Did you know, LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than other social media networks? Of all leads generated from social media, 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn. These are shocking numbers, especially if you’re NOT using LinkedIn right now.

So how can you make sure you’re taking full advantage of the above stats when it comes to your own LinkedIn profile? Here are 5 tips that can help you.

1. How to make your profile stand out

There are lots of things you can do to optimise your LinkedIn profile to make it stand out from the noise, below are just a few that can contribute positively towards your SSI score:

• Picking the right picture: When you appear in search results, your picture is the first thing someone will see in addition to your headline. First impressions are important, especially on a professional network like LinkedIn. Try to keep your headshot professional but friendly and also make sure you are the only person in the picture.
• Adding a cover image: The cover image is your virtual billboard – use it. This is prime real estate on your profile and can be used to highlight offers, services, your expertise or even events. We regularly use this space to advertise our upcoming events. It can be useful to mimic your company page cover image to allow for consistency across your social profiles.
• Create a headline that hooks: LinkedIn will add a generic headline with your title and your location. Change this, don’t leave it on default. This is your chance to sell yourself and create a connection with potential leads. Use relevant keywords to hook people in so they want to click on your profile and see what you’re all about.
• Tell your story: Whether you’re B2B or B2C, you’re dealing with people. As humans, we love a good story. Storytelling has been used for centuries to communicate key ideas and help people connect through shared values. You can use this powerful method to share your own story which your potential connections and leads can resonate with. Use the about section to share more about ‘you’, your why, what you believe in, and why you started your business/got into what you’re doing. This is your opportunity to build a relationship with the reader.
• Use buzzwords sparingly (if at all): Be careful with buzzwords such as ‘specialist’, ‘expert’, and ‘guru’, these words don’t add anything. People are so used to seeing these words that they have become immune to them. If in doubt, when writing a word always think, “can I back this up”?
• List your skills and take tests: LinkedIn has a whole library of tests and certifications you can take to prove your expertise and skills in any area, it also allows you to add these skills to your profile.
• Spotlight your services: This is a new section where you can add your services and what you provide, to allow people to see how you can help them. It also allows you to be found when someone searches for a service you offer, as LinkedIn will send you a notification if someone is looking in the local area.
• Use social proof: This can be done by the ‘recommendations’ section in your profile. Use this section to show proof of the claims you have made in the rest of your profile, by asking for recommendations from colleagues, past clients, co-workers and customers. This will allow people to see that you are genuine and deliver on your promises. Make sure to share the love with others too!

Listing industry information—such as Internet, Financial Services or Education Management —leads to up to 9x more profile views and can help you get discovered up to 38x more in recruiter searches, according to LinkedIn data.

Plus, adding something as simple as your location in your profile can help you get up to 19x more profile views.

2. Using a commenting strategy

We get a lot of people asking about what content to post, and what to say on LinkedIn. We get it, it can sometimes be difficult to come up with ideas for content all the time. That’s where we recommend the commenting strategy.

The commenting strategy is an easy and simple way to engage on LinkedIn without having to post new, fresh content all the time. It allows you to leverage other creators who are already creating content in your industry and simply add to the conversation already going on.

When it comes to the commenting strategy, the LinkedIn search bar is your best friend. You can use this to search for keywords related to your products or services which will bring up posts that are around those topics.

You can now go in and read through the posts that show up, if there is a specific post that you have a comment on you can get involved by contributing useful insights that further the conversation.

This strategy is a secret hack that you can use to bring in more leads than actually posting on your own profile as it allows you to tap into the relevant conversations going on in your area of expertise.

3. How to get involved in groups

Groups are a huge opportunity that not a lot of people utilise. Again, using the LinkedIn search bar you can search for almost any group in any industry.

Joining, posting and contributing to a group can open up more opportunities than posting on your own profile. The reason is that the people who have joined the group are super targeted, they are there to learn more and connect with like-minded individuals. So if you are contributing to the group then this allows you to get in front of the relevant people, who may be your target customers.

Another benefit of joining groups is that you can go in and message the group members, to take your conversations further if you like. You do not have to have a LinkedIn premium account for this.

Use this sparingly though, don’t spam people as you WILL get banned.

4. How to bypass the follower button and personalise your connection request

Content creators on LinkedIn who are focussed on growing their following now have the option to have a ‘follow’ button instead of the ‘connect’ button displayed on their profiles. It may seem as though you can’t directly connect with them anymore due to these button changes.

However, you can still connect with them, you just have to do a workaround. You can do this by going to a person’s profile, and instead of clicking the ‘follow’ button, click ‘more’ instead.

This will give you the option to connect with them and send a personalised message as well, just be mindful that not everyone will have this option though (if they are paying for the services to block this).

Make sure to always customise your introduction message, take time to look through their profile and customise your invitation. This additional step can be the difference between your connection request being accepted or declined.

Note: If your request gets declined, this contributes to your SSI score – so it’s well worth taking the time to customise your connection message.

Below are some quick ideas that can help you personalise your message:

• Just be honest
• Look for similarities in their profile
• Connections in common
• “I’d like to see more of your content”
• “Expanding my network”
• Both members of the same group

5. How to create quality content with the algorithm in mind

Content forms the foundation of any social media strategy, and that includes LinkedIn. There are six key ingredients in any content recipe- which will allow you to create content that people actually want to read, these include:

• The ‘trigger’- This is the hook, it’s the sentence that shows before you press the ‘see more’ and is prime real estate to get your audience interested in what you’re talking about. Its purpose is to ‘stop the scroll’ and entice people to read more.
• Post layout – No one wants to read a huge block of text. Space out your text with smaller paragraphs or one-line sentences to allow people to skim your content if they want. Short and sweet is best. If you feel confident then make a video.
• The tag – Is there someone you can tag in the post? This could be a colleague, business or another individual. Make sure it is relevant though, and the person will actually engage with the post.
• Hashtags – Use relevant hashtags. The key is 3 to 5. Make sure they are relevant to your post and audience.
• The storyline – As mentioned before, storytelling can be useful when you are wanting to deliver any message. Every story has a beginning middle and end, it has a structure – try and incorporate this structure into your content.
• Call to action – In such a distracted world, people need direction. If someone has taken the time to get to the end of your post, they are engaged so tell them what to do next. Want them to call you, tell them. Want them to comment, tell them. Tell them what action they need to take.

Bonus: Make your company page a consistent priority

We’ve been talking about your LinkedIn profile, but it’s important to note that a lot of the methods outlined above can also be applied to your company page.

Your company page is equally important as personal pages, so make sure it’s up to date, don’t just post random stuff on it, inconsistently.

The key is consistency and relevancy. Make sure you have a clear strategy for your company page too. Companies that post weekly see a 2x lift in engagement AND those with completed and active pages get an 11x lift in clicks per follower. So it’s well worth taking the time to fill in each section.

Hopefully, you found these different methods useful and can use them to update your LinkedIn.

This blog was first seen on Xpand Marketings website.