How to Win Business on LinkedIn – Part 2

Last week I revealed that winning business on LinkedIn is often dependent on you doing two fundamental things: ensuring your LinkedIn Profile gives the right impression and engaging with others on the business-to-business platform.

In last week’s blog post I shared practical tips on how your profile photo should look and the importance of your LinkedIn headline and summary and skills. This week I’ll focus on the importance of being active on LinkedIn via a well-thought out engagement strategy.

Engagement and Your LinkedIn Strategy

To make LinkedIn work as a business development tool, you must use it actively and consistently. This means attracting your target audience and engaging and nurturing them.

What matters here is not having a sales pitch but building your credibility and using this as the basis for opening up lines of engagement and communication.

To do this you must develop a social media strategy. You need to know what your goals and objectives are:

• Who are you talking to?
• What action do you want them to take?
• What will be the measure of success of this activity?

In practical terms, this means using LinkedIn to post relevant and thoughtful content that will attract and inform your audience. This content need not be restricted to written content. Video is developing a powerful presence on the platform.

When you post content, give it context. Make it appear as personal and authentic as possible.

When others respond, comment in return. Open up a dialogue.

Remember: LinkedIn is excellent for giving you visibility. You can see who’s taken an interest and who’s viewed your profile.

How to Approach Connection Requests

If you invite them to connect, personalise the request. Add some words of your own.

Always, keep one eye on your strategy. Connections are not about the numbers, but about quality and relevance. Build your network so that it is useful to your business, and that your business is useful to others you’ve connected with.

LinkedIn can transform your business and your life. But you have to put energy and dedication into it to reap your business rewards.

If you require further assistance with LinkedIn you may be interested in my LinkedIn Workshops aimed at beginners or my LinkedIn Masterclasses aimed at existing users of LinkedIn who are looking to take their LinkedIn activity to the next level.