Nada & Nothing To Leads & Clients in 20 Minutes A Day

Just how do you STOP faffing on LinkedIn and actually make the most of the time you DO have to spend on LinkedIn count?

Whether it’s 20, 15 or 30 minutes a day, whatever time you do have to spend on LinkedIn, you want to make sure you’re using it on activity that is productive and focused on achieving your goals rather than ad hoc unfocused activity that get you nowhere or as someone recently described it  . . . faffing with no end game!

During the pandemic I ran a series of LinkedIn trainings (that I call LinkedIn LoveIns and still run today!) and one question that came up time and time again was . . .

“How do I manage my time on LinkedIn?”

So, although I like to say LinkedIn is NOT a social media platform, it is like any other social media, far too easy to waste time doing ad hoc, unfocused activity that gets you nowhere.

Now I’ve built my business on LinkedIn, it’s my primary lead generation platform and I know full well how difficult it is to keep focused and not go down lots of those proverbial LinkedIn rabbit holes!

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

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

LinkedIn is good for business!

But why LinkedIn? As business owners we need to generate leads. They are the lifeblood of your business, but lead generation is all about attracting the RIGHT people to your business.

Which is why LinkedIn is such an exciting place to be as it’s the only social media platform that allows you to build relationships with people you don’t know and grow them into opportunities.

How many times have you heard people say they were contacted by someone who they didn’t know but who had been following them for X amount of time?

So with LinkedIn you can have people you don’t know dropping messages into your inbox asking to work with you – which is like happy days . . . 💃

So now we know why LinkedIn, where do we start to maximise this wonderful platform for lead generation?

Defining your LinkedIn strategy

We need a plan so where I start with my clients is by defining their LinkedIn strategy, which includes . . .

Let’s go through these step by step . . .

• What’s your why? Why are you on LinkedIn?

It’s so important to have a focus. Why are you on LinkedIn and what is it you want LinkedIn to do for you and your business? Is it to raise awareness, build credibility, get seen as the go to expert, get in front of JV partners? Ultimately, of course it’s about generating leads – finding and getting front the people you serve and who need you.

• Know Your Audience:

Knowing your audience is marketing 101. LinkedIn is no different to any other marketing activities – your website, direct mail, PPC, you have to know who you are talking to!

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

Knowing this underpins everything on LinkedIn , including:

What to say in your profile. You profile not about you, its about your ideal client so understanding who you help, their pains and keywords will help you write your profile from their perspective and not yours

Whom you connect with and where you find them on LinkedIn. You have too know who you want to meet before you can find them!

What you post. To create content that will be relevant you have to know what your audience is interested in. What are their challenges they are likely to need help with?

• Prospecting Strategy:

We then go onto to look at your prospecting strategy. Who do you want in your network, where are they and how are you going to get them into your network. LinkedIn gives us a number of different tools to help us drill down the 31 million profiles (in the UK alone!) to find who we want to meet. You may use just one of these tools or a combination depending on who you want to find.

The next step once found of course is starting the conversation. Which for me is all about connecting and getting them into my network. The next question then is . . .

Should you personalise or not personalise your connection request?

There are two schools of thought here. Personalise or not personalise your connection request.

First thing to remember the primary objective of the connection request is to get people into your network – end of. For me personalise the connection is a key part of achieving this objective AND it’s also the first step in building relationships. The person you are wishing to connect doesn’t know you so personalising your request saying why you want to connect is, like introducing yourself.

Of course, connections requests need to be genuine! Sending those boring generic connection requests, such as: “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” OR “I noticed your profile and thought it could prove beneficial for us both to connect” . . . just don’t work any more!

• Content Strategy:

Your content strategy is looking at what content you have, both your own and relevant 3rd party content that you can post, as well as where and when you are going to post. It also takes into consideration the engagement process – whom will you engage with.

• Measuring Success:

Finally how will you measure success? What will success look like for you? So although LinkedIn is free it still does cost your time so you sill want to ensure you’re getting you the results you want! So you can use metrics such as #Profile views or #Connections. I like profile views because this is the equivalent of website traffic. But it’s better than website traffic as you can actually ‘see’ who is coming to your profile!

I followed this exact strategy with Bernadette . . .

Bernadette and I worked together to create her plan of action of what to do and when. We researched her audience, found where they were and how to get in front of them. This not only increased Bernadette’s confidence, she also picked up new clients – happy days!

Are You Committed?

LinkedIn like any other marketing activity requires commitment, you’ve got to see LinkedIn as a key part of your day to day sales and marketing activity.

It’s like paying to be a member of a networking group and never going to any of the meetings! That’s a lack of commitment and will never work for you.

So in terms of LinkedIn, decide how much time a day or week can you spare to lead generation on LinkedIn. I often say treat LinkedIn like another face to face networking group. Look at how much time you spend face to face networking, the travel, the meeting itself and then the follow up 121s. Then dedicate say 10 or 20% of the time you spend networking to LinkedIn.