The methods of connecting with potential customers and acquiring business have evolved a lot over time. We are in the age of experimentation and we are looking for methods that can generate quick results (leads for business). In this context, LinkedIn has aided business with its InMail and Update features. You can actually achieve better exposure and connectivity with your prospects through updates and InMail. Well, here are some best practices if followed can get you mind-boggling results.
This article shares the secret of gaining leads through posting content (updates) and Inmail on LinkedIn.
To start with, let’s talk about how posting and managing content or updates on LinkedIn can boost your profile and hence your business like anything.
Viralize Your Updates
LinkedIn updates:-
- Make people think of you
- Make you more visible to your audience
- Give a glimpse of your personality and activities
Thus, LinkedIn updates can build your LinkedIn presence. Hence, making your content viral in front of your prospects leverages your branding and business.
Well, here are some steps you may need to practice to make your updates viral.
Share Your Update With Everyone Possible
When you share an update on LinkedIn, you get three options- Public– Share with everyone on LinkedIn
- Public + Twitter– Share with everyone on LinkedIn + Twitter
- Connections– Share with your connections
I recommend you to go for the second option i.e. Public + Twitter as it makes people on LinkedIn and Twitter aware of your updates. Because connections are a great medium to convey yourself to your spectators. And you reach out to maximum people through Public + Twitter.
Understanding The Strategy Behind Updates
You have to understand the purpose behind updates. Let me help me out. There might be three reasons why you are updating:-Goodwill:- You are doing it for the sake of goodwill. It means that you are posting your updates because you want to share the knowledge with everyone and do not ask anything in return.
Thought Leadership:- You are doing it because you want to establish yourself as a thought leader. For example, when you share an update, you give a link to your blog or article where people can follow your thoughts.
Direct Response:- It is about posting an update and making people directly respond to your updates. You need to include the name of the persons in the update whom you want to respond to. You can add-in CTAs so that your prospects can respond to you.
Thus, these are the reasons why we do an update on our LinkedIn account.
Now, what all sorts of updates can you post on your LinkedIn account to enrich your business?
Humor:- People generally repost good updates and posting humorous updates is a great method to get your updates circulated by other people. For example, if a person finds your update funny enough, he will surely report it giving your profile maximum exposure to his or her connections.
Discuss a Problem:- You can place a problem and its solution in front of your targeted audience. These are my favorite kind of updates as they have three potentialities in them:-
- Your prospects will click on it and follow your thought which makes you thought leader.
- These types of updates will be forwarded.
- Your prospects may contact you directly.
Note:- If you are redirecting your audience to an article or a website, you can include your CTA. It will increase your chances to get direct responses.
“Congratulate You” Update:- It means congratulating a person for his or her accomplishment. For example, if you are a trainer dealing with a sales course, you can congratulate one of your recent student who is a certified sales professional. Sharing such an update will make your connections (LinkedIn+Twitter) aware of the course. Moreover, it will the other person repost the same update and make his or her connection aware too.
Informational Update:- You can post an update that says- “5 great sites to locally cite your business in UK” and in the update, you can provide your article’s link which describes 100 more citation websites. Hence, you can promote your business. You can also use an article by someone and add value to it by providing your link in the update.
Important:- If you are providing a link to your article or blog, you can also include video describing the article to that blog which will increase the chances of your article getting viewed as some people are more into videos than reading and vice versa.
However, it is easier for Google to find your blog if it also includes videos.
Personalized Approach For Updates and InMail
In this section, I am going to discuss how to overcome your prospect’s objections through Inmails and Updates.First of all, you need to build a personal story that your prospect can relate to. This will lay the foundation for the process of overcoming your prospect’s defense mechanism. For example, you are targeting a CMO of an IT product based company. Then, you need to research the problems that the company of your prospect is facing. Now, in the context of the problem, you need to build a story that your prospect can relate to and finally end up to you as a person. The story should portray the current problem of the company and should point out to you providing the final solution. Now, share the story via an update or InMail to your prospect and he or she will subconsciously agree, accept and fall for it.
You should describe the problem and the location where the problem occurred. For example, if your prospect is from London, you can choose a place nearby to make things easier.
You need to introduce a timeline. For example, the character has been in the industry for X years and Y months.
You need to describe why the character in the story went for the solution. Further, you should introduce the change after implementing the solution with a conclusion with a final verdict.
Using the Yin-Yang Technique In InMails and Updates
The two questions that you need to answer are:-- What does your target audience fear the most?
- What does your target audience desire the most?
Let’s discuss using fear as in your InMails or Updates. You can use fear of your target audience in the first line of your update or in the subject line of your InMail. Now, if you are posting a video, you can use fear as the title of the video and it will increase its open rate. Moreover, you can use the appropriate image as the featured image to your video or article to enhance the content’s effect.
Now, you can follow the same process for using the “desire” of your targeted audience in InMails and updates.
Gaining (Stealing) Credibility Instantly Using Pulse Feed
Acquiring credibility in your target niche is very important and unfortunately, gaining credibility in any market takes time. Well, not for them who will follow this technique. The technique is called stealing or winning credibility over the thought leaders of your niche. And the technique is very simple. Here’s what you need to do.Choose a thought leader in your niche that your potential customers are a fan of. Now, get one of his interesting posts and repost it by contradicting his or her ideas. For example, if he or she has written views about the role of content in marketing, you can logically go against his or her ideas and present your own version of the topic. Now, share the update or send via InMail to your targeted audience.
Hence, you will get instantly noticed by this group of people who love the respective thought leader. Make sure that your views are logical or else things will turn upside down.
The beauty of LinkedIn is that you can send this article to individuals, groups or make it public. Hence, with a single click, you can influence your targeted audience.
From content to connections, LinkedIn completely sources everything. And remember, you can show it on both Twitter and LinkedIn. Isn’t it awesome!
