Thinkin LinkedIn 2

by Hector Cisneros

It has been some time since we discussed how to leverage the online marketing potential of LinkedIn.

This powerful business-to-business social network has a number of new features that are designed to connect you to other business owners if you know how to access them. In this article I will discuss the four must do daily tasks that every LinkedIn pro takes advantage of.  I will also cover three new features that can make LinkedIn life easier and keep your momentum going and lastly I will provide links to other articles that give even more comprehensive information to help you master LinkedIn.

In my last article about LinkedIn, entitled "How to Leverage LinkedIn for Business & Career Enhancement", I gave a broad overview of the top features available on LinkedIn. LinkedIn like all social networks follows unwritten rules of social etiquette and protocol. In this article I want to start off by discussing the absolute minimum of tasks you need to do on a daily basis. These four tasks are the 80/20 rule you have heard about, where 80% of your productivity comes from 20% of the functions you use.

Let's begin by keeping your profile up to date. 

The first thing a person sees when they look you up on LinkedIn is your profile. This is the first place you need to put your best foot forward. Never accept mediocrity by leaving your profile incomplete. More importantly make sure you let your audience keep up with the changes that are happening in your business. You can always add new successes, projects that you've started, product launches, add company pictures etc… The benefits of keeping your profile up to date are: 1. You put your best foot forward.  2. You get free promo's from LinkedIn. That's right, LinkedIn sends out a daily list of people who have updated their profiles. This helps keep you in front of your peers and potential clients and it's promoted by LinkedIn, so it isn't considered as spam!

Next lets discuss posting articles relevant to your industry and position. 

Try doing this daily if at all possible. If you have lots of followers you can up this to say 3 times a day. If you're scientific about it you will measure what day of the week and hours of the day get the most reads. You can do this by tracking your posts with Hootsuite or some other software program. I can't overemphasize the importance of providing useful content to your peers and prospects. Posting lots of information about yourself or your products/service will hamper your progress. If you want to provide information that builds your credibility, write quality articles and blog posts about your industry and mix them with posts from industry leaders. Make sure the content is useful and written grammatically and technically correct. If you lack this skill find someone who can ghostwrite for you. Your cost can be as low as $50 for a short blog post to $300 for an article length document. The best way to look like an expert in your field is to show off your expertise in writing. Blogging or self -publishing is a great start. Getting published in industry related magazines provide its own advantages and raises your credibility to a new level. A third way of building your credibility is actively participating in Groups. Again be ready to help others out. Don't act like a rookie salesperson ready to pounce? Act like a host, ready to help. Here is where providing useful content can also pay off. People will follow you if you are in their group and you are posting quality information that they find useful.

Third, endorse others and post testimonials to people who have helped you. 

Providing other businesses with testimonials allows you to leverage the law of reciprocity. This law is alive and well and still works in the 21^st century. The likelihood of someone reciprocating and endorsing you back is very high. LinkedIn offers three ways to endorse others. First, you can create a testimonial and post it in their recommendation section.  Second you can endorse them for a specific skill set by clicking on that specific skill or expertise in that section. And lastly you can post something positive about a person or company in the "Share an Update…" field on your home page or activity field in LinkedIn.  Endorsing others is a great way to beginning a relationship with a referral partner, customer or prospect. I would add that genuinely endorsing others fulfills a need that can't easily be fulfilled in any other way. On top of that LinkedIn automatically asks for reciprocation when it announces to the recipient that they have been endorsed by you.

Of the three methods a written testimonial is the best and most powerful way to endorse others. The second most powerful is a posted endorsement in the timeline of the newsfeed. A message of congratulations or positive statement of endorsement goes a long way here. Clicking on a skill or expertise is the least powerful but does have some advantages that make it different from the other kinds of written endorsements. For one it's quick and easy. A click or two and you're done. It also prompts LinkedIn to contact the person being endorsed with the statement "You have been endorsed"! You’ll get noticed in a flattering way to say the least.

Fourth, engage members in gracious and useful correspondence. 

The reason I say gracious and useful correspondence is that most of the correspondence people receive in LinkedIn are solicitations of some sort.  These solicitations cover the gamut from tacitly asking to connect to our right cold sales calls. A way to be gracious is to say thank you whenever possible to anyone who connects with you, likes your post or mentions you in anyway. A way to be useful a correspondent is to provide useful information like needed links, free white papers on your industry and be willing to help other with questions they post asking for assistance.  If you do this in a way that beneficial it will get noticed. Not everyone is going to jump up and say thank you back but a good portion of the recipients of your help will remember you. The law of reciprocity will kick in and what goes around will definitely come around, and you will eventually be the recipient of someone asking for your help as a customer.

New features worth Noting:

LinkedIn now has sponsored ads in their newsfeeds and they have also added video ads in the Pay Per Click model. Anyone can sponsor ads in the newsfeed time line just like you can for the 

header ads. It's easy to setup and can be initiated from your own sponsored updates (your posts) or via Ad manager. Once you have chosen a post you want to sponsor you then select the demographics you're looking for. You can choose from location, companies, job title, schools, skills, groups, gender and age. You can also add filters for title, name and category (industry, function, seniority etc…). This is very powerful targeting. Next, choose whether you want to pay on a cost per click or cost per impression basis. Set your budget and the length of the campaign and start. It's that simple. The system will suggest minimal bid prices and daily budgets. I have been able to gets clicks for as little as 90 cents. However most will come in close to the suggested bid rate.!

LinkedIn introduces new company page analytics.  In July LinkedIn introduced their new Company page Analytics which allow the subscriber to better understand what is driving the traffic on your pages. This new service allows you to identify which updates are driving the most engagement. It will allow you to filter engagement trends by type and time period.  It will provide more detailed demographic data on your followers and it will allow you to visualize your follower growth and benchmark your growth against similar brands. This enhancement is also easy to understand because it also utilizes the new built-in help feature which can be accessed by highlighting the question mark symbol. Check out their help video for their analytics.

LinkedIn goes mobile.  LinkedIn’s new mobile app allows for greater customization plus it comes preloaded with the handiest features already setup in the customizable navigation page. This new app also helps emphasize localization. Since 64% of LinkedIn's growth is overseas they have also added additional native language support for 15 languages in total. Click here for LinkedIn own story.

In this article I have shown you four things you need to do on a regular basis in order to be successful with LinkedIn. I have also introduced you to three of LinkedIn’s latest features. You can never go wrong by following these suggestions. Yes there are other things you can add but leaving out these four activities will hurt your chances of success. The new features are worth your investigation, especially if you like using pay per click ads.  If you feel this article was helpful, pass it on to your friends. If you have a something to add to this discussion enter it in the comment section. It been my pleasure share my thoughts on what important and new in LinkedIn. I look forward to reading yours.

Hector Cisneros is a partner, COO and social media director for WSquared Media Group based in Jacksonville, Florida. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+,  LinkedIn, and YouTube. He is also the co-host of Blog Talk radio’s “Working the Web to Win,” where he and Carl Weiss make Working the Web to Win simple for every business. Hector is a syndicated writer for EzineOnline and is an active Blogger, (including ghost writing). He is a published author of two books,  60 Seconds to success (on sale at Amazon and B&N) and Internet Marketing for the 21st Century which you can get free by clicking on the link at WSquaredMediaGroup.com.