You want your business to be profitable, but in order to do so you’ll need customers. No, not just any customer, but one who will buy. However, that won’t happen without leads.
Without leads, and a considerable amount of them, you won’t generate sales, revenue or profits into your business account. Social media has allowed many business owners to yield leads and LinkedIn, better known as the professional’s playground, is the preferred platform.
To digitally network and generate leads on LinkedIn, we’ve detailed what you need to do to ensure you have a successful strategy:
Complete your profile
Before you decide to start your lead campaign ensure that your corporate and personal profiles are complete, free of grammatical errors and full of great copy. Your profiles will dictate the way others view you and your brand.
Connect
You can do numerous things with LinkedIn such as build connections within your industry, research competitors, and source talent. But how those connections are garnered is another story.
LinkedIn groups are an excellent way to connect with others. Identify groups based on your industry and review the activity of each group prior to deciding to join. Read posts from others and, if you have information to contribute that will help another professional, then share it. The more you give to the community, the more benefits you will sow.
Follow-Up
After attending an event or conference, gather the business cards of the individuals you met with and connect with them on LinkedIn. This move will secure a digital connection where you can share information and identify others within your shared network.
Showcase your work
LinkedIn has some great applications you can utilize to enrich the content on your profile. From WordPress applications, which can display your latest blog posts, to the SlideShare application, which will show PowerPoint presentations, find which tool best fits your needs.
The easiest way to showcase your work on LinkedIn is to post it as a status update with a link. It will remain on your profile until your next update.
Don’t Cold Message
The term cold calling has been around for decades; online it’s referred to as cold messaging. If you have no connection to an individual on LinkedIn, your first communications should not be a sales pitch. You need to develop a relationship with this individual prior to attempting to sell them anything. Ask yourself: If someone you don’t know walked up to you on the street and asked you to buy something, what would you do? Nine times out of ten you would say no thank you and move on. When these unsolicited messages are shared on social media platforms, they are treated as spam.
Have you utilized LinkedIn to build your business? If so, share your story below in the comment section.
S. Lynn Cooper is a Washington, DC-based digital strategist and communications expert. Cooper is the founder and director of Socially Ahead, a strategic communications agency that specializes in the creation of social and digital strategies and campaign management. Follow her on Twitter at @sociallyahead.