5 Things You Should Be Doing On LinkedIn But Likely Are NOT

Don’t you love it when people tell you what you are doing wrong?

Well, if you’ve read the book “how to win friends, and influence people” you’d know to avoid this tactic, for making friends.

However, in the blogging world, we get the benefit of skipping some of the practical rules of the world.
So let’s get to it. You absolutely should be doing these 5 key items:
1) Use the Widget and Links on Your Profile Page to Maximize Exposure. Getting people to visit your profile is half the battle with LinkedIn, however once they are there are you inviting them to go where you want them to go? Using the website links as well as widgets such as “Wordpress” to add your blogs post to you profile are a great way to engage people. These people are already interested in you, they are reading you profile. Don’t limit their engagement to what you can type on LinkedIn, take them to other places that can educate them further and/or promote your brand or your products.
2) Respond to Questions and Answers. This is often encouraged to gain expertise and “rank” within communities as an expert. This is very true, however there is also a very important aspect of engagement when you provide value to a conversation in this format. You automatically engage a targeted audience who all have a certain mindset. If you’re savvy, you cannot just build expertise, but you can weave in relevant self-promotion that is usually highly effective.
3) Provide research to a community. This is basically providing a group with interesting data and topics as news or discussion. Similar to the reasons above, this type of engagement will not only provide you an audience and build your rank within a community, it will also make people more receptive and engaging when you lead them to self promotion. People don’t mind being “pitched” or getting some level of promotion from folks as long as they first get value from them.
4) Figure out what you want, then build a group to accomplish it. Most people feel intimidate to start their own group on LinkedIn or feel like it’s going to be a hassle to maintain. Before you dismiss it, give it a try. It’s not that hard and you may be surprised by how many professionals out there are interested in same goals or topics you are. Owning a group has several advantages, perhaps the largest is you can communicate directly to them at any time.
5) Use LinkedIn. Ok, this one sounds a bit dumb. However a majority of people we train do not login and interact frequently. They use it more as a repository for their online resume, which they update once every few months, then happily go about “facebooking” several times a day. This is ok if you’re 18 or if you have no current professional goals or needs. However, if you need a job or have a business objective that requires others, get on LinkedIn! It’s overlooked often, but truly is one of the most effective and powerful networking tools today.
For more information, join one of our linkedInformarketing.com webinars and subscribe to our newsletter.
Dave Albertson
Small Business Growth Expert

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