When I launched my first three businesses I did so with a sizable budget to fund my startup costs. But, when I started my consulting business back in 2007 I found myself in a very different situation. For the first time in my life I had no income coming in.

My husband was in the midst of a long season of unemployment after I had already sold my previous businesses. We had three hungry mouths to feed at home, so I was determined to launch my new business leaner than ever before — like as close to zero startup costs as possible.

That’s when I decided to figure out the LinkedIn thing.

LinkedIn is an incredible free tool to market your business. Once I invested the time to figure out how to get better at using it, I was able to track 6 figures of annual new business all came from LinkedIn.

So, if you want to start monetizing LinkedIn here are 9 tips to help you start generating leads for your business:

Lead Gen Tip #1. Have the Right LinkedIn Success Mindset.

Thousands of business owners are killing it with LinkedIn, but new clients aren’t going to come flooding in if all you’re doing is logging into LinkedIn to accept connection requests and post a few comments here and there.

LinkedIn will work for you if you put forth the right consistent effort.  I love this famous quote:

“Your diamonds are not in far distant mountains or in yonder seas. They are in your own backyard,  if you but dig for them.” ~ Russell Conwell

If you’re not sure whether your target market is on LinkedIn watch this video where I share 5 reason why you should be marketing your business on LinkedIn.

Lead Gen Tip #2. Craft a Stellar LinkedIn Profile for Instant FIND-ability and GET-ability.

Keep in mind the user experience on LinkedIn. People will land on your profile in 2 ways. Direct search and an indirect search. Direct search is easy low hanging fruit because they are typically ‘buy intent’ – ‘hire intent’ searches. Potential clients search LinkedIn for the type of person they are looking to hire.  This is why you want your profile to be SEO optimized for the right keyword phrases. Your LinkedIn profile should also have a professional looking photo of you. Most people skip profiles where there is no picture or only a logo.

RELATED: LinkedIn Marketing Tips – Is Your LinkedIn Photo Costing You Clients?

Indirect search can happen in many ways. For instance, let’s say you post an update on your personal LinkedIn profile and you share a few tips about a frequently asked question you get. Let’s say you currently have 1,200 1st degree connections and 45 of those connections liked or commented on your post.  Not only does your post get seen by your 1st degree connections, it also gets eyeballs from the connections of the people who commented on your post. So if your 45 comments each had an average of 1,200 connections then your one post can also reach 54,000 2nd degree connections. You’re bound to get some of those people who saw your content click on your profile to find out what exactly you do. They will skim your profile for all of 3 seconds. If they don’t immediately get what you do, they WILL MOVE ON to find someone else.

So, you don’t want to miss out on this EASY passive lead generation opportunity simply because they don’t get what you do.  That’s why it’s so important that your LinkedIn profile captures an immediate GET-ability (and wow factor).

Naturally, you want to have the updates you post on LinkedIn reach more people. So, be sure you develop the habit of sending targeted connection requests to grow your 1st degree connections.

Lead Gen Tip #3: Create Customized Connection Requests

When searching for connections on LinkedIn, you are given numerous filters to choose from. This allows you to get really strategic with your search.

You are able to drill down to where someone lives, where they went to school, what their interests are, and so on. With this information, you can take it and personalize your connection requests.

Lets say, For Example, you search for CEO’s and filter by 2nd degree connections located in Philadelphia. Instead of sending a pre-baked template to someone, study their profile and find a way to insert a question about their city in your request.

You can also ask about things like the weather, their sports teams, and much more.

By creating customized connection requests, you break the ice and open up an easy dialogue with the other person.

Lead Gen Tip #4: Don’t Spam Connections. Talk to Them.

When it comes to messaging your connections on LinkedIn there are two common pitfalls occur. Pitfall #1. You send out tons of requests to connect, but then fail to talk to them after they accept. Pitfall #2. You blast straight into a sales conversion. From its inception LinkedIn was not built to be a marketplace to bombard members with advertisements and solicitations. LinkedIn was designed to foster relationships.

