LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, offering countless opportunities for networking, building your personal brand and making new business contacts. Whether you’re new to the platform or looking to refine your strategy, this guide will walk you through the key steps – from registering and optimising your profile to expanding your professional network, creating content and leveraging PPC advertising. You’ll also learn how LinkedIn works and how to measure your success using the SSI index.
Article content
- First steps on LinkedIn: sign up and choose a subscription
- Enhance your profile like a professional
- Expand your professional network and add new contacts
- Build your personal brand and build trust with your followers
- How to measure your success on LinkedIn? The SSI Index can help you do that
- Make sure users know about you with PPC advertising
Registration and subscription selection. How does a LinkedIn subscription work?
Signing up for LinkedIn is easy and can be done in seconds. You can choose between a free version and several paid options such as:
- LinkedIn Premium
- Sales Navigator
Paid versions offer advanced features. For example, Sales Navigator allows you to search for contacts in more detail or reach contacts outside your professional network via email, called InMail messages. With LinkedIn Premium, you’ll be able to view more detailed analytics on your profile. Choosing the right subscription depends on your goals. LinkedIn Premium is sufficient for building your network and expanding your contacts, but if you want to regularly acquire new business opportunities, Sales Navigator may be a better choice. We’ve already discussed the differences between these two subscriptions in our blog post on LinkedIn premium and Sales Navigator.
LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator has detailed filters to help you find your exact target audience
Enhance your profile like a professional
A well-filled profile is the foundation for success on LinkedIn. Among the foundations of your profile, take a professional profile photo that looks credible. Users will be drawn to an interesting banner that highlights your professional identity. Getting the headline and “About Me” section right is also key – use keywords related to your industry.
How do I fill out my LinkedIn profile to make it as findable as possible? Read our article “Optimising your LinkedIn profile“.
Not only will you clearly communicate your added value, but you’ll also make LinkedIn’s job easier for searchers to find your profile. After all, SEO optimization of your profile also plays a big part in LinkedIn. V At Get Leads, we make sure our clients’ profiles look their best. LinkedIn also likes to regularly update your experience, skills, and peer recommendations can be very helpful.
Banner, motto and photo are a key part of LinkedIn profile customization
Expand your professional network and add new contacts
Having a good network of contacts on LinkedIn will help you reach more people and new opportunities. Add not only colleagues and former colleagues, but also experts in your field. Not sure who else to add? Think about someone from this list:
- Current and former colleagues
- Experts and influencers in your field
- Competitors (you can be inspired by what they do well)
- Specialists who would be interesting to work with
- Business owners and managers in your target segment
- Clients you already work with
- Recruiters and HR specialists in the field you are interested in
- Celebrities who share interesting content
- Participants of conferences and workshops
- People who regularly engage in interesting discussions for you
Get busy with personalized link invitations too. A well-written invitation increases the chances of acceptance. Also take advantage of the comment options and engage in the discussions below the posts. You can’t go wrong by sharing interesting posts from your industry either, and valuable content will draw attention to yourself from other users in the industry.
Want to learn how LinkedIn works and what opportunities it brings to the business world? Sign up for our LinkedIn training, master digital business skills and achieve your goals.
Build your personal brand and build trust with your followers
In addition to sharing expert content, you can get involved by publishing regular posts. This is a great opportunity to interact with the community, plus it helps you gradually build your own professional brand. On LinkedIn, you can write articles, LinkedIn newsletter or make videos that showcase your knowledge and experience in the industry. We’ve already covered how to write a successful LinkedIn post on the blog. As with all social media, it’s important to be authentic and consistent. Focus mostly on sharing useful advice and insights that will resonate with your followers.
Post on your profile and draw your followers into the game
How to measure your success on LinkedIn? The SSI Index can help you do that
The Social Selling Index (SSI) is an indicator that measures how effectively you use LinkedIn to build relationships and generate business. It is a very good measure of how well your profile is doing.
LinkedIn Measures four key factors:
- creating a professional brand
- network expansion
- interacting with content on the network
- building relationships
The higher your score in each category, the better your LinkedIn ranking and the more likely you are to be approached by potential clients or employers. It is therefore a good idea to regularly monitor your SSI index and optimize your profile to ensure the best results.
Want to know more about how to improve your SSI index and increase your chances of closing deals? We’ve put together an e-book with a checklist to help you best optimize your profile.
You can evaluate the success of your LinkedIn activities using the Social Selling Index. We’ve written a free e-book about it
Make sure users know about you with keywords and PPC advertising
Similar to search engines, SEO works on LinkedIn. So use keywords that are related to your industry. If you want to reach a wider audience and increase the reach of your posts or services, you can also use PPC advertising on LinkedIn. Unlike other social networks, you have the ability to target very precisely here. For example, you can choose from job filters, company size sectors or seniority. This ensures that your ad is always displayed to the right audience. As with posts, you can use different promotion formats such as sponsored posts, video ads or lead generation forms.
LinkedIn offers different ad formats
At Get Leads, we help our clients to properly optimize their LinkedIn profiles, manage them and work with Sales Navigator. This ensures that they regularly get quality leads that are ready to establish business relationships with our clients. Do you also want to expand your circle of followers with relevant leads and close deals faster? Contact us and get great business opportunities.