When you are short of time to spend on LinkedIn, your profile sits there dormant.
Then you have an hour to spare and it’s at the top of the list! What do you do?
You jump in and do lots of activities.
You know you should have been there before but there are clients needing help, team members needing training, a board that needs a report, a dog that needs walking.
They are all shouting louder than the people on LinkedIn, quietly networking away – without you.
Sometimes, it is the wheel that squeaks the least that needs the oil.
And so it is with LinkedIn.
The Law of Reciprocity
The law of reciprocity goes a long way in nurturing relationships, and it is very much that way on LinkedIn.
Take supporting someone’s post, for example. Dropping them a note from time to time. Tagging them into something that may interest them.
All this helping out and giving means your relationships are more likely to return the favour.
So, you need to be on LinkedIn to see these opportunities to engage.
The LinkedIn newsfeed is a noisy place and you’re at the mercy of the algorithm. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has lost 15 mins scrolling down – when I only jumped onto LinkedIn to check something entirely different. Those pesky social feeds hook you in, and that is the intention!
Instead of giving your ‘post loving’ out willy-nilly on the feed, you could tap the bell notification on those profiles so you would head straight to your notifications to see who has posted. You are still at the mercy of the algorithm but it helps you miss fewer posts that are important to you.
Sales Navigator Is Your Friend
But if you upgrade your account to sales navigator, you’re in a whole new world. If your LinkedIn use has been like driving without a map so far, Sales Navigator is like getting a satnav!
Sales Navigator offers a different home feed entirely, one that is entirely populated by the posts, updates and activities of only the people you’ve saved there. They can be 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-degree connections.
Those 15 mins you used to spend checking out what the algorithm decided to show how can now be spent strategically commenting on future customers, influencers in your industry, partners and colleagues.
Sales Navigator costs money and some upfront work to find and save people and companies you want to track.
Nearly everyone we’ve met who is paying for Sales Navigator rates it as an essential directory of contacts. It is great for finding target company decision-makers, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The treasure trove is the management of who is saved and tracking their activities for triggers that you can respond to.
The wealth of triggers it gives you means you never miss an opportunity to congratulate someone on a new job, like their post, or find a new decision-maker at your target account.
Action -> Reaction: LinkedIn’s Other Law
One action on LinkedIn very often creates a reaction. This is how you nurture relationships.
For example: you post -> someone likes it -> you connect and thank them for the like -> you have a two-way inbox conversation
Or: you comment on a post -> you get a reply -> you respond -> you take that into the inbox and have a two-way conversation
If you don’t re-visit LinkedIn regularly, then you break the flow of these activities and they stop. At best, you miss out on conversations, at worst, people think worse of you for leaving them hanging – often publicly.
If you follow up with someone who liked your post a week ago, how effective is that likely to be? Do you remember the profile of someone whose post you liked a week ago? No, me neither!
So if you don’t have much time, doing little but often is key. If you only have half an hour a day to spend, spend 15 mins in the morning and 15 mins in the afternoon, and ensure your activities are driven in the right direction.
It depends on your end goal, but in general, you should be in the routine of checking;
- messaging inbox
- notifications
- profile views
- post likers and commenters
- Sales Nav – lead shares (for post engagement)
- Sales Nav – scan all other filters to see new decision-makers, account updates etc.
Then use all of this to start up conversations.
In Conclusion:
Of course, like most things, providing you are doing things in the right way, you get out what you put in.
And if you do not have the time to learn LinkedIn best practices, let alone execute the things you’ve learnt, you can have a ‘little help from your friends’ at Pitch121.
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Learn More
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If you have any questions, please reach out to a member of the Pitch 121 team. We would be super happy to hear from you.
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