If you use LinkedIn to blast straight into solicitation messages to cold connections, you’re just going to burn through those connections.

Instead, just follow the natural sequence of relationship building when having 1-1 conversations on LinkedIn. For instance:

1. Customized invitation
2. Welcome / build rapport message
3. Engage message
4. Give value message
5. Value follow up message
6. Invitation to call, coffee, interview, etc

If you have a well written profile and tagline often times you can go from step 2 straight to step 6, but it’s good to have a 6 step sequence like this to continue the conversation for people who aren’t ready to be a client of yours.

If the idea of messaging people individually feels too daunting, I use a tool called Auto Text Expander to speed my responses to FAQ’s when I’m on desktop.

When I’m messaging people from my mobile I just use the keyboard shortcuts on my iPhone which functions the same way as Auto Text Expander. I can reply 10x faster when all I have to do it type in 2 or 3 letters I set up.

Lead Gen Tip #5: Use Trigger Events to Engage and Re-Engage

Not all of your prospects will be ready to talk about your services immediately. However, they may be ready in 6 or even 12 months from now.

Your goal is to remain in their minds, meaning you’ll need to continue engaging them.

Fortunately, this can be done easily with trigger events. These are situations that will provide a comfortable way for you to re-engage with someone if they’ve shown no interest in your solutions so far.

These situations include:

• they engaged on one of your posts (liked, commented, or shared)
• they viewed your profile
• they’ve published an article on LinkedIn
• they’ve posted a status update on LinkedIn
• they had a job change
• they were promoted
• they engaged on one of your posts (liked, commented, or shared)
• they or their company were mentioned in the news
• they’ve published an article on LinkedIn
• they’ve posted a status update on LinkedIn

By re-engaging in this manner, you are more likely to stay on their radar and be top of mind when the time comes that they need the solution you offer.

Related: Attract Clients on LinkedIn! 12 Things You Can Do in 15 Minutes

Lead Gen Tip #6: Use hashtags to get discovered

When you’re posting an update, whether it’s a simple text update, a picture, a video or audio LinkedIn allows users to follow various hashtags. This way, they can get content on a topic in their feed, even if they don’t follow specific influencers for it.

Additionally, when you post an update, LinkedIn will auto-suggest hashtags, which can give you some inspiration for what to include.

You can also do a quick search a topic in LinkedIn and you’ll be able to see the number of followers on that hashtag.

Lead Gen Tip #7: Use Native Videos

Here’s an excerpt from SEO expert Neil Patel where he shares the importance of posting videos on LinkedIn to grow your business.

Advantages of Video

Native videos are videos that are uploaded directly to LinkedIn or created on the platform itself, as opposed to embedding videos from other sites, such as Youtube, Vimeo and more.

There are numerous advantages to using native video. According to Neil Patel, “A staggering 84% of buyers reported that they had been convinced to buy after watching a brand’s video.

And that same study found that 97% of businesses believe that their video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.

That means the right type of video will help you sell and engage more.”

How to Upload Native Videos

To upload a Native Video, go to your feed, and you’ll see a button with a camera icon next to “start a post.

From here, You can directly upload a video between three seconds and ten minutes in length. This will appear directly to your update feed, allowing your audience to start watching your content immediately.

The dimensions of a native video can be from 256×144 to 4096×2304, and the orientation can be Horizontal or vertical, though vertical videos will be cropped into a square in the feed. Native video’s will also loop automatically.

Using Analytics

Another advantage of Native Videos is that, Once you post a video, you are able to see detailed analytics. This includes things such as the number of views, likes, and comments your videos are receiving.

Additionally, you can also see audience insights, including top companies, titles, and locations of your viewers.

You can find these insights in the dashboard section of your LinkedIn profile. This works on both mobile and desktop.

Click the drop-down that says “Me” and scroll down until you see “Posts and Activity.”, which brings you to a feed of every post you’ve ever uploaded to LinkedIn.

