Your LinkedIn Questions Answered

Are you proud of your LinkedIn presence?

Now more than ever, your future customers/clients are researching their next supplier or partner online. They’re looking for what you offer. Is your LinkedIn profile client-ready?

I had the privilege of leaving my usual playground of LinkedIn in favour of Facebook and joining Fleek Marketing’s Jonny Ross in his LIVE Q&A today. The video session was streamed live on The Yorkshire Business Club and YouTube, and organised jointly with Leeds-based UK Cloud computing and software hosting experts virtualDCS. The aim was to answer any LinkedIn questions the audience had to help them make the right impression on LinkedIn.

The Yorkshire Business Club Facebook group is a set of business leaders from a variety of professions. They host live Q&As covering all topics from Communications, Finance and HR to Employment Law and IT.

Here’s a quick flavour of some of the questions I answered …

LinkedIn Questions I Answered:

What makes a good LinkedIn Headline?

If you’ve never done a piece of work on yourself to identify what the keywords are in your business-related life, then it’s a really useful exercise to do.

Take some time to jot down everything that’s important to you, including the keywords associated with your business and your skills.

From that ‘brain dump’ certain keywords will stand out. Try to incorporate those keywords into your Headline and turn that Headline into some sort of personal statement: ‘I help my customers to…’

LinkedIn is a bit like a search engine, similar to Google. So, including the right keywords in your Headline and About section is a MUST.

Can you actually win business with LinkedIn? What role does it play?

LinkedIn is about lead generation, but in a meaningful and trustworthy environment. It’s NOT about automated lead generation, something I hate with a passion!

When I ask the question: “How many pieces of new business do you need in the next 12 months to make your business really successful?” It’s rare people say they need more than 10 new pieces of business when their own business is a business-to-business one.

Then I ask them: “What’s your conversion rate when you get in front of the right person, with the right product, and the chemistry is right?” Most people say, it’s pretty high and they win a lot of those opportunities.

So let’s say I lower that percentage and take the highest figure of 10 new pieces of business and lower the conversion rate percentage to 50. I’m then saying, “You need 20 prospects in your pipeline this year to make yourself successful, do you?” And they often reply with, “Yes, I guess if you put it that way, I do.”

So why not concentrate on using LinkedIn to have an absolutely focused strategy on being attractive with your content to the right 20 people who are going to make you successful in the next 12 months?

Is there an effective way of getting people to follow your company page? Is there value in having a page, and if there is, what is the best way to use it?

We engage with each other on LinkedIn. We have relationships with Connections (other people!) on LinkedIn. Companies on LinkedIn are kind of like third party inanimate objects, you can’t have a conversation with a company. So, using your company page on LinkedIn is a complete and utter waste of time.

This is because:

• We don’t know who our page followers are, yet we know who our Connections are.
• Usually, only a very small number of people follow any given page.
• Page content rarely gets posted as content that ends up in your LinkedIn feed. Why? Because LinkedIn want to charge you for the privilege of putting your posts as promoted content in front of an audience!

So honestly, page content doesn’t work in terms of being an engagement vehicle. Engagement and opportunity come from us sharing and communicating on LinkedIn as individuals.

It is vital to have a page if only to legitimise you, particularly if you work for yourself, against a company name, and to bring through the logo on your profile to make you look professional. Make sure you fill out all the fields the page affords, such as the link to your business website.

I’d advise posting once a month on your page, just so it doesn’t look like it’s gone to sleep, but don’t expect engagement to come from it. You build your personal brand and the ambassadorship of your brand through yourself or the people you employ, make them the ambassadors of your brand on their profiles. That way you have multiple channels of content, reaching their Connections and amplifying your brand’s exposure.

Other LinkedIn questions included:

1. Are there any tips or tricks on how the About section should open and what language should be used in it?
2. How many Connections should you have and who should you Connect with? What’s the best approach?
3. Is there a way of blocking spam, such as those offering endless leads?
4. As a long-standing LinkedIn user would I advise a “cull” of Connections on LinkedIn who are clearly not active or engaging on the platform?
5. Do you think LinkedIn’s Premium offering is worth it?
6. Do you use any automation tools for Connections or Messages on LinkedIn?
7. Do I see LinkedIn as being more for business-to-business and businesses that have a small number of clients or do you see it as an opportunity even for consumer products and to be used on a bigger scale or does it not make a difference?
8. What are the Pros and Cons of LinkedIn Posts and Articles and how often should you post on your LinkedIn profile? Is it better not to talk about business matters all the time but show your personality and engage with people that way?

Your LinkedIn Questions Answered