I want to tell you a secret: HRs is not the only people who use LinkedIn. With this platform you can build business partnerships, network online, make direct sales and search for investors. LinkedIn is a perfect place for B2B companies and 👔 business professionals. It's also useful for self-branding. For the promotional purpose, LinkedIn has Personal Pages, Company Pages, Groups, and Ads.
Your LinkedIn profile can be a complete sales and marketing tool. It should communicate the value of your product and your expertise to potential partners. These guides and tips will help you out:
- Want to Effectively Raise Your Linkedin Profile? Follow These Tips by Larry Kim.
- 5 Templates That'll Make Writing the Perfect LinkedIn Summary a Breeze by Aja Frost.
- 7 LinkedIn Summary Examples That Make You Look Good by Melissa Williams.
- How I Got 425% More Page Views on LinkedIn — and You Can, Too by Aja Frost.
- Using LinkedIn: 7 of my favorite tips by Susan Hallam from Hallam.
- 11 Quick Questions to Ask Yourself Before Accepting a Stranger's LinkedIn Request by Inc.com
LinkedIn can help you get more eyes on your content, and receive feedback from other folks. Contributing to a discussion will make both your profile and your Company Page more visible. If you listen to Rand Fishkin video on Comment Marketing you know how to establish yourself & your company as thought leaders:
- 255,262 Views on LinkedIn in 30 Days: Here’s Everything I’ve Learned by Gregory Ciott.
- We Analyzed the 3,000 Most Successful LinkedIn Publishing Posts by Paul Shapiro.
- The Most Successful LinkedIn Headlines and Topics of 2016 by Steve Rayson from BuzzSumo.
- How to Publish on LinkedIn Pulse: A Beginner's Guide by Carly Stec. When you have published your post, tweet it with “tip @LinkedInEditors” message. It will maximize your chances to be featured on LinkedIn Pulse Channels.
🕴️Use LinkedIn for direct sales and getting partners. You can write people via invitation note, direct message, InMail or Group message. You should have clear objectives and know exactly who you want to connect with. Business outreach is common and popular among LinkedIn members, but it should be done in a structural way:
- 11 Signs That You've Mastered LinkedIn. Tony Messer gives a general overview of using LinkedIn with a sales purpose.
- The Anatomy of Great LinkedIn Sales Message by Emma Brudner. The example is kind of formal, but it worth to try out.
- How to Write Reply-Worthy LinkedIn InMail by Melissa Williams from Yesware team.
- The ingredients of a Great LinkedIn Sales Message by Mark Williams.
- Please, check also Cold Email Marketing section below. Articles there have awesome templates & advice for cold outreach.
📢 LinkedIn Company Pages & Advertising options:
- LinkedIn Company / Business Page Best Practices with Examples from ShivarWeb staff.
- Company Page Best Practices with Page Examples via LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn Analytics for Company Page by Hootsuite team.
- LinkedIn Ads: Step-by-Step Tutorial by AdEspresso team.
- How to Advertise On LinkedIn Effectively by Nate Shivar.
- The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Conversion Tracking by Tom Whiley.
- 5 tactics which can help reach your ideal audience and increase conversion rates. Written by Michael McEuen.
I heavily use LinkedIn. As you remember, we run Flawless App — a tool for iOS & macOS engineers. A lot of our users spend time on LinkedIn, participate in iOS groups or post articles there. I often post cool stuff in those groups, engage with people via direct messages or share my writings. Unfortunately, I do get spam or some random requests from job seekers\recruiters. But in general, LinkedIn works for me.
📌 Useful tools:
- If you need to grow your LinkedIn connection base, use this script. It will automatically add targeted people from the "People You May Know" section. You only need to choose the keywords.
- Dux-Soup is another good tool to automatically add LinkedIn connections + send invitations. A free account is not very useful but the paid version is pretty good (worth 15$ a month). It has auto-inviting with personalised messages, auto-messages to 1st-degree connections, downloading your tag-lists with links to profiles.
- LinkedIn X-Ray Search tool using Google. With a free account, you only get 100 search results. To get around this limitation you can use X-Ray Searching.
