How To Get The Most Out Of Linkedin

This article is a guest post written by Ronan Leonard.

About the author:

Ronan Leonard connects small business owners to support groups through the innovative concept of virtual Mastermind groups.

I’ve had a fair bit of success through Linkedin recently. I’ve done business. I’ve collaborated on projects. I’ve connected with a great number of people who are looking to help me grow my business as I help them grow their business. I’ve had podcasting opportunities and guest posting opportunities.

But before you start you need to understand what your purpose is and what is your end goal. If you don’t know this then you cannot measure your success and you will not put in the hard work required to grow your LinkedIn influence.

As so many have asked me what the secret to my success is I thought I would share with you a few quick tips in this article. Here is what I am doing to try to leverage Linkedin to its full potential.

Create your Customer Avatar

The first thing that you need to do is work out why you are on Linkedin. Who do you want to connect with? You need to understand what their motivations are and what you can offer them. As mentioned, Linkedin is not just necessarily about doing business it can also be about collaboration.

Profile Optimisation

Once you are clear on the Avatar of your ideal Linkedin Prospect, you will then want to create the right profile that appeals to them. Make sure it says who you are, what you do and how you can benefit them.

Connect with others who are active

After you have worked out who you want to connect with and created your appealing profile, then you need to reach out and connect with people. You should try to ensure that you connect with people that are active on Linkedin. That way as you try to engage in conversations with people they are more likely to respond.

Create engaging posts

Everyone has a different network and who they are trying to reach but there are some fundamentals that you should consider when thinking about what to post – Post about what your network is interested in, talk about problems that you have faced and how you have overcome them, tells stories and speak in the first person and create different styles of content – video, articles, long posts and short 1-2 sentence posts. Mix it up just make sure it’s relevant to those you want to read it.

Connect with people that will support you

A great way to leverage Linkedin is to create a group of 10 + supportive people who will help each other expand the reach of their posts – through liking, commenting and sharing each other’s posts. That way, if they comment on your post it will be seen by relevant people in their network.  You need to make sure you connect with people that you would be comfortable commenting on their posts and returning the favour. This won’t work unless everyone is helping each other out.

Leverage your results

You need to keep growing your connections. I started 2017 with just over 1000 connections. Now I have over 10000. As you would expect I’ve seen a 10x increase in results because of this connection boost. The quality of your connections and engagement is important but you will see improved results when you have a larger number of connections.

Automate when you can

Whilst Linkedin doesn’t necessarily like 3rd party tools they do come in useful if you really want to take Linkedin to its full potential. You can use tools to automate some of your connecting with people as well as sending messages to prospects – don’t send “salesy” messages, just send an intro and then have a real conversation from there when people respond.

There you have it. A step by step process giving you a quick introduction to how I leverage Linkedin in my business. If you’d like to know more, please connect with me on Linkedin (include a brief message as I ignore all generic request and suggest you do to!)

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