LinkedIn Strategy, Grow Connections, Get Leads and Increase Your Credibility

Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn is all about the professional face. It's all about showing the world how smart you are and how good you are at what you do. Typically speaking, people on LinkedIn are looking to do one of two things - selling something, OR further their career. There's no point in candy coating it - that's fundamentally what the network was built on.

Which brings us nicely to the messaging style of LinkedIn. Don't worry about sounding like you're self-inflating your ego - so long as you can do it credibly then all is well!

When it comes to messaging on LinkedIn, there's a few key things to consider:

Remember this is a professional audience

Provide as many of your own new ideas and concepts as possible

Respect other peoples ideas, don't try and pass them off as yours

Remember your grammar, punctuation and spelling

Ensuring you respect these points and stick to 'thought leadership' as your main content source will keep you ahead of the pack on LinkedIn.

Professional Profiles

Your professional profile is your face to the world. It's also the most important mode of communication on LinkedIn. Whilst there are other entities that can represent you on LinkedIn (think Corporate Profiles), it's typically highly unlikely you'll conduct much if any meaningful communication under the those profiles. Therefore it's important to put your effort and thought process in to developing your profile and making it as well populated as possible.

Well populated doesn't mean full of slabs of text that no-one reads. Nor does it mean empty with lots of reposts of other peoples articles. You need to ensure you have just the right amount of credible information for your audience, with an equal helping of recommendations and thought leadership posts that show the world just how good you are at your chosen discipline.

The main things to consider about your professional profile are:

Increasing your connection base

Show respect by providing recommendations to your valued peers

Provide value to your connections

Your LinkedIn professional profile is where the majority of your magic will happen. Your reach is directly proportional to the number of connections you have, and your success will be dependent on the number of meaningful interactions you have with those people!

Corporate Profiles

A corporate profile is the face of a company on LinkedIn. It's provides the source of all the credible corporate information you have, including products, services, location, history, contact details and most importantly the people who are part of the business.

The key difference however is - people don't 'connect' with a company on LinkedIn, rather they 'follow' one. And getting people to 'follow' your company is hard work, challenging at best. Even some of the most well known brands in the world don't have a great number of followers, so investing your time in to publishing content under your corporate profile is perhaps less than optimal.

However, having a Corporate Profile is good for a number of things. These include:

Corporate credibility

Publishing important milestones to the world

Lead generation

Finding new staff and team members

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups can be a very powerful tool - they can also be a massive time consumer. There are lots of options available when it comes to groups and there's an equally high number of people ready to battle with you to prove their professional superiority. So choose your groups wisely and your battles even more wisely.

When it comes to choosing to be involved in a group, you should consider the below points as they'll help ensure your time is spent well.

Choose a group that doesn't focus solely on your discipline. Choose a 'periphery' group.

Be engaged in only a few high quality groups, rather than many low quality ones.

Don't get engaged in fruitless debate.

LinkedIn Advertising

Advertising on LinkedIn is challenging. There's a lot of people trying to do the same thing, and there's often not a lot of space for you to garner that all important user impression. Unlike Facebook there is no concept of sponsored stories, so getting the 'friends of friends' style connection just isn't possible.

So the use of LinkedIn advertising needs to be thoroughly considered before you launch in. That said, there is a particular niche where LinkedIn advertising can be quite powerful. This niche is what's known as micro-targeting. Read our article on micro-targeting to learn more as the concept applies to a number of platforms.

All that said, there are a number of very powerful facets of LinkedIn advertising. These are:

Accurate and effective "Cost Per Click" advertising - only pay for what gets clicked

Highly Targeted - Aim your adverts at locations, jobs or companies.

Allows videos as adverts