At the bottom of each post, you’ll see a breakdown of it’s likes, comments, shares, and views.

With this information, you can begin to understand if you’re reaching the people and companies that matter to your brand.

Lead Gen Tip #8: Get to the Point Quickly in Your Videos

On Social media, attention spans are short, so there’s no time for you to waste. This means that you need to hook your viewers by getting to your point quickly at the beginning of your video.

LinkedIn themselves recommend capturing attention with a hook in the first 0 to 3 seconds.

From there, seconds 3 to 15 should be used to identify the problem or opportunity, and should address one of the biggest pain points of your potential customers, in order to really draw them in and entice them to watch the rest of your video.

After you have successfully hooked your viewers and drawn them in, seconds 15 to 50 should be used to describe the solution. Explain what you’re offering and why it’ll help your viewers.

Lead Gen Tip #9: Use Closed Captions for your videos

When a video comes up on your feed, it begins playing automatically. However, it is also muted by default.

It’s estimated that up to 85 percent of social media videos are played with no sound.

This makes adding closed captions/subtitles to your videos essential.

Even if your video isn’t heavy on speech, doing so will make them more accessible. LinkedIn even has a closed captioning feature, making it easy to implement.

To add captions:

• Click the video icon near “start a post” and select the video you’d like to upload.
• When the preview shows up, click the edit icon on the top right to see the video settings and then click select file to attach the associated SubRip Subtitle file.”

Lead Gen Tip #10: Make Use of LinkedIn Showcase Pages

What are LinkedIn Showcase pages?

Let’s ask Darren Travers, who shares, “Showcase pages are add-ons to your LinkedIn company page for highlighting a specific business unit, initiative, product, service, or for targeting unique demographics. They are standalone pages, meaning people can follow them without following your main page.

If you have multiple target audiences or brand personas, you need Showcase pages. With them, you can avoid over complicating your main page and creating confusion for your audience by spreading out your offers and messages across multiple pages.

To create one, simply click ‘Admin tools’ on the right of your company homepage and select ‘Create Showcase Page’ to get started.”

Lead Gen Tip #11: Make Use of Sponsored vs Targeted Updates

If you have a LinkedIn page for your company, then you are able to take advantage of two powerful features. Targeted Updates and Sponsored Updates.

With Targeted Updates, you can target your content to a specific audience. This is useful for many reasons, such as if you want to show specific content to your investors, and other content to your consumers. However, the segment you are targeting must have at least 300 followers for you to use this feature.

Sponsored Updates: Sponsored updates are paid posts that allow you to reach a broader network. If you would like some content to get even more visibility, or if you want to get your content in front of people who aren’t following your Company Page (or your employees) you can pay to sponsor it.

To use targeted updates:

• Click on start a post from your Company Page
• Click on “Anyone” and you’ll be taken to “Who can see Your Post?”
• Click on Targeted Audience and you’ll be able to customize what audience you want the post

While Targeted Updates can be used to build an organic following, Sponsored Updates allow you to pay to get your posts in front of a larger audience to further build your following.

These will appear in the your audience’s feed and look like a normal post, the only difference being a “sponsored” label next to your company name.

You are also able to target specific audiences just like you can with Targeted Updates.

To use Sponsored Updates:

• Post an update to your company page and click the “Sponsor Update” button.
• Within the Campaign Manager, name your new campaign.
• Target your campaign by choosing Location, Company, Skills, etc.
• Choose Your payment option. You can select either Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM).

Conclusion

So, there you have it. I just shared 11 tips to help you start generating more leads on LinkedIn. If you’re starting at zero, don’t be overwhelmed by trying to implement all 11 by tomorrow! Bookmark this page to review it each day and decide to implement one at a time until you add all 11.

If you’d like to nail down your LinkedIn profile faster check out our free and paid LinkedIn Profile Makeover services for you here:

QUESTION: What’s one thing that’s been working well for you on LinkedIn? Share With us in the Comments below!

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