Ashad RehmanIt is without a doubt that LinkedIn is currently one of the top social media platforms on the Internet. And what makes this platform unique is that this social media is designed to connect professionals from around the world. You can find people belonging to every niche and every industry active on LinkedIn. In short, LinkedIn has become a major hub in the world of professional grooming giving rise to a new digital corporate era. It is now interconnecting professionals from all walks of life under a single umbrella.
However, I always wondered that is this platform only good for socializing and connecting with other individuals who are professionally adept! And I realized that LinkedIn has a whole lot more in store than what I imagined. LinkedIn is not only a professional social media platform but it is a whole marketplace for service providers. With a bit of exploration, you can get almost any kind of service done within no time.
In fact, it is not just a professional platform but you can actually use it to generate some good leads for your business. Yes, you can do that and much more! All thanks to the modern day digital marketing.
All you have to be is a little creative and the platform will introduce countless opportunities for you. Keeping that in mind, here are seven interesting tips that can help you generate profitable leads in no time.
Tip # 1: Introduce Yourself & Offer Connections Your Help
Starting off on LinkedIn is very easy. You sign up for an account, fill in your personal and professional detail, enter all that you have achieved and save it. And before you know, you are already a part of this amazingly ever-growing platform. But, just in case, if you are seeking to grow on LinkedIn, then it is highly important that you add some potential connections to your account. In that case, LinkedIn is pretty similar to Facebook. In Facebook, you add casual friends, whereas, in LinkedIn, you add professionals.
When we add people to our connection list on LinkedIn, often times, we are under the impression that they are going to reach out to us themselves. But this my friend is nothing more than just a myth. Now, just in case, if you are a celebrity let’s say, Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, then there is a probability that people might come to meet and greet you themselves. Otherwise, the only time a person will consider to visit your profile is when they are considering to hire you. For example, if you are an iOS app developer, you will only be reached by recruiters or HR departments if there is a job opening for you.
Sometimes, you might want to reach out to a prospect that is not in your LinkedIn connections. But LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to send a message to a second-degree and 3rd-degree connections unless you have their paid, premium account – LinkedIn InMail.
If you find yourself in this situation, here is an article that can guide you on How to message someone on LinkedIn who is not a connection, without paying for InMail.
Related Read: 5 P’s of Social Media Marketing Your Business Can Not Afford to Ignore – Infographics
Hence, it’s okay to take out some time from your busy schedule and go through your list of connections every once in a while. Build your connection list of people who share the same interests and work in the same industry as you do. To casually start up a conversation with them, drop a warm message letting them know you are in the list. And, only if they are willing to talk, then make introductions and move ahead with the conversation.
Listen, listen and listen!
Learn about each other and how you can help your connections. You never know who might need you just when! Reaching out to them yourself and asking them if they need your help will automatically make them a potential lead.
Here’s a great article to help you learn How to Introduce Yourself on LinkedIn effectively.
Tip # 2: Resolve Their Problems Through Engagement
Just like Facebook, LinkedIn also has an active Live Feed. But only this time, your Live Feed is going to show you information which has been mostly published by your connections. These can be interesting news, their significant achievements, something that they have produced (such as articles), motivational quotes and the list goes on and on. In other terms, your LinkedIn Live Feed will have all the interesting information from your connections, and each one of them can be your way in to attract some leads.
Here’s how?
For instance, I like to connect with people who are mostly writers, digital marketing specialists, SEO specialists, community specialists, web designers, and developers. Hence, my LinkedIn feed is always flushed with interesting news and latest happenings in the technology and digital marketing industry. I sometimes find something of my interest and leave an informational comment to add to my connection’s knowledge.
What this practice does is that it presents me as an individual who has knowledge in a specific domain. Thereby increasing my domain authority. And this often leads connections to come to me themselves and ask me for help and guidance. In return, I provide them a solution to their problem and gently pitch them my service showing my inclination to help them out.
By answering your connections query with your expertise, you are not only resolving their particular problem, but you are also becoming a go-to source for them.
Eventually, they will realize that some tasks are best suited for professionals only. And there you go, with a simple consultation service you have generated another potential lead.
Tip # 3: Auto-Optimize Bids for Lead Generation Forms
Do you know that you can collect more quality leads by running LinkedIn ads?
The ads are incredible and they include a lot of great features. But, one remarkable feature which they recently added to their ad tool was the feature of bid optimization. In bid optimization, they have enabled users to fill Lead Generation Forms. These custom forms allow users to feed relevant information about their leads to the LinkedIn system. With automatic optimization in Campaign Managers, users can now get much better leads at a better price. All they have to do is select “Lead Form Submissions” on the Bid and Budget page, and the Campaign Manager will automatically adjust the bid to serve sponsored content
The best thing about Lead Gen Forms is that it comes with accurate LinkedIn profiling data option. It allows various members to forward their professional information using a handful number of clicks.
