5 Habits to Finally Get Something Out of LinkedIn in 2017
By Sarah Santacroce, LinkedIn Consultant & Trainer, Social Selling Advocate
A new year, new resolutions. LinkedIn keeps growing, now more than 470 Million users and if you haven’t realized that it’s THE tool for the B2B sector, then 2017 will be the year you give LinkedIn the credit it deserves.
Maybe you have participated in the LinkedIn Challenge in November and have decided to make LinkedIn a priority in 2017. Congratulations! But even if you have missed my signature event, this post will give you 5 ideas for new habits to pick up on LinkedIn in 2017!
1. Always personalize invitations
If you haven’t done this yet in 2016, please make the effort in 2017. I know, LinkedIn doesn’t exactly make it easy for us, since the only place you can do this from is directly from the profile. Any other button you find on the platform will send the automatic invitation with the very impersonal message ‘I’d like to add you to my personal network on LinkedIn’. LinkedIn is about professional relationships and just like you wouldn’t be rude at a real-life networking event, a polite message in the virtual world that is LinkedIn is of key importance. If you don't know how to personalize invitations on LinkedIn, read this post that will show you how.
2. Be active and visible in your networks newsfeed
It’s one thing to build your network, it’s another thing to be pro-active and position yourself as an expert. A simple profile, even if optimized, will not achieve that goal. You need to regularly share relevant and valuable content that might be interest to your connections and that at the same time positions you as the go-to person in your area of expertise. If you don’t create your own content you should consider creating your own content aggregation strategy so this task becomes a regular part of your personal branding. I use Feedly as my content aggregator.
3. Notice people so they start noticing you
The easiest way to get people to notice you is to flatter them. LinkedIn provides a great tool for this: the tagging feature. If you are looking for someone’s attention, share some of their content with your network and tag them so they receive a notification and are made aware that you’re talking about them.
4. Hurry up and organize your contacts
Did you know you can organize your contacts into different groups? Well, at least you could... Unfortunately this tagging feature will only be available to free accounts for a few more weeks. The new interface gets rid of tagging with the free accounts. So do it now, while you still can. My colleague Viveka von Rosen has written a great post on this topic. Read it here.
5. Use the LinkedIn Publisher
Another way to position yourself as an expert in your field and to improve your Personal Branding is to publish your thoughts via the LinkedIn Publisher. The Publisher is LinkedIn’s very own publishing platform that every user can use to publish quality content and share it with their network. It’s very user friendly and resembles a simple WordPress website. Read this post if you have never written an article on LinkedIn before. Word of caution: with so many publishers it is now much more difficult to get traction for your post. Don’t forget to cross-promote it on your other social platforms (Twitter, Facebook etc). And please don't advertise, inspire, educate or inform!
Turn your LinkedIn Profile into a Client Magnet first!
It goes without saying that if you want to get more business out of LinkedIn, you need to have a LinkedIn Profile that does all the selling for you! If you need help transforming your boring, bullet style CV into a client magnet, check out my LinkedIn Profile Quick Fix, a short but insanely effective step-by-step video training.