LInkedin Archives - iRespectOnline

May 16, 2018 By Melonie Dodaro

How to Use LinkedIn to Increase Revenue

One of the most overlooked platforms for many small businesses struggling to find qualified leads, new clients and increase revenue is LinkedIn. Perhaps you have heard of success using LinkedIn for client acquisition but you really don’t understand how to effectively use it?

We asked leading LinkedIn expert, author and influencer, Melonie Dodaro to share her thoughts on how businesses can use LinkedIn to increase revenue. I’m currently reading her new book and it’s packed full of actionable information to help your business to grow. Highly recommend. – Fiona

Over the past decade, social selling has grown from being a little-known concept to an integral part of modern selling and marketing. LinkedIn is the premier platform for social selling for B2B businesses.

While Facebook is still the largest social network, LinkedIn remains the go-to place for business professionals. According to Hubspot, 98% of sales reps with more than 5,000 LinkedIn connections meet or surpass their sales quota, while 78% of salespeople using social media perform better than their peers.

More than three out of four B2B buyers say that they won’t even speak to a salesperson until they have done their own research – and most of them do that research by using social networks.

However, the stat that I find the most compelling is… 80% of all B2B leads generated by social media come from LinkedIn. So, if LinkedIn is producing more B2B leads than any other social network, doesn’t it deserve your attention?

The old way of selling isn’t as effective with today’s modern buyer, especially on LinkedIn. To attract today’s buyer, it requires a shift in the sales dialogue from “What can I sell you?” to “How can I help you?”

Today your personal brand is more important than it’s ever been as people are looking to find out more about an individual before they do business with them.

Seven seconds is all you have to wow a potential client. Your social selling success is dependent on how your LinkedIn profile represents your personal brand.

With all of these challenges, there is still tremendous opportunity. You now have tools available to you to connect directly with your ideal prospects, with the click of a button.

And while everyone has been talking about social media for years, few talk about the power of LinkedIn. I believe many businesses ignore LinkedIn for two primary reasons:

It isn’t sexy.
It isn’t fun or exciting.

While LinkedIn may not be exciting, getting new clients and having a successful business certainly is!

A Blueprint for LinkedIn as a lead generator

There are five crucial steps that will turn LinkedIn into a highly predictable lead generator for you; I call this The LINK Method™.

In the infographic below I will share with you the five-step process, what you need to have in your profile to attract your ideal clients, trigger events that allow you to build relationships with your prospects on LinkedIn, how to leverage existing relationships, increase revenue and much more.

Are you interested in discovering how to turn LinkedIn into a lead generation machine? Take a look at the infographic below:

Image credit Top Dog Social MediaI believe that when you stop collecting connections and start building relationships, you increase trust, credibility and attract more clients. This is vital because effective social selling is all about building relationships and trust.

The beauty of LinkedIn is that it is a platform that was designed to help you find, connect and then build a relationship and trust with the exact group of people that comprise your target audience.

Social Selling Mistakes people make on LinkedIn

Yet people continue to make two very serious mistakes with LinkedIn and social selling.

Mistake #1: They rush to a sale right after connecting with a potential prospect.

Mistake #2: They never move the conversation offline, or don’t know how to, as it’s offline that you convert a prospect to a client.

LinkedIn is the premier business platform for social selling and the tips shared in this infographic represent just a small portion of the blueprint laid out in my brand-new book: LinkedIn Unlocked: Unlock the Mystery of LinkedIn To Drive More Sales Through Social Selling.

Your thoughts

Are you currently using LinkedIn? Where are you finding success, or what aspects do you struggle with?

From Fiona: We invited Melonie to contribute a post for us to share some of the amazing content of her new book and her expertise with our readers. As a LinkedInLocal host, I extol the virtues of LinkedIn on a regular basis. This is not an affiliate or sponsored post, we just wanted to share with you key learnings to help you increase revenue from one of the top LinkedIn experts globally, and we greatly appreciate her generosity in sharing.

If you would like to learn more about LinkedInLocal, you can read why I got involved.

graph showing business growth with LinkedIn — image: created on Canva

November 25, 2017 By Fiona Lucas

#LinkedInLocal – why I became involved

The value of LinkedIn

For me, one of the greatest attractions of LinkedIn is the authenticity that comes from making connections with the owners of a business. It gives me more insight into their values and operations, and can be a huge determinate when it comes to selecting products and services. It was these thoughts playing on my mind when I came across the #LinkedInLocal movement around September 2017.

I was immediately captivated by a movement that sought to network, not to sell and pitch, but to really connect. To let us meet the people behind the business in a relaxed environment, with no pressure to sell or spruik.

As a social media strategist I have often wondered why more local businesses were not leveraging LinkedIn. Was it because there is some disconnect between an electronic profile and the human behind it? Was it because some business owners couldn’t see how LinkedIn could benefit their business (and this is often the case where the focus is more on selling than making connections. It is harder to see the benefits when we are faced with the daily grind).

