Tip 31 -Use Status Updates to thank other people
Giving gratitude is a great way to help others and thank people in your network for the great support that they have been to you. Use your Status Updates on LinkedIn to do this, and mention them in your comments, as well as adding a link to their website or blog. This is an easy way to bring content your network and to share with people that you give to others by saying thank you.
Share any company success stories, so share information about what you are up to, that is relevant to your business but without selling.
For example:
“Just back from a great client meeting, where they told me they have saved 75% of their recruitment costs since working with us! I love saving people money and helping them to cut their admin time.”
“Another happy customer just sent the whole office a box of chocolates, balloons and a gorgeous thank you card. We are so privileged to have such fantastic clients.”
”Another client has decided to come on board with us, we are really looking forward to helping them to look after all of their printing needs, a great day and the business continues to grow.”
“We are delighted to celebrate Sarah’s 6th year in the business with us! A happy and motivated team here and we love passing that energy and great service on to our clients”.
“Just back from training an amazing group of Entrepreneurs on how to get the most value from LinkedIn.”
It’s a clever way to say what you do and how you do it but without selling to your contacts, it is a subtle and indirect way of letting people know what you do and how you add value. Even more powerful is to use images with these updates. We always generate enquiries about LinkedIn training when we post about how we are helping our clients.
Tip 33 - Use Status Updates to create 'buzz' about your Business
If you want people in your network to notice you and your company create content that is viral, engaging, interesting and will give you massive visibility. You can easily create buzz especially if you combine this with other forms of social media. You could run a competition, engage with your followers and connections, use the status updates to post landing pages, excite people about an upcoming event or spread positivity about your brand, your business and your success. This will get you noticed and the Status Updates are a place to do this.
You can post links to any website in the Status Updates from the LinkedIn home page, so use this opportunity to drive traffic to your website. If you want to be able to track the effectiveness of this then use a free tool such as bit.ly: http://bit.ly .
Simply create a free account on a website such as bit.ly and then paste a link there to a web page, landing page or blog that you have created. The bit.ly link will be a short-link which you can add into LinkedIn updates or Twitter or Facebook. From this every time someone clicks on the link it will be tracked. Then you can ‘View Stats’ and see how many clicks came through LinkedIn.
When you are posting a link that you have created, it is important that it is useful content and not a sales pitch, people on LinkedIn don’t like to be sold to.
When you post Status Updates always have your customer in mind. Who is your target market, if you are B2B (business to business), what is the job title of the buyer in a company that you would like to do business with? Is it the HR Manager, the Purchasing Manager, the IT Manager? Is the CEO or Managing Director? What industry is that potential customer in? Think about what they like to read, think about articles that they would find of interest. Then simply go to the LinkedIn Today news feed and follow the industry or profession that would appeal to your target market.
If you are B2C (business to consumer), ie. That you are selling to the general public, think about demographics, does your product or service appeal to parents of young children, first time homebuyers, recently retired couples? Are you selling in the local market or internationally? Either way, whatever the demographic and location is, get into their mind and think like them, what content would they like to read or feel appealing?
The most recent activity shows on your LinkedIn profile, so as an example, let’s say you were targeting HR Manager, and you really wanted them to connect with you. You would find a very relevant article on LinkedIn, such as “8 Ways to Drive Employee Engagement in Your Organisation”. This is very topical for HR departments at the moment, so you are going to ask an HR Manager to connect with you. They are naturally going to check out your profile before deciding whether to do business with you.
So the HR Manager of a large company you would like to do business with comes to your profile, following your connection request. They read your very credible headline and a profile written to impress HR people. They then see an article that helps them called “8 Ways to Drive Employee Engagement in Your Organisation”. They are going to recognise you as someone who knows about their industry and are more likely to connect with you after seeing your profile because you clearly are in tune with their industry, and if you posted that article you’d like to see more.
You are increasing the chances of your target market connecting with you by making your Status Updates relevant to the people you want to do business with. Your visibility and credibility will go up massively with these people if done well.
When you share a status update which has not been generated from the LinkedIn Today section, you can choose to place a link into the update you are sharing. If you use video in your business, or you wish to share videos created by other people, then you can easily place a link to a YouTube or Vimeo video to share with your network.
Simply find the video you want to share, for example a YouTube video, then choose the option to ‘Share’. This will show a unique URL for the video, simply copy the link and come back into LinkedIn, create a new update and then paste the link into the update. A screen shot of the video will be created and then you can comment on the video before sharing with your network.
When you write a blog it is important that you use a catchy headline so that people are more inclined to click on it, as well as thinking about optimising the headline for search engines. LinkedIn is a great place to share your latest blog. Use headings for your blogs that people are most likely to enter into a search and that would encourage someone from your LinkedIn network to read more. Start with headlines such as:
“How To…”
“8 Different Ways To…”
“10 Tips for…”
“The Best Advice for…”
If you want some great ideas, see what other people are writing about in the LinkedIn Today section. Once you have created your blog post, simply place a link to the blog in the Status Update at the top of your Home Page on LinkedIn.
If you have never created a blog before and want some help then this is the best article (over 7100 words) on how to set one up. http://dukeo.com/how-to-start-a-blog/. If you have never come across Dukeo before then it is a blog well worth following.
Every time you post an update, you appear in the LinkedIn Activity Feed which any of your connections would see on their home page. Don’t worry, they don’t get a message every time you post something, they will only see it at that moment in time if they are logged in on their computer or on the LinkedIn App on the phone. Your frequency of posting will drive more profile views and we recommend as an absolute minimum that you post content once a day although 3-4 times a day will give you more visibility.
If the content you are posting is good and useful, then your credibility will also be boosted. You will notice that more people want to connect to you and you will drive engagement by people posting, liking and sharing what you have posted in your updates.
You can always mention others in your updates. This is a great way to profile other people in your network. It’s the same feature that Facebook has for their updates, if you mention their name then your contact will appear and you can link them to the update. Reasons you may want to do this are to showcase the other person, recommend the other person or talk about them in a nice way. All of this would be seen as helpful and giving to the other person and would come back to you in some way. You could say “Just back from a fantastic meeting with Derek Reilly, he has fantastic offers on business cards at the moment, so if you’re running low then I highly recommend you speak with Derek for a great deal.”
Tip 40 – Theme Some Of Your Status Updates
Frequency is key, when it comes to sending out content over your LinkedIn network that gets you noticed. Theming your Status Updates can be a great way to remember to post and to keep your message on track. For example you could come up with specific names for each day of the week that fit with your business:
– Monday Madness –this would include posting a strange or funny post or article on your news feed that would grab attention.
– Tips on Tuesday – This would give free tips to people to show your expertise.
– Win on Wednesday - this would be the day to share success, talk about a recent win in the business either for the whole company, or one of your tem
– Thursday Trivia – Engaging your network with questions is a good way to get responses by having them guess the answer to a question relevant to your industry
– Friday Feature – This is the day you could promote someone else in your network and feature them and their business
If you create your own theme you will find it easier to post something and stay on track, but once you have started don’t forget to keep it up. You could also do something similar on Facebook and Twitter.