According to the Director of Marketing at Oracle,
“When we enabled lead-gen bid optimization, we saw an awesome 36% decrease in cost-per-lead, which we were very happy with.”
Tip # 4: Educate Your Connections With Learning Resources
Another great tip that I can give you to increase the positive vote bank among your connections is to help them learn things that are of interest to them. When you educate your connection your motivation should only be to build rapport.
A good way to help them learn new concepts and trends is by sending them news pieces, ebooks, statistical reports, articles, videos or fact-based case studies. When you don’t hold an expectation of receiving something back, then the only thing that comes back is a positive perception about you from your connections. This perception leads to building everlasting authentic relationships.
This will result in creating a higher level of trust among your particular audience type.
The next step is to reach out to your connections with something that is fulfilling their business agendas. You will simply be amazed at how easily your connections will open up to you with their requirements and recommend you to others.
Tip # 5: Stay Active & Create Passive Awareness to Attract Leads
Today, Linkedin has moved away from just being a professional platform. If you want to stay at the top of your game, then you have to keep sharing buzzworthy content actively. Are you becoming a success story in your organization? Let the professional world know about your achievements. It will help you establish an element of trust among your fellow connections.
Are you a writing enthusiast and wish to show-off your knowledge to the world? Write an article and publish it on LinkedIn Pulse. Apparently, you will start seeing a certain level of engagement start taking place on your published pieces.
This constant publishing of content that’s relevant to your connections will result in your appearing frequently on your connections’ news feed. What this will do is portray you as an individual who’s on top of the latest trends that are relevant to your connections. Sooner or later, the word will get out and you’ll be regarded as a subject-matter expert of an area of knowledge that’s preferred by your potential audience.
This gradual building up of your audience will create passive awareness about you and eventually about your business and its offerings.
By creating a passive awareness of oneself on a platform such as LinkedIn has its own increasing benefits. Every time you post something interesting on LinkedIn, you get a chance to appear on the live feed of everyone in your connection. All you have to do is make sure that whatever you are publish completely original and authentic. It shouldn’t look or feel as if you are selling something, such as your service! Instead, just share your expertise and add knowledge to increase their understanding.
When you are active and publishing something new, people like to interact with you. This way you can establish a certain level of professional relationship with them & learn if they need your expertise.
Tip # 6: Getting Recommended on LinkedIn May Attract Some Potential Leads
Now, this is not basically a tip to attract leads to your platform but it can surely establish a level of trust. With this practice, your potential leads will know that you are an expert in the field and will help them grow.
Recommendations make you more trustworthy in the digital trust-deficit world. Have you ever visited a freelancing website? Which freelancer do you prefer to hire for your big and small tasks? I am sure you’ll go for the one with the best rating and positive reviews. Similarly, LinkedIn has a recommendation section. And I would also like to add here that securing a recommendation on LinkedIn is no easy job since we exist in an interactive corporate environment where everyone sort of knows everyone.
So if somebody isn’t writing a good recommendation for you, then there must be plenty of people whom you may have worked with before. Start giving away recommendations to them and eventually someone will give you a recommendation as well. It will not only strengthen your profile, but it will also make you a much-anticipated connection on LinkedIn. Next time, if someone is seeking to work with you, they won’t have to run a background check.
Tip # 7: See Who Viewed Your Profile & Talk Business With Them
LinkedIn has become an amazing professional platform for many reasons. But, one among such many reasons is its amazing features. One feature that I kind of admire is that you can always check who visited your profile. In case, if these people are existing in my connection list, then there is a significant chance that they might’ve visited me because they might’ve required some professional assistance from me.
So, here’s what I do, I craft a friendly message stating:
“Hi there, how are you? Is there something that I can help you with?”
Or
“Hello Pal, I saw that you visited my profile earlier. Would you like me to help you with something?”
Such small but catchy messages often end up with you connecting with a potential lead. Because someone, who has chosen to spend time on your LinkedIn profile, will be more likely to explore what your business has to offer and in the process become a potential lead.
Concluding Thoughts
Today, LinkedIn has become the largest channel for B2B marketers and is widely used to distribute content. There are more than 500 million users who have signed up on this platform and almost 3 million of those share content weekly. It constitutes 50% of all social traffic coming to B2B websites & their blogs. Almost 91% of marketing executives are of the view that LinkedIn is their first choice of finding quality content related to digital and traditional marketing. This shows that LinkedIn has definitely become a force to be reckoned with in the social media circle.
So when was the last time you considered generating leads from LinkedIn? Now might just be the time. Sign up now, start building relations you never know how many potential leads are waiting for your services.
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