A handful of members met on Zoom today to discuss LinkedIn.
Networking on LinkedIn and Face to Face is not so different. We discovered that no one likes to be 'sold to' and most success stories have come from building relationships.
In a world full of 'fake it until you make it' profiles, you can be triggered into thinking that you are doing something wrong as you aren't getting lots of leads from your posts. So here are a few tips that we shared...
• Be yourself. Being 'you' sets you apart from the crowd and gives your posts some personality. Always add a call to action and stay on brand for continuity.
• Be social. Get to know your connections, ask questions, share your thoughts, be helpful, be open minded and courteous.
• Build relationships. Start conversations with your connections that are based on being helpful/useful. Building relationships take time, people who trust you are more likely to buy from you or send referrals in your direction. TOP TIP - check out this blog from Moira Barnes Sales Consultancy about selling on LinkedIn and building relationships - CLICK HERE
• Be consistent. Don't beat yourself up if you don't have time to post on LinkedIn daily. If you only have time for one post per month make sure the content is in line with your marketing strategy - remember you can always schedule your posts in advance to help you manage your time!
• Hashtags. Some of our seasoned LinkedIn contributors always add their primary keywords as hashtags. LinkedIn is a huge search engine so adding those hashtags can help with your post reach.
• Tagging. If you want to acknowledge a place, event or person remember to tag them into your post. This will help extend the reach of your post by allowing your 'tagged' connections to see your update.
• Images/videos. Social media can be rather 'noisy' so having an eye catching image or short (under 60 seconds ) video can help catch the attention of your audience. Stock photos can be great but taking your own photo to promote a specific event, product or service is preferable.
• Artificial Intelligence or AI. Our thoughts around AI were all pretty unanimous. AI can be really helpful if you tell it what to do! Most of our members use AI to enhance content they have already written. Some use it to shorten a blog so that it can be shared on social media. Either way, AI works best when you tell it what to do - maybe this could be our next online topic????
Thank you to everyone who contributed, it was a very interesting morning indeed.
If you have any questions about networking on LinkedIn, get in touch and we'll do our best to help - CONTACT US
