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“Your LinkedIn profile should leave no room for doubt about the kind of job you’re looking for and why you’re the best person for that position.” ― Melanie Pinola, Lead Writer at Zapier
The
newly acquired Microsoft property, LinkedIn, is at the epicenter of digital business networking. With over 450 million members residing in nearly every industry, professionals regularly leverage the site to develop new opportunities with potential prospects that would otherwise be hard to come by.Despite the staggering pool of connections to be made, many are failing at developing meaningful relationships that ultimately lead to collaborations, sales, and other prosperous business circumstances.A large reason for this is that many do not know how to properly represent themselves on the network and employ marketing tactics that produce underwhelming results on this unique channel.To help curb some bad marketing habits and build a network that actually benefits LinkedIn users,
Mark Fidelman recently interviewed Brynne Tillman, Chief Learning Officer of
PeopleLinx.Brynne is a
LinkedIn marketing expert with over 21,000 followers. She shared some incredibly insightful and practical tips and tricks to developing a stellar presence on LinkedIn.The video above is is some of Brynne’s sage networking advice.
Optimize Your Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is essentially your resume and business card rolled into one. For this reason, it needs to unequivocally convey that you are the individual that prospects are seeking; you tout the goods that will help them succeed.Or as Brynne likes to put it:“When [prospects] show up to your profile, you are presenting yourself in a way that attracts, teaches, and engages them and gets them curious enough to want to take your phone call.”This means that engagement is the key. You should be interacting with each and every new connection you make. This is most effectively done by analyzing a person’s profile and sending them insights and educational information such as blogs, articles, or video content that may be helpful to them and their career.Doing this helps business professionals to become thought leaders to small groups of people while also building intimate connections and relationships by marketing themselves one person at a time.“If you are not engaging people, it’s just sharing lots of stuff with no end.”
Methodize Your Outreach
I know what you are thinking — marking yourself one person at a time is an incredibly time consuming amount of work; and that it is.For this approach to be effective, you must develop an outreach strategy and pace your efforts.The best way to accomplish this is by simply connecting with 5 new prospects a day, 25 a week, or 100 a month, depending on what you think will be most advantageous.Approaching networking in this manner allows you to build a large number of intimate relationships over time with relevant prospects, making them more likely to be interested in your or your company’s offerings.
Advertise Relevant Content
LinkedIn ads can absolutely be an effective marketing tool when used correctly. But when it comes to relationship building, they are simply not as effective as a small scale approach.This is where content is a vital tool.The biggest problem with content marketing on LinkedIn, however, is that users often push out content that they think their audience wants to read without actually uncovering what is most useful to those individuals.By interacting with new connections and developing relationships, you can develop a better gauge on what content will be most fruitful for your audience, and therefore fruitful for you.It is these simple insights that will make or break a successful content marketing strategy on LinkedIn.Applying this advice will take time and effort. At the end of the day, however, you will have developed a much more advantageous network to your particular goals.
