How to Generate Leads from LinkedIn Strategically

How to Generate Leads from LinkedIn Strategically

LinkedIn was created in 2003 by Reid Hoffman and some colleagues he used to work with at PayPal and Socialnet.com.

Since then it has it has become the #1 professional social media platform for the modern professional.

LinkedIn now has over 400 million members and is growing at a rate of about 2 members per second. With offices throughout the world and an ever-growing market share, it is no wonder that professionals turn to LinkedIn when they want to generate leads and do practically anything else in the business world.

Why getting leads through LinkedIn works

LinkedIn is one of the few social media platforms that actually allow you to have complete control over your content.

You can promote your brand, or use call to actions within your content. As long as you’re utilizing content that interests your audience, you will have no problems getting the lead generation you’re looking for.

LinkedIn has also been one of the best marketing channels for B2B businesses.

linkedin-b2b-business

For business to uncover the potential of generating leads from LinkedIn, they have to follow a step-by-step strategy, which I have laid out in this article.

Getting results through LinkedIn is simple but you need to follow certain rules. Following are some of them which will help you in the best possible way to generate leads from LinkedIn.

Know your audience

LinkedIn allows you to connect with practically anyone who is even interested in you or your company.

If you know who is connected to you, you can more easily post content that generates leads. You will learn the tone, type of content and frequency by which you should be using.

Related: Top 10 mistakes every content marketer should avoid

Stay committed

stay committed

 

One of the biggest pitfalls individuals encounter when trying to generate leads from LinkedIn is not maintaining their commitment to engaging with their audience. You cannot just post a random thought here and there and expect to get results.

You may want to set an alert on your calendar, or use a platform like Hootsuite, to make sure you have frequent posts going out.

Minimize the promotional content

minimize promotional content

Even if your end goal is to promote your brand, you never want to come off as trying to do so. Remember that no one likes to be sold to. Everyone likes to believe they are coming to the decision of buying something on their own.

Whether you’re attempting to sell something, or you just want to promote your brand to a bigger audience, you will never get there by being pushy. Instead, be informative and give your audience what they want. They will in turn give you want you want.

Getting to know LinkedIn Groups and how they can work for you

linkedin groups

LinkedIn Groups were created to help bring together people with similar interests. This is a marketers dream come true. Imagine you’re selling boating gear and you can create a LinkedIn group of boating enthusiasts?

You will have a captive audience you can connect with, learn from and sell to. It doesn’t take a genius to see just how easy it is to get leads from these groups. In order to get even more from LinkedIn Groups, you can do the following:

Promote your group

Of course, your groups is not going to do much is no one joins.

So, the first thing you have to do is get out there and promote it to everyone you know that may be interested in it. Add a link to it in every email you send out as a part of your signature. Add a link on your website.

Essentially, anywhere you’re creating content that might reach the audience you want in your group would be a good place to promote your group.

Have a mission statement

mission statement

Your group should have a purpose. Make sure that every member of the group knows what this purpose is as soon as they join. The best way to accomplish this goal is by creating a mission statement for your group.

Lay out the basics of what your group is and what the people within the group can get out of being a member. This can evolve as your group becomes more defined.

Send out regular group emails

Once people start joining the group, you should send out regular emails. Include content regarding the group itself. Make sure that you are not selling in these emails. Keep the posts informative and interesting.

Always look for ways to engage your group and ask for feedback about what they would like to hear about more, and then give it to them!

It is like an elixir where you can find emails from Linkedin, contact details, company information, etc. Whether you use it for email marketing or recruiting the candidates, you can quickly develop a list of emails from Linkedin using LinkedIn extractor tools.

Related: 11 Effective Ways To Increase Email Deliverability Rates

Manage brand ambassadors

There are going to be people in your group that will be stand outs as being all for your brand.

manage-brand-ambassadors

These brand ambassadors should be nurtured. Engage with them and start a dialog that will culminate in an even stronger promotion. Make sure you empower your brand ambassadors to go out into the world and promote your brand for you.

Offer them information and incentive to love your brand even more. Give them tools to help bring in more people to the group as well as to go out into the world and promote your brand to the people they know.

Create posts that bring in new members

You should always be looking for new ways to increase the popularity of your group. After all, more people means more leads you can generate.

Create posts that will go public for everyone on LinkedIn to see as well.

Make sure there is a link to the group they can follow if they like what they see or want to learn more. As your group grows, you can even get your brand ambassadors involved in promoting the group. With more people promoting the group, it will appear to be even more enticing.

How to create content that will generate leads from LinkedIn

Aside from connecting directly with people, you should be using LinkedIn as you would any other social media platforms.

After all, with LinkedIn being used by so many people, you never know who your content will end up in front of. Everyone you’re connected to will get the alert that you created new content.

Anyone who has access to LinkedIn has the potential to see your content just by getting on the site.

linkedin profile

Additionally, if the post gains enough attention, there’s the likelihood it will be picked up by the search engines as well. Here are some tips to make sure you generate better LinkedIn content.

Make your posts a habit

When publishing on LinkedIn, you should be doing so with regularity. This doesn’t mean you have to have set days and times that you post.

What it means is that you’re setting your editorial calendar to assure you’re going to be making posts that will be repeatedly seen by the people you would like to connect with. It is the only way you can get a realistic ROI.

Track your success

You should always know what effect your posts are having.

The easiest way to do this is to make sure that you have a URL that you can track through a tool like Bitly. You can follow the metrics of the URL to see who is paying attention, what leads you get out of it and even what may come next.

The more you can gauge these metrics, the easier it will be for you to determine whether your posts are effective, what you may need to change and what practices you should abandon.

analyze-success

While there are no hard and fast rules that lead to posting success you will at least get an idea about when you should post, the kind of content that converts and what keywords engage.

Include a call to action

Since LinkedIn allows you to use promotional language in your content, you should!

While you don’t want to be pushy with your posts, you also don’t want to miss an opportunity to direct people to what you want them to do. Alongside informational material, you can include a directive telling them to check out your brand a little more at your website, or information about a specific product that links to your post.

As you get to know your audience even better, you’ll know what will work as a call to action and what will just sound pushy.

Wrapping up

So, there you have it!

LinkedIn is one of the most effective lead generation tools available to the modern business as long as you know how to use it to your advantage.

Promoting your brand through LinkedIn is easier to do than other social media platforms, because people expect B2B relationships to be created. They expect to learn more about the businesses that they want to do business with.

There is no shock or feelings of being appalled when they read promotional material within a post. Use this to your advantage and make sure that LinkedIn is a part of your regular roster of tools to use when you want to generate the kinds of leads that can convert.

As you get better at using LinkedIn, you’ll realize there are even more tools you can use to get the results you’re after.

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