Growing Your Business With Linkedin
I’m sure you are aware, but I’ll say it anyway. Linkedin is the place for businesses and people to connect.
Why you might ask? Well because there are 575 million active users and over 9 million business profiles across the world.
When starting on LinkedIn, it is completely possible to get a steady stream of leads coming in for free. (more on this later)
And once you’re ready to scale up, you can use some of their paid tools like sales navigator to scale your lead generation process.
So regardless if you are a solopreneur who just started your business or a thriving consulting firm, you can use Linkedin to your advantage.
Goals
Before I start any new project, I like to fully understand the end goal that I want to accomplish. This allows me to create the best process for accomplishing my goals at hand.
Which brings me to the goals of your LinkedIn efforts. Your goals should be these 2 aspects:
- Thought leadership
- Building trust
Most people on LinkedIn are not currently ready to make a decision, and they will never make a decision with someone they are not familiar with.
This means that you should build trust by providing informative content. This way the readers can understand that you know what you’re talking about, and when the time comes to make a buying decision, you are already top of mind.
(Another important goal is to define your target audience, but I have another post that covers target markets)
Content & Assets You Need To Get Started
Profile Picture
One of the very first things that people look at when they come to your profile, is your picture. Too many people overlook this step.
You want a picture that presents you in a positive and charismatic way.
A great way for people to easily remember you online is to make sure all of your profile pictures on different channels are the exact same.
Take your photo in soft natural light and use only high-resolution pictures. Have your face take up most of the available space.
Psst. use photofeeler to learn which of your profile pictures are the best.
Here are some profiles with great pictures!
Headline
You get 120 characters to make an impression. This is the 2nd thing people will look at when they encounter you.
It’s best to include relevant keywords and other important information that others should know about.
Check out this headline:
She explains what she can do for you, what she has done before, and demonstrates that she is experienced.
List out your accomplishments, current projects, and what you do for your clients.
Now phrase these aspects about you in a propelling way in less than 120 characters. Be creative!
Here’s another example.
About Section
It is important to use facts and data to prove any of your results. These are the most captivating and interesting parts of your career.
Talk about your personal interests, and what your company is here to accomplish. You should be able to do this easily within the 2,000 character limit.
Your bio is a great place to have a CTA to get new leads to engage with you.
This is a good template to get you started:
Check out this great example of an about section:
Posts
Here’s the deal about posts:
IMAGES!
LinkedIn reports that posts with images on average get 98% more comments than ones without. So get this, you have to use custom and creative images. Stock photos are boring and everyone scrolls right past them.
You should include anything that supports your post, it could be in the form of power points, slide decks, or PDFs.
What’s even better is making videos for LinkedIn.
The main factors that the LinkedIn algorithm uses to show content to people are:
- personal connections
- engagement probability
- interest relevance
This means that LinkedIn shows its users content that each user engages with from accounts they are connected with.
In other words, your posts should be focused on engaging with accounts that are already connected with you.
Making it even more important to connect with people in your target market.
Post once a day; try between 7-8 am, 10 am-11 am, noon, or 5-6 pm. I find Monday-Thursday to be the best.
Groups
Join groups that are relevant to your niche! There are plenty of groups out there that are related to what your goals are.
The key is to be active in the groups, so that way you have a good reason to connect with people from the groups.
And the more connections you get, the more opportunities can arise for you.
Comments
If people are commenting on your post, make sure to reply to them. This helps to increase the engagement of your post. Better yet, respond quickly.
But don’t just stop at your own posts, go out and find people in your target audience, and comment on their posts. This spreads your awareness and creates opportunity.
Ask for referrals
Regardless if you close a deal or lose one, you should make a habit of asking for referrals.
This can become a gold mine for new clients. Especially the more people you talk to in your target audience, they probably know more people who could be interested in your offers.
Or as I like to say, birds of the same feather flock together, which means that people in your target audience know other people who are in your target audience.
How To Utilize Other People's Audiences
Building an audience from nothing is hard!
But leveraging other people’s audience to gain some followers yourself is a great way to start.
The first and best way is to find an opportunity to help an influential person in your space. One idea is to create content for them in an interesting way. This will give the person a reason to share your stuff.
It could be a summary of their book or course. Or an image that visually represents one of their posts.
Another way is to tag the influential person in one of your posts, so their audience can see you automatically.
And the best way of all is to go live with an influential person so any of their audience can see you. This builds rapport, and you can take screenshots of the recording later to have pictures to use for posts.
You can always hire a micro-influencer to tag you in their posts. (as long as their audience is in line with yours!)
Sales Process
Just like all things in life, you will get out of LinkedIn what you put into it.
Now this process is not a guaranteed overnight success story, but with this sales process I have listed below, you can expect results in less than a month.
It is very important that you track your metrics!! This is the only sure way to improve your results by analyzing your process.
You should be able to close deals in less than a month with this process.
Budget
Organic
The good news about Linkedin is that it is free for everyone to use! Anyone can post their content, connect with people, and network in all sorts of ways completely free.
In fact, I recommend that everyone starts with organic content because it is a great way to get the ball rolling, and you can learn the platform.
One of the next things to do after someone has posted a lot of organic content is to consider ads, partnerships, and/or sales navigator.
LinkedIn Ads
Like most platforms, there are tons of ads that you can run on LinkedIn. Which ads are best for you is determined by what you are trying to accomplish.
