One of the packages we offer at Web Traffic That Works is an entry level, Do It Yourself service. In it, we work with businesses to create a step-by-step strategy for them to implement in order to set up a great social media campaign. This package works brilliantly for our clients time and time again… but only if they take the time to follow the steps carefully!
As a social media strategist, I’ve often seen plans not working because they’re not implemented correctly. Whenever a business owner or entrepreneur is setting up a new campaign, it’s vital for them to do their homework first and take the necessary preliminary steps.
In this article, I’m going to be sharing with you three fundamental steps you need to take before implementing your social media strategy on LinkedIn.
#1 – Optimise Your Profile
Before you do anything else, you need to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is optimised correctly. Your profile is how you let your connections know what you do and why you’re exactly the right business that your target client wants to be working with. If you don’t do this then the next steps simply won’t work. Remember, you only have seconds to capture a potential client’s attention.
The first thing that a potential client is going to see is your image and professional headline. In fact, a connection is 14 times more likely to read a profile with a high-quality image, so it’s crucial that you invest in getting a professional picture taken. Likewise, your professional headline needs to be something that resonates with the people you want to be doing business with. This area of your LinkedIn profile is the place to capture the attention of potential clients. It’s also the first hurdle where the majority of LinkedIn users fall down.
Once you’ve captured your connection’s attention, they’ll dive deeper into your profile, and the next place they’ll look is your summary. Essentially, your summary has to include the following four pieces of information:
- What it is that you do
- Reassurance that you understand your ideal client’s problems
- How you go about solving those problems
- What your ideal client needs to do next
The difficulty here is that LinkedIn doesn’t give you too many words to play with. You’ve only got 3,000 characters, which works out at roughly 300 words. As you can imagine, it can be pretty tricky to fit those four points in.
For a more detailed approach on how to optimise your LinkedIn profile go ahead and check out a recent article I wrote on the subject, ‘Optimising Your LinkedIn Profile’ .
#2 – Targeting the Right Client
LinkedIn is a brilliant platform for allowing users to identify and find their ideal client. However, before you can do this you need to know who your ideal client is. If you’re taking a scattergun approach as to who you’re trying to connect with then a lot of the conversations you’re going to have will be with the wrong people. This will, in turn, be a waste of time and resources.
Building up a profile for your ideal client can be a difficult task. You need to identify their likes, dislikes, wants, fears and location – both online and offline. The good news is that as the owner of your business you should be perfectly placed to build up that avatar, and once you’ve done it you can be sure that you’ll be focusing your conversations on the people who you want to be talking to.
For a more detailed approach on how to identify your ideal client, check out this earlier article I wrote on the subject, ‘The First Steps to Generating High-Quality Leads’
#3 – Building Trust and Credibility
Once you’ve identified your ideal client, you’re nearly ready to fully launch your LinkedIn campaign. But be warned, LinkedIn is not a place to pitch and try to sell your product or service. Beforehand, you need to build a level of trust and credibility with your connections. There are a few ways to do this. First of all, it’s important to get yourself a few recommendations (although don’t become overly focused on this, there’s certainly no need to aim for dozens of these), and secondly endorsements can be slightly helpful. However, the most effective weapon in building up trust and credibility is creating content.
When considering what type of content to produce, pick a medium that suits you, whether it’s a blog, podcast or YouTube video series. Don’t choose one just for the sake of it. If you don’t love writing blogs then there’s no sense in forcing yourself to do it as the quality simply won’t be there. The most important point to bear in mind when creating content is that it should be of genuine value to your ideal client, so don’t jump into something if you’re not totally sure it’s a good fit.
If you don’t have the resources to create your own content or if you simply can’t find a medium that suits you, then don’t worry. A lot of our clients have great success with a technique called pro-tips. This is all about creating a list of top tips from existing content and sharing that list with potential clients.
The point is that there’s more than one way to create content. Just bear in mind that you’ve got to find something that you enjoy and that would be of interest to your avatar client.
Check out my previous article, ‘How to Sell on LinkedIn by Selling Nothing At All’, for more detailed instructions on how to create and disseminate content among your connections.
Whenever I’ve seen businesses manage to align these three steps their success rates have invariably skyrocketed. Just be sure to be patient, don’t jump ahead and always remember to be providing value to your potential clients.
Why not check out our Do It Yourself package to find out how we can work with you to create an easy to follow, world class LinkedIn strategy.
My latest book, The LinkedIn Playbook, offers a step-by-step guide on how you can use LinkedIn to generate leads, clients and sales.
Finally, check out FREE 4 Week Twitter marketing course to help you generate high-quality leads on Twitter.
