Many countries are in lockdown, and the number of members of Linkedin is increasing. In the past month, I had received several messages from individuals and companies that wanted to be on LinkedIn.
They’ve heard it’s a tremendous B2B & B2C tool, and they want to ride the wave. Great 😊 But what is the reason to join LinkedIn? I can tell you 90% of the people don’t know.
So, if you are contemplating the idea of diving in and make your presence on LinkedIn, you should consider a few things first. It applies to personal profiles as well as Company Pages.
If you do these things before you start your profile and/or Company page, things will be much easier for you.
- KNOW YOUR WHY (SET UP THE GOALS)
If you are thinking about setting up or optimizing your profile, you have several options as to why:
You may be a business professional and want to have an ‘online business card’ with all your skills, experience, successes. You may be looking for a new job, or you may be working towards building your brand and thought leadership
Each of these whys needs a different approach when working on your profile.
Suppose you are a company and are thinking about starting a Company Page. In that case, you have to know whether you will be building a LinkedIn Company Page following, using it as an HR tool to hire new people, or building brand awareness with your page.
- DECIDE HOW MUCH TIME YOU CAN DEDICATE TO YOUR LINKEDIN ACTIVITIES
Based on your goals, you will have to schedule some time in your timetable to dedicate to LinkedIn. If you don’t do this before you start, you are most likely to neglect your profile. If you were not active before, don’t exaggerate; if you start with one post per week, it’s a great start, and then you gradually build up. We recommend the newbies’ coffee strategy, meaning you deal with your profile/page the time it takes you to drink a coffee. Of course, if you are thinking about doing serious business with LinkedIn, you may schedule 2 hrs or even more.
- MAKE THE INVENTORY OF THE CONTENT YOU ALREADY HAVE
Creating content is the biggest challenge for most people. But many of you already create content for other platforms (newsletters, blogs, youtube or other videos, tutorials…). You can repurpose all this content for LinkedIn. You can use a video in these ways: a video, you can make a ppt or pdf document out of it, you can transcribe it and post it as an article. There are even more ways. It is essential to do the content inventory not to get overwhelmed, so you see immediately LinkedIn is not that much additional work you may have thought before.
- KNOW YOUR IDEAL CLIENT
I know everyone is stressing this. Why is it essential for LinkedIn? When working on personal connections, your aim should be to build up your ideal clients’ network. How will you know who to connect with if it is not clear to you who your ideal client is? If you are creating content for your site or Company Page, you have to know who they are, so you choose the language that triggers their interest. You may have the best profile or page, but if your content is not speaking to your ideal client, you won’t be successful. If your ideal client is outside your timezone, it is crucial that you adapt your language and posting time to them 😉
- QUALITY BEATS QUANTITY
With years of activity on Facebook and Instagram, we’re used to getting as many likes, comments and shares. All these are also available on LinkedIn. But it’s not these vanity metrics that build your business. By posting concise, quality content, you will notice that even if you don’t get that much engagement on your posts, but you will see an increase in your connection requests, messages, and new leads.
- LEARN ABOUT THE ALGORITHM AND USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
When you are new to the platform, it is helpful to know the algorithm and use it to your advantage. Once you have built up your connections and your Company Page following a specific number, test what works best for your product/ service and when your ideal clients are most active, then post according to your findings.
Do you have any questions about LinkedIn? Connect with me on LinkedIn, and I will be happy to answer them.
