Great LinkedIn Strategies that Really Work

Most likely, you understand the value of LinkedIn (at least, to some extent) and you are trying to use it as much as possible for your business. That may or may not be working very well for you. It really all depends on what you are doing and how those features apply to your particular business. However, there are some less-well-know features and tricks that may work extremely well for you. They are, in many cases, a well-kept secret.

LinkedIn and its amazing potential

You may use the free version of LinkedIn (don’t worry, you are not alone; many, many people do the same thing) or you may feel that having access to additional features on LinkedIn are worth paying for so you have a subscription to the premium version of the tool. Well, you may be correct when it comes to some of the features that you are using for your business. Most likely, you are using a combination of features that are part of the premium version and some that everyone who is a part of LinkedIn is allowed to use without paying a penny. 

Leveraging LinkedIn Groups

By now, it is probably safe to assume that you understand the importance of not only posting content on a frequent, consistent basis but also the importance of syndicating that content so that many other people are able to benefit from what you are writing, sharing, offering, etc.

You may or may not be aware of the fact that in LinkedIn (this is true of the free and the premium versions), you are allowed to join up with 100 groups. It certainly makes the most sense that those 100 groups (or, however, many you choose to join) should all be relevant and appropriate for you and your business and brand. When it comes to your groups on LinkedIn, the important elements that you will want to capture are how may people have viewed your LinkedIn profile, how many connections you have on LinkedIn, how many groups you have joined, and whether you use the direct messaging feature on a regular basis to communicate with your connections. 

The advantages that LinkedIn offers you

If you take advantage of all that LinkedIn has to offer (we will be discussing those secrets in a little while), you will begin to embrace the fact that LinkedIn enables you to gather information on other businesses and people, communicate with people who you knew at some point on a professional level. You may have lost touch with those people but perhaps it is now the time to reconnect with them. LinkedIn also enables you to establish new relationships with people whom you hope to do business with at some point.

Aside from LinkedIn’s wonderful features in general, there are several different things that you can do, which will produce a positive result for you, and which you may not have considered or even realized existed.

• Evaluating your competition: LinkedIn allows you to gather intelligence on your competitors by simply conducting a search with the names of those businesses. Once you have put in the name, the tool will generate a list of positions within the company. Once you have that information at your fingertips, you can get a handle on who works at that company and that will tell you where the strengths of that particular business lie. By looking at the number of people in any given competing business (including the positions that those people hold), you can get to know exactly what level of competitor that business is for you.

• Checking out potential employees: LinkedIn can be extremely helpful in this regard. Let’s say that you are seriously considering bringing on a high-level, experienced individual and, of course, they look great on paper. LinkedIn can reveal a lot more to you about the person than the person may be willing to reveal about him- or herself. If you can obtain that information before you actually decide on whether you will hire the person, it may save you a great deal of grief before you make a mistake that will be rather difficult to get out of. 

• Finding top-caliber people with whom you want to connect: You may want to connect with someone but you can’t locate them online. You may need to connect with these particular people in order to do your job (or to allow your business to accomplish what it needs to accomplish). LinkedIn allows you to easily obtain information that saves you countless amount of time and effort in order to go from Point A to Point B.

• Using LinkedIn as a bridge to establish relationships: If you have been hearing about a particular individual but you just could not figure out how to actually connect with that person, if you meet the person just once, it is appropriate and acceptable for you to invite that person to connect with you on LinkedIn. The chances are very good that the person will accept your invitation. From that point forward, you can build a meaningful, mutually beneficial relationship with that person.

• Gathering leads straight from your profile: Are you aware that you are able to do this? In fact, it is very easy to accomplish. If you have written an eBook or a white paper, you can put that on your LinkedIn profile as well. You can put the links to the publication(s) on your summary and then you can continue to share those links on a daily basis. 

There are many other secrets that are well guarded and that most people are completely unaware. For example, you can create a public URL that is customized to your profile, there are seven different profile photos that you should avoid (such as grainy or pixelated, a self-portrait, a photo with too little light, a photo that is not appropriate for your niche, a boring photo, a photo of you taken at a party, or no photo at all. You may or may not be aware that you can use up to 2,000 characters when writing your LinkedIn summary, and LinkedIn apps may be extremely advantageous for you and for your business.

Conclusion

Even if you feel that you have been using LinkedIn effectively and that it is helping your business to gain momentum and to make great progress, there is still a lot more that you can do with it and you should still explore a lot of territories, which, up to this point, is untapped by you. LinkedIn still has a great deal of, which, up to this point, is untapped by you. LinkedIn still has a great deal of potential and it is an excellent place to work your way up to becoming an influencer. You should always keep in mind that the content that you share on LinkedIn is valuable to other people. Those connections will appreciate every word and you will be rewarded in some way that you can’t even imagine. 

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