How To Build Your Business On LinkedIn Without Spending Hours Trapped On The Platform

Like any social media, it’s far too easy to spend hours on LinkedIn doing ad hoc, unfocused activity that gets you nowhere.  

What you need is a plan of action! One that helps you stay focused on activity designed to get you in front of your dream clients and maximise the time you do have to spend on LinkedIn. Read on to find out how!

I have been running a series of LinkedIn LoveIns on the 3 steps to getting your dream clients coming to you on LinkedIn.

These LinkedIn LoveIns covered the 3 key elements of an effective LinkedIn strategy:

1. Your LinkedIn profile: a hugely important first step as your profile is your shop front on LinkedIn. It’s where you position your expertise and build your credibility
2. Growing your network on LinkedIn: This is about connecting with the people you want to meet and connecting intentionally rather than randomly.
3. Posting on LinkedIn: to raise your visibility so you attract self-selecting clients to you.

During these LoveIns, I asked attendees to send me their burning LinkedIn questions and I got a lot of great questions, including . . .

“How do I best use my limited time on LinkedIn?”

I’ve built my business on LinkedIn, it’s my primary lead generation platform, so I know full well how easy it is to get distracted and end up down all sorts of rabbit holes!

But what I can tell you from my 8 years teaching and mentoring people on how to use LinkedIn for business, and to grow my own business is . . .

. . . to get tangible results from LinkedIn you need a clear, actionable daily plan of action!

How To Build Your LinkedIn Daily Action Plan

Start by defining your LinkedIn strategy, including:

1. What’s your objective? Be clear on what it is you want LinkedIn to help you achieve. This is key to helping you stay focused. Of course, if you are a business owner, you’re more than likely be looking to use LinkedIn to help you generate more of the right opportunities – this means raising awareness, building credibility, being seen as the expert and ultimately finding and getting front the people you serve and who need you.

2. Know your audience. LinkedIn is no different to any other marketing activity you undertake whether that’s your website, direct mail, pay per click, etc you have to know whom you are talking to . . .

• What keywords would they use to find solutions?
• Who is it you help?
• What are their challenges?

These are all important to know as not only will it help you write your LinkedIn profile; it also will help you find the right people and guide you in terms of what post on LinkedIn.

3. Find your audience on LinkedIn. Once you’re clear on whom you are looking for on LinkedIn you can then go find them. LinkedIn gives us several ways to drill down the 28 million profiles that are on LinkedIn in the UK alone.

These include people searches, company pages, LinkedIn groups, your connections’ connections . . . you may use just one of these tools or a combination depending on what works best for you.

Once you have your overall LinkedIn Strategy in place, you can then put together your LinkedIn Daily Action Plan.

Your LinkedIn daily action plan will consist of a number of activities, but I am going to give you my top 3 activities in this article.

What Are My Top 3 Action Steps . . . ?

Let’s explore these in a little more detail.

Step 1: Who is coming to you? This is what I call ‘low hanging fruit’, as these are people who are coming to you for a reason. On a daily basis check the following:

• Who has viewed your profile? Is there anyone you want to connect with or follow up with
• Who is asking you to connect? Review these and decide if you want to accept or ignore. Note: don’t just accept. Check out their profile first and decide if they will add value to your network
• Check your notifications and your messages and follow up where required.

Step 2: Engage daily. A great way to raise your visibility is to engage on your network’s posts. If you are connecting with the right people you will be seeing posts from people you want to get in front of

Step 3: Grow your network. Engaging with your network also gives you a great opportunity to connect with someone. So check who else is engaging on the same content as you and use that as a reason to connect.

Engaging daily and growing your network you will also then drive traffic to your profile, so you circle back to step 1 who is coming to you.

How long should I spend on LinkedIn?

This then begs the question of how long should you be spending on LinkedIn?

For me it’s less about how long you spend on LinkedIn than what you do in the time you do have that’s important, hence my top 3 daily action steps suggested above.

However, when it comes to LinkedIn the more you put in the more you get out. Essentially you need to commit to using LinkedIn on a regular (daily if possible) basis.

So next time you are on LinkedIn with the aim of building your business, follow these top 3 action steps and let me know how you get on!

To get notified of future LinkedIn LoveIns please sign up here and get a copy of my free ebook on 1 Hour To A LinkedIn Profile That Gets you Found & Noticed.”

Want to attract more of the right clients using LinkedIn? Know your ideal clients are on LinkedIn and feel you “𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑡” but have no idea where to start?

Let me help you unlock the massive potential LinkedIn offers to attract, nurture and win new business. If you think you waste too much time on LinkedIn while trying to generate leads, connect with me on LinkedIn to chat about how I can help.