Since everyone’s goals are a little different, I went ahead and laid out a table to demonstrate the different types of ads and what to use them for.
| Categories Of Ads | What The Category Is Used For | Type Of Ads Inside In The Category |
| Sponsored Content | Raising awareness for company events, getting more followers, increasing traffic to specific posts. | Simple Image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, Event Ads |
| Sponsored Messaging | Increasing sign-ups for lead magnets, generating B2B leads, communicating directly with valuable prospects. | Conversation Ads, Message Ads |
| Lead Gen Forms | Collecting leads with forms, | Lead Gen Forms |
| Text & Dynamic Ads | Targeting highly specific B2B prospects, increasing traffic to a website, generating job applicants. | Text Ads, Spotlight Ads, Follower Ads |
(Hubspot has an ad calculator to make it easier for you to figure out what results you might expect from running campaigns.
Partnerships
This can be a great resource for a business that has traction and needs help generating leads.
The advantage of a partner is that they can manage your ads, and effectively generate the results you need. But it’s going to cost you.
LinkedIn marketing partners have a great resource of partners and a way for you to search for your ideal partner.
Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator is a tool on LinkedIn that allows you to target the right buyers faster and engage with the right prospects.
It gives you an option for advanced search that allows you to create lists of the exact buyers you want to talk to.
Beyond that, you can direct message anyone with InMail.
Not sure if it’s for you? Use their free trial to find out for yourself.
When To Hire And What Type Of Help
The key with hiring help is to be brutally honest with yourself when figuring out what your business will become, and what you currently don’t have the bandwidth to do.
First, consider what type of help you will benefit the most from.
(Keep in mind that hiring a permanent employee is a huge change from being a solopreneur, or just working with freelancers.)
The main sign that indicates that you need to hire help is how much time you spend doing busy work, if you procrastinate on critical tasks, or if you just simply don’t have enough time to complete all of the necessary tasks at hand.
Another category of work that you should outsource is if you only plan to do something one time. Then there will be a large learning curve of you doing it yourself, but you will never need to do it again.
For example, let’s say you want to rebuild your website. Well, it is going to be years before you need to do that again, so the amount of time it would take to learn to develop a website yourself vs hiring an agency/freelancer to do it is huge.
One big aspect that is commonly overlooked is if there is software that can solve your problem. Sometimes you can use software with automation to seriously reduce the amount of time you spend doing busy work. The best thing about robots is they never call in sick! 😉
Some common positions to hire for are:
- Copywriters
- Virtual Assistant
- PPC ad managers
- Website developers
- Social media managers
- Graphic designers
- Branding experts
- SEO specialists
And the best places to find some of these people are:
- Fiverr
- Upwork
- 99 designs
- The HOTH
- Local agencies
- Facebook groups
- Your network (either people you know or recommendations)
- Find popular content in your niche and reach out to who made it
2 key things to include in your hiring process:
1. Ask questions that showcase your candidate’s working process, along with the success they have had in your niche.
Some examples of questions to ask are:
- What tools do you use regularly?
- What is your usual turnaround time?
- Can you provide examples and references?
- How long have you been working in this space?
- What has been your favorite pricing model that you use with your previous clients?
- What questions do you have for me? (you want people who are excited about the project and ask questions enthusiastically)
- What are your career goals.
2. Your job listing must portray the type of help you want.
What I mean is that if your job/gig posting is not specific and doesn’t reflect your workflow, then you will likely get applicants who are not specific and who don’t match your workflow.
Make sure to be specific about your expectations and what value you can provide to the applicants.
Alternative Approaches To Linkedin
Even though Linkedin is the best platform to generate new leads, there are a few other options available to you.
Podcasts
Being a guest on a podcast can be of great benefit to you. Especially if the podcast is popular or specific to your niche. This will be a timeless piece of content.
It is common for podcasts to not have many total listens, but each listener has a newfound connection with you and has a high chance of contacting you. In other words, warm leads will come to you!
Lead Magnets
Having lead magnets on your site is a great way to generate new leads (hence the name lead magnet…..).
Lead magnets are any type of content that requires the reader to fill out a form with their email address to get something in return.
These are great because they are free to your reader, and provide even more value to them before you encourage them to buy your offer.
Common lead magnets are: quizzes, tools, extra content, and calculators.
Groups
There are many groups outside of Linkedin. Facebook and Reddit are 2 great places to look for groups in your niche.
These can be a huge advantage because you get to communicate with like-minded people on all of the small intricate stuff in your space, as well as create leads for your business.
Some paid communities like Trends offer a great network of people from whom you can benefit from.
And That’s It!
I sure hope this guide to LinkedIn lead generation helped you to grow your business.
But if you are looking for even more help, sign up here for the most actionable tactics to grow your business. 
She explains what she can do for you, what she has done before, and demonstrates that she is experienced. List out your accomplishments, current projects, and what you do for your clients. Now phrase these aspects about you in a propelling way in less than 120 characters. Be creative! 3. About Section After someone looks at your picture and tagline, they move on to your “about” section if they are interested. This is a great place to persuade readers to contact you. So let’s make your about section powerful, here is a good template to get you started:
Check out this great example of an about section:
4. Writing Organic Posts I am going to let you in on a little secret………… The posts with 98% more comments than others all have one thing in common. IMAGES! It’s best if you use custom and creative images. Stock photos are boring and everyone scrolls right past them. The goal with your posts is to engage with accounts that are already connected with you. And to post once per day, between 7-8 am, 10 am-noon, or 5-6 pm on Monday-Thursday. Action Step: Make your LinkedIn profile stand out and start posting. Just one more email and you’ll be well on your way to generating more leads than you know what to do with! Signature |
