Video: Getting the Most Out of LinkedIn for You and Your Business

I was honoured to take part in an episode of Agency Local’s “Ask the Expert” video series back in January entitled “Getting the Most from LinkedIn for You and Your Business.”

Normally Agency Local have 1 expert per episode but on this occasion, they had three, taking the informative session over the usual hour duration.

The episode was split into three key areas delivered by three LinkedIn experts.

1. Building a profile that converts – delivered by the knowledgeable Angus Grady a.k.a LinkedIn Unlocker
2. The DOs and DON’Ts of Connecting and engaging – brought to us by expert Jon Simmonds of Rocket Science Digital Marketing Ltd
3. Content Posting and gaining visibility – delivered by yours truly.

Followed by a lively interactive Q&A at the end!

You Can Watch the Full Video Packed with LinkedIn Insights Here:

In my segment in the video above (which starts at around 38 minutes in but it’s ALL valuable) I reiterated my message that there are really only 2 things to get right on LinkedIn:

1. Have a great and optimised Profile as Angus talks about.
2. Engage! If you’re not engaging on the platform, you’re dead to the algorithms. You can have the best Profile in the world but if you’re not engaging on the platform nothing good will come of it!

I then went on to share three Take-Aways:

Take-Away 1: Content.

Here I covered (amongst many other things!):

1. The different types of content you can publish on LinkedIn – which types get you the most engagement.
2. The content strategy pyramid – which you can use to get more value out of your content.
3. Thought leadership
4. The importance of storifying your content
5. Why solving the problems of your ideal prospects is key. Trying to attract everyone on LinkedIn with your content isn’t the way to go. If your content is attractive to everybody, it’s going to be meaningful to nobody.

Take-Away 2: Posting

Here I discussed:

1. Why you should NEVER sell on LinkedIn – engage instead!
2. How the old sales funnel has now evolved into an engagement funnel – we should now all strive to attract people through our engagement.
3. Videos can generate lots of engagement and documents are another neat form of content creation on LinkedIn.
4. Variety is your friend! If you mix up the type of content you produce, your audience won’t know what’s coming next which keeps things interesting.
5. Answer the questions you know your network is asking.

Take-Away 3: Visibility

Here I talked about:

1. How using hashtags in your content increases the chances of your content appearing in the feed and why you should follow hashtags that are relevant to you – I follow 25 which I think is a good number.
2. Have a unique branded hashtag if you can to serve as a unique way to identify your content against a recognisable phrase.