LinkedIn is one of my favorite social networks. Not only am I a business owner, I’m also on the sales team here at ConvertWithContent. LinkedIn serves an extremely important role for me in growing my business and increasing leads.
I didn’t always think this way. I used to think of LinkedIn as a place to collect contacts and that’s about it. Silly, silly me. If you think this way, you too should change your thinking. Instead think of LinkedIn as a place to grow your leads by way of growing connections and offering something of value. Yes, leads are the goal, (and sales) but you can’t think so one-sided. In order for this to work, you have to offer something that benefits both parties. Hopefully, that something is your product or service.
So what makes LinkedIn such a powerhouse for B2B businesses and sales people? Let’s take a look at the statistics first, shall we?
LinkedIn Statistics
* Over 200 million members
* Members are from over 200 different countries
* 187 million monthly visitors
* 40% of users check LinkedIn daily
* Users spend an average of 17 minutes per month on LinkedIn
* The 10 most liked business pages are B2B
What do these numbers mean? It means that there are a ton of people from all over the world who are super active on LinkedIn looking to grow their businesses, meet the right partners, and exchange services.
That’s what you want too, isn’t it? Bingo! And guess what? Like-minded individuals like to be around other like-minded individuals. With that said, LinkedIn is a great place for you, your business and lead generation. In fact, I love LinkedIn for lead generation.
LinkedIn For Lead Generation
Using LinkedIn for lead generation works. It works for me. I have the numbers to prove it, and it works for others too. 80% of Social Media B2B leads come from LinkedIn.
Yes, that means 20% of social leads come from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, G+ and all the other social networks combined. Score 1 for LinkedIn!
So are you ready to start using LinkedIn to grow your leads?
First Impressions Count
Just like on any other network, your first impressions count. The first thing that anyone will see on LinkedIn is your profile picture. It should represent you and who you are on the business side of the spectrum. It doesn’t need to be a professional shot, but it does 100% have to be clear and of good enough quality. So don’t use a group picture and by no means should you use one of you in a bathing suit, unless you are a bikini model or a bathing suit designer. 🙂
The next thing that people will see is your headline. It should be catchy and describe you as you want people to perceive you. As you can see it is highly visible from groups, news feeds, your profile picture and even invitations.
Now it’s time to get to work on your profile. For more tips see my article here.
Increasing Exposure & Connections To Increase Leads
Remember when I said the best way to use LinkedIn for lead generation is by way of growing your connections? Here’s what I mean. The more people who have access to you and find you through consistent engagement and sharing tactics, the more people will start to connect with you. Because you are active, you’ll attract people to you like a fly to a light. I’m serious. So here’s how you do it.
Blog on your own site, join a lot of groups, share your blog content to those groups and your profile and business pages, blog on LinkedIn, share that content to groups, your profile and your business page, and comment and like content from your news feed. Sounds simple right? It is. And it works two fold.
On one side it brings LinkedIn traffic to your site and if you follow the ConvertWithContent traffic system, you’ll have an ebook at the bottom of each blog post to capture leads.
Whenever someone comes from LinkedIn and downloads that ebook, you can count one more lead from LinkedIn.
The other side of the equation is that those who don’t go to your site directly are likely to connect with you. Here’s where you have another chance at finding more about who they are and how you can help.
Here’s how you do it.
It’s all about having a page to send your new connections to that offers them value as a call to action. I use the ebook as my call to action. Because it offers my new connection a way to learn more about us and gives them something for free, those who are interested will download it and the relationship begins.
Lead generation on LinkedIn at its finest. How do you generate leads on LinkedIn.
