As you've been scrolling through LinkedIn, you may be hearing experts saying, "You need to have a strategy for LinkedIn."
If you don't have a strategy, they say:
You'll be wasting your time
You'll attract the wrong people
You'll grow followers but not income
So, it sounds like a good idea to have a LinkedIn strategy.
But what does that actually mean?
Is it a list of the times in the day that you should post? Influencers you should follow? Hours you should spend on the platform?
(To me, it's none of those things!)
In this post, I’m going to outline what the term "LinkedIn Strategy" means, so that you can take the first steps toward creating one of your own for your small business.
What is a LinkedIn strategy for a small business owner?
Let's start with a simple definition. When experts say, “you need to follow a LinkedIn strategy," they mean you need a thoughtful plan for how to use LinkedIn to achieve your specific business goals.
It’s not about posting for the sake of posting. It's about posting, engaging, and networking thoughtfully to generate demand for your services, demonstrate your credibility, and position yourself as the obvious right fit for your dream clients.
When your strategy is in place, your audience naturally grows and your audience becomes primed to buy from you, increasing your profitability.
Your strategy increases your profitability by generating leads for your services.
Let me explain…
I approach LinkedIn based on these principles:
People are selfish
People have limited attention spans
People have problems they desperately want solved
By considering these principles and leveraging psychology-backed techniques, your audience will become familiar with and interested in what you have to say - and therefore your offers.
Creating and implementing an intentional LinkedIn strategy means that...
You don't rely just on posting
You aren't guessing which actions to take on LinkedIn
You know how to generate leads on demand
A good LinkedIn strategy includes three elements:
Profile
Content
Outreach
When you break it down like that, it's actually quite simple.
Different tools on LinkedIn - posts, comments, messages, etc. - have different functions. Your strategy will dictate how you will choose to leverage different aspects of the platform.
Small business owners go wrong when they:
Rely exclusively on posting to generate leads
Send messages without tracking them in their lead list
Focus on selling instead of building relationships in the direct messages
Learn why you dread sending direct messages today in this short blog post.
This is why having a thoughtful LinkedIn strategy is so important. It keeps you focused on taking strategic actions that generate interest for your services - without wasting your precious time.
The next steps you can take to get leads on LinkedIn (and how I can help you)
Step 1: When I start working with a small business owner, we always start with a Profile Optimization so that you clearly explain your credibility, who you serve, how you serve them, and what action the profile viewer should take.
This process takes about 3 weeks from start to finish, and provides you a profile that captures the attention of your ideal clients and gets them to take action.
Step 2: Once your profile is optimized, we then create your LinkedIn strategy. Through my program Leads on LinkedIn, you will become comfortable navigating LinkedIn to find right-fit clients for your business.
Inside Leads on LinkedIn, we focus on two main skills - LinkedIn posting and direct messaging. These skills bring the right clients into your orbit so you can consistently grow your business without relying on time-consuming strategies like video and expensive strategies like ads.
Within just a month, you'll have identified and contacted 30 prospects for your business. You'll have the skills and systems to do it again any time you want an influx of leads. And, this rinse and repeat process gets more effective every time you do it!
The Leads on LinkedIn program includes 2 months of support, during which you will have access to actionable video trainings, 1:1 calls, daily email support, critiques of your posts and DMs, and weekly accountability check-ins from me.
Learn more and get started here.
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