Among social media applications, LinkedIn is distinct in that it is focused on business related activities like recruiting, prospecting, and business networking. LinkedIn offers a number of quality avenues to improve the productivity of your business and carry out your business functions. Want more LinkedIn leads? This is what you need to do.
Make Your Profile into a Resource
The first step in making your profile recognizable is to transform into a real resource. What that means is that your profile should be operated almost like a micro site which regularly provides content and information of value to others.
This ranges from white papers, instant perspectives, links to quality industry resources and job opportunities. As you keep providing content and information of value to others, your profile rises in stature and credibility. This is the first step to improving your ability to gain more leads. This should be an ongoing effort and at any point in time, you should be regularly posting high quality information and content.
Actively Participate in Relevant Groups
Needless to say, business networking is the most valuable capability available on LinkedIn. It’ll help you to the fullest to maintain high visibility of your profile, activities, business, and brand.
By joining relevant groups and maintaining regular participation by way of answering questions, commenting and being involved in discussions, you go a long way towards demonstrating expertise in your area and also your people oriented skills. As you gain and maintain reputation as a trustworthy expert, your ability to connect to high quality prospects goes up several folds.
These groups are full of experienced professionals so bear in mind that a marketing oriented approach to group networking could rub a few people the wrong way. So the recommended approach to group network is to be knowledge and competency driven, and not be marketing driven.
Use LinkedIn’s Advanced Search Capabilities
LinkedIn gives you extremely advanced search capabilities and you should use them to the fullest. You can search by profile keywords, title, company location, and seniority level among others. Using these search capabilities allows you to build up a master list of prospects with whom you can attempt to engage.
Judiciously use Profile Viewing Data
LinkedIn gives you information related to who has viewed your profile, who has viewed your posts and how your rank for profile views. This kind of information can be very useful while mining prospects. If you take advantage of premium memberships, you can even get this information going back 90 days. This information should be judiciously used given that approaching prospects on the basis of such information can cause privacy related concerns on the prospect’s side.
Use LinkedIn’s Find Alumni Capability
This capability can be extremely useful when you already have strong relationships with employees or customers who are alumni from specific institutions. You can search for alumni based on where they live, where they work and the role that they are currently playing. This can be extremely useful while looking for mid to senior hires due to higher opportunities for value fitment with your organization, whether as an employee or as a customer.
