This article will help you to generate more leads and grow your presence on LinkedIn. You will build up a LinkedIn account that converts. First step is to go to LinkedIn and create an account which is free. Once you signed up you will have to add some things to your profile. We start with the most important things you will need to do.
How to build up a successful LinkedIn Account.
PROFILE PICTURE.
It is highly essential for you to add a profile photo to be successful on LinkedIn. Have a clear image, a close crop shot of your face to recognize you easily, and also the background should be neutral and should not distract to recognize you on your profile. People first look at your photo, so it is very important to have a good photo of yourself.
HEADLINE.
The next thing you want to do is to create a headline. Now you might think to only add your job title into the headline like most people do. But if you actively looking for a new position or searching to get more business projects, think different. Rather than having only your professional title in the headline focus on how you can add value to people and show this in your headline. For example your headline can say “Software engineer helping you to develop algorithms features. Let’s connect”. In this way you say what value you can bring to a person and invite to connect. Let’s connect is a call-to-action phrase.
SUMMARY.
Now let’s go to the part where you have a “Summary” of your LinkedIn profile. A great thing is that LinkedIn already designs by default a summary for you. They pull this summary out for you that is quiet good and accurate but you should improve it. And of course it is a good idea to look at other peoples’ profile to get inspired and create your own summary out of it.
CUSTOMIZED URL.
You will find this option under your personal profile in “Edit Public Profile & URL”. To customize your URL is a great feature because you can have a weblink that looks like https://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname. You can put this on business cards and it also looks great on your website. It is a short link that you can put anywhere and advertise yourself.
HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES TO GROW YOUR LINKEDIN NETWORK.
2ND DEGREE CONNECTIONS.
Hereby, I start from the premise that you are connected with a few people on LinedIn so you have a current network and want it to grow. Go into your network and click on your connections. LinkedIn will show all the connections you have. You will have an option to see all connections of the people you are connected with. Use the filter and apply to only show the 2nd connections. Now, in my case I have 100 connections. By using this tactic to add 2nd connections, LinkedIn is showing 160,000+ results. I now can set myself a goal and go through the list and connect every day for maybe an hour with the users. Some may not accept an invitation but others will. In that way my network will grow rapidly. 160,000+ however is a large number and you may want to narrow down the results by activating another filter such as location or current company.
START A POST.
Post something valuable. Start off to tell about your expertise, for example how you helped other people to grow their business. Give proof, be specific. Invite people to connect with you. Tell them if they do so, you will share a link with free, valuable content etc with them.
WRITE AN ARTICLE.
Get blog traffic through LinkedIn. An excellent feature that LinkedIn provides is to write an article and essentially publish directly on LinkedIn. In that way, your article gets a lot of visibility. The type of content should be very targeting. Your content should accomplish two goals. First your content should teach people how to solve a problem or do the job better and then it establishes you as a thought leader. Each aspect is going to lead to more business if you offer real value. Get strategic with the content you release and also call-to-action at the end of the article. What do you want to achieve through this article? Let the reader know what to do next. For example add a link that leads to your website. If you publish an article everybody that you are connected with will get notified that about that. The article has so much more visibility through this function than a regular post.
