How I attract new clients on LinkedIn

It’s not an accident, I work at it.  Here’s what I’ve learned about LinkedIn and how to use it to do business:

• LinkedIn Expert Melanie Goodman calls LinkedIn a networking platform.  She is so right.  If you think of LinkedIn as a giant opportunity to network, you won’t treat it as a social media platform and you will get much more out of it.
• You need to show up regularly.  You knew that already, right?  When you stop showing up, things stop.  For me that means posting 5 times a week (this is an average).   But it’s not posting for posting sake, you need to give value every time, even when you are promoting something you have to give something of value.
• Showing up means participating.  Once you’ve posted, you need to react, respond, engage with anyone commenting on your posts. 
• Posting and commenting on other people’s posts and adding value and support to them is a great way to get visibility and to support someone else’s content. 
• The more you do the easier it gets.  I encourage you to have some kind of logging system for ideas that will come to you to post about.  Gavin Ingham uses notes on his phone to jot ideas, and he often turns comments he’s made on others’ posts into content for himself.   

These are the types of posts that have worked best for me.

• A post with a personal picture on it, that you can relate to your business content.  I’ve used a few.  Most recently this post about my wedding attracted a lot of people, because the picture is fun, but there is valuable content here too.  https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6977154493582843904/
• A post that has a serious message but that is done in a fun way works well.  As this post did about a speaker who really needed to update his photo.  https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6960492469138423808/
• A bit of controversy works well.  This post could simply have been titled ‘What is a keynote speaker?’  Instead, I made it a bit more provocative and got greater engagement as a result.  We had some interesting discussions both on LinkedIn and outside of it.  Posts that take a stance, have an opinion work well.  Not everyone will agree with you of course, but those that do are more likely to become friends and clients in the future. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6967740971467870209/

Here’s what doesn’t work (for me), some of it might surprise you:

• Sharing other people’s posts using the share button or a link to their content.  Strange but true.  LinkedIn seems to squash the reach.  Irritating.
• Putting external links in posts.  Do it sparingly when you really need to.  I do it occasionally but try to avoid it as much as I can.  It affects the reach of your posts. Logical really, LinkedIn wants you to stay on the platform.
• Videos without captions.  Obvious really, right?  But videos in general seem to be performing less well than they used to even though we were all encouraged to make video.  You’ll notice I’ve reduced my video posts, and my video newsletters to an absolute minimum.  Old fashioned writing is doing better these days.
• Posting too often.  I know, crazy, right?  LinkedIn expert Tony K Silver advises to leave 6 hours before adding a new post so that the algorithm doesn't squash your previous post.  I’ve tested that out and it seems to work well.  Though these days I tend to post once a day. 

I also have a wonderful tool that helps me to track how my content is doing, it’s called Shield.  You can use it to see which posts work best, what times are the best times, the levels of engagement, numbers of views and even which posts are still active.  And it will look back historically, how cool is that?  Better than anything LinkedIn provides.  Best of all you get 2 weeks free, then it’s only USD8 a month or USD60 a year.  Use this link, I get kudos.
 
Finally, if you are struggling to get started with your content and you’d like help creating 30 posts for LinkedIn to get momentum, let me help you.  Check out my latest service: https://www.mariafranzoni.me/content-creation  And let’s have a chat.