LinkedIn is a powerful tool for your work, your business, and your professional life. Whether you are in sales, management, ownership, or are a solopreneur really doesn’t matter: You need to have a purposeful, powerful presence on LinkedIn. That is why a few months ago I posted a blog entitled, “Five Insightful Tips for your LinkedIn Profile and Presence”, which you can read here.

In her helpful book LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive, Carol Kaemmerer states, “Beyond housing your profile, LinkedIn is a relationship-building tool – an efficient way to engage with those important to you in your business. LinkedIn is also a vehicle for expressing your thought leadership, building your own brand as a leader, and contributing to your company’s brand equity.” To that end, I have written another Blog entitled “5 MORE Insightful Tips for Your LinkedIn Profile and Presence”

1.  If you want to have a successful experience on LinkedIn, you have to be on LinkedIn. I guess that goes without saying, but I can tell that probably the majority of my connections haven’t posted to LinkedIn or shared a post in perhaps years…  Plan to visit LinkedIn at least weekly to interact with the posts of your connections and the thought leaders that you follow. Be sure to post comments often, not only to share your thoughts with other business leaders, but so that your connections and especially your prospects will begin to learn who you are and become more familiar with you.  Every time you post a comment, your LinkedIn profile picture and headline are also displayed so any of your connections’ connections can get to know who you are as well!
2. Observe the 70-30 (or the 80-20) Rule when you post on LinkedIn. One of your primary goals on LinkedIn should be to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.  So, your posts should primarily be aimed at educating or inspiring your connections.  Keeping that in mind, make sure that no more than 30% of your LinkedIn posts are “salesy” in nature, because truthfully, people don’t want to be directly sold to on LinkedIn. Remember, LinkedIn should primarily be about building relationships.  As an important corollary to this, make sure you don’t ever spam connections LinkedIn Message inboxes with overt sales stuff.  That would be an immediate turnoff for most people.
3. If creating content isn’t your forte, then you need to curate useful, insightful content for your followers. For example, if your primary clientele are small business owners, then post helpful articles related to business growth or sales and marketing or helpful LinkedIn tips.  Also, seek out articles especially related to your industry, and then post them with your own couple of insights about why it should be important to your audience.
4. Seek out LinkedIn connections that you are “qualified” to give a recommendation to, and write them a well thought out recommendation for their LinkedIn profile. Not only will they be touched and thrilled that you cared enough for them to write it, but it may also give them the impetus to write a nice recommendation for you as well.  The recommendations that you write are also listed on your own LinkedIn profile for all to see.  So, writing recommendations for others demonstrates that you truly do care about others and their “social credibility.”  It’s just another way as Larry Levine would say to “Sell from the Heart.”
5. After someone accepts your LinkedIn connection request be sure to message them again and thank them for doing so. In this message you can make it more personal as there’s no limit to the amount of characters or words you can use.  Likewise, after you’ve accepted someone’s connection request be sure to message them and thank them for connecting with you.  Remember, at this point, your main goal is to be building a strong relationship with them.

A Freebie:  LinkedIn is NOT Facebook.  It is not your socio-political posting platform.  Save those for Facebook.  LinkedIn is the place online for your professional self, and your posts should almost always be centered around your personal professional branding.

Did you miss the First Five Tips?  Read them here:  “5 Insightful Tips for Your LinkedIn Profile and Presence”

LinkedIn Thought Leaders to Follow:  Carol Kaemmerer, author of the excellent book (new revised edition released earlier this year) “LinkedIn for the Savvy Executive”;  Melonie Dodaro at Top Dog Social Media; Professor Heather Austin on YouTube (great for “beginners”);  William Aruda at Forbes Magazine;  Jeff Young, “The LinkedIn Guru” (Jeff is a great follow on LinkedIn, and he practices what he preaches);  Lynairre Johnston (all the way from New Zealand) who just released her insightful book “BUSinESS Gold”; and finally the ever practical and self proclaimed “King of LinkedIn and Social Selling” Daniel Disney.

Helping you print smarter, faster, and cheaper:  630-289-0747 or  kent@carlisle-enterprises.com