This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation” blog series.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
Are you using LinkedIn effectively to generate new business prospects? The Content Marketing Institute claims that LinkedIn is the only platform that the majority of B2B marketers consider to be effective.
The Sophisticated Marketers Guide to LinkedIn yields some interesting stats about prospecting on LinkedIn:
- 1 out of every 3 professionals is on LinkedIn
- 65% of companies acquired B2B leads through LinkedIn
- 93% of marketers rate LinkedIn as effective for generating leads
- LinkedIn drives more traffic to B2B blogs than Twitter, Facebook and Google+ combined
Make sure your profile is complete and customer focused
Before you implement any of the follow tips, be sure your LinkedIn profile is complete, current, and attactive to your target audience. Each section of your profile is an opportunity for people to find you (through LinkedIn Search) and to understand your expertise and how you can help them.
Review 10 Ways to Spring Clean Your LinkedIn Profile to whip your LinkedIn profile into top shape.Then you can move on to attracting new prospects on LinkedIn.
Post in LinkedIn group discussions
When it comes to exposure, the bigger the Group the better — but make sure the Group profile fits your target market. You can join up to 50 groups on LinkedIn for increased exposure, search ability, and information sharing. And most of these groups are “open” groups, which means that the discussion will also be available in Google search, so you might get some extra exposure there.
Not only does posting in groups and participating in existing group discussion increase your exposure, being a group member let’s you send LinkedIn emails to anyone in the group! You can even do this from your free LinkedIn account without spending money on InMails.
- Post in Groups 2-3 times per week.
Resource: 8 Ways to Use LinkedIn Groups to Boost Your Business on CIO.com.
Post your own personal status updates and like or share your connections’ status updates
Status updates go out to your entire network. The more connections you have, the more exposure and thought leadership you develop. Post status updates that include articles you find from sources other than LinkedIn. Curating good content can help you get out there as an expert at least until you’re ready to write your own articles.
LinkedIn has found their busiest times to be morning and midday, Monday through Friday, so that’s the time to publish your updates and articles (see below). This will naturally lead to a larger percentage of reach.
- Post a status update every morning, and take a few minutes to like or share others’ status updates. LinkedIn has found that 20 posts per month can help you reach 60 percent of your unique audience.
Resource: 7 Good and Bad Ways to Use the LinkedIn Status Updates Box on PowerFormula.net.
Post your company status updates and like or share other companies’ status updates
Your company status updates go to your company followers. Tune up your LinkedIn company page to attract more B2B prospects. Most of us are just beginning to understand the value of a company page on LinkedIn, but think about HP’s company page with 1,896,676 followers! Every status update they post on their company pages goes out to almost 2 million people!
According to numbers from LinkedIn , 6 out of every 10 LinkedIn users are interested in industry insights—the most-demanded type of content among LinkedIn members. Insights, in general, are quite popular among users. Second to industry insight, company news appeals to 53 percent of LinkedIn members. (New products and services are the third most popular content, with 43 percent interested in this kind of update.)
For maximum exposure, have a company page, attract followers, and do regular status updates. When you “like” or “share” another company’s Status Update, the update appears in the Status Update feed of your entire network, and this is another great way for you to gain exposure.
- Post a company status update at least twice a week.
Resource: Best Practices for Company Updates on LinkedIn Help (be sure to download the PDF).
Like or comment on group discussions
This is a very easy way to gain exposure without having gone through the effort of finding the information or posing the question. Comments on group discussions appear in the discussion feed. The amount of exposure will depend on the number of members in the group.
- Engage with your groups 1-3x per week.
Resource: Are You Likeable? on PowerFormula.net. (This is an older post. . . skip down to the big “like” image and read from there.)
Publish articles on LinkedIn’s publishing platform
Showcase your expertise in long-form articles (i.e., blog posts) for not only your network to read but for the whole world to read. What a great way to show you know your stuff!
New posts will show up in your regular home page news feed; but since these articles are also readily available to users beyond your network, the platform offers a tremendous opportunity to help you develop a following among the wider LinkedIn community.
We recommend that you post original content here… not just re-post something from your own blog. However, you CAN post original content here and re-post it on your company blog later (using the rel=”canonical” tag to avoid getting a duplicate content penalty).
- Publish an article on LinkedIn monthly; twice a month if you can manage it.
Resource: LinkedIn Publishing Platform: What Marketers Need to Know on Social Media Examiner.
Help your employees to help you
Engagement on your profile can be a big help to those who happen to stop by, and it turns out that your own employees could be the greatest asset to building this engagement.
Employees are 70 percent more likely to click, share, and comment on an update than a typical LinkedIn user, according to LinkedIn.
You can take advantage of this by making it easy for employees to engage with the content. Send notifications and links every time you post or when particularly important updates go live. Asking for engagement is sometimes all it takes to get your colleagues involved.
Spending as little as 10-15 minutes a day on LinkedIn to do the above activities will payoff with a continuous stream of new prospects that are exactly the people you’re looking for! 10 minutes a day (5 days a week) for a whole year is just over 43 hours. Using what you’re paid for a week of work, and the revenue from a new customer, how many customers would you need to acquire from LinkedIn to have a strong ROI?
This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation” blog series.