Perhaps it was because on other social media platforms we can get so hung up on numbers that we forget about the human side of actually connecting individually? I also wondered whether it was because for some business owners, they stay behind their business name and have not “unmasked” themselves on LinkedIn.

Time to get out of one comfort zone, and into a laid back networking zone via #LinkedInLocal (where you will still feel comfortable).

I contacted the inspiration behind the #LinkedInLocal movement, Anna McAfee. She started #LinkedInLocal in Coffs Harbour after exploring statistics and seeing that of the 23,000+ accounts in her region, under 900 were active. After posting a comment about it, one of her connections, who she had not physically met before, said “why don’t we meet then” and the rest is history. An incredible movement has started and is moving rapidly across the world.

(You can read Anna’s reflections here)

Why attend #LinkedInLocal?

There are many reasons why LinkedIn is really valuable to a business. In enables you to build quality business relationships, and interact with a group of like minded business owners and job seekers. #LinkedInLocal takes this to the next step, beyond the initial professional connection, to the human element. We must not forget the value of interaction with the incredible potential in our own area when we are looking to grow our business and teams.

Anna says “we are all here to do business, share experiences and grow our networks, and learning from those who have paved the way already is a truly valuable exercise. If you don’t have a LinkedIn aficionado in your area though my suggestion is organise one anyway, as we did. There is no need to host a workshop style event or have high local engagement on LinkedIn, as we have proven in Coffs Harbour. It simply about making a connection, getting to know one another, and working together towards better business relationships” .

Following my discussion with Anna, I decided it was time, as a local “LinkedIn aficionado” to put it out there to my wonderful home town of Geelong. I’m a third Generation Geelongite. I am loving the current buzz as our community helps to build Geelong into an incredible knowledge base, a hub of startups, ideas, new services, great products and innovative manufacturing as we move into a new era.

#LinkedInLocal exists as a non profit, no pitch, no sell form of networking. A refreshing change, where the focus is on the human, not the business (but of course you can talk business too).

Perth had a magnificent turn out. With the beautiful waterfront at the Royal Geelong Yacht Club beckoning, why not join us at our first #LinkedInLocal event in Geelong on 13 December? Share a drink, a laugh and a chat, maybe even win a prize!

You can find me on LinkedIn here, message me to let me know this post led you to connect!

Fiona.

August 22, 2015 By Fiona Lucas

LinkedIn Tip – finding connections

Finding a connections recent activity on LinkedIn

Have you ever seen a great comment in your LinkedIn feed but you have been distracted and when you return you can’t find it for the life of you? When you have many connections, the newsfeed moves fast but its actually easy to find the thread as long as you know who started it.

All you need to do is to pop over to your connections profile and hover over the “Send a message” button. You will then be able to select “view recent activity”. Provided they have been active in the past two weeks you should be able to get back in the loop.

On the mobile app “recent activity” will show under any published posts. If you cant see the words “recent activity” then that person most likely hasn’t posted or commented on any stories in the past two weeks or they have restricted their privacy settings.

This works for viewing your own recent activity too – on the app your activity will show under your posts, and on your computer you can click on PROFILE in the navigation bar and choose “your updates” from the drop down box, or click on the dropdown box beside the blue “view profile as” button.

There are many reasons to have a look here every now and then (in a politely interested and networking kind of way, not stalky!). Here are a couple:

If you are about to have a meeting with a connection, you can get a quick update on what has been capturing their interest lately
Find interesting articles to share from favoured connections
See if they have started new projects or updated their profile
Join in a new conversation
Find that article you already commented on to see what the latest comments are.

I hope that little tip helps you navigate a little more easily.

(this post first appeared on Linkedin in August 2015)

December 22, 2014 By Fiona Lucas

Reputation management matters

Branding vs Reputation

Someone said to me recently, “reputation doesn’t matter, it’s all about how you brand”.

Wow I thought, that takes the personality out of it, although of course I could understand what they meant. Certainly in business, or for individuals (particularly celebrities), if you create a lot of hype and gloss about something you can get traction even if its not quality information that you are promoting. There are plenty of snake oil salespeople out there but I for one don’t intend to add to them.

“All you have to do is been seen” they said. Yes, true for some people that seems to work, but I certainly do not think it builds any kind of longevity. What you do catches up on you at some point. Just what is it that they are seeing?

There is an audience for those who create hype and gloss, often vulnerable people who are seeking quick answers or desperate for change. That is why there are so many “get rich quick” schemes.

Smoke and mirrors

Puffery abounds in all forms of advertising and never as much as online when often consumer laws are pushed right to the edge in order to make claims about being the “best”, the “top”, make six figures in xx minutes”. For me it’s all about ethical marketing practices, promoting and highlighting the truth of what you do. We all know (or we should) that it takes work to get results. If you pay for a course it won’t guarantee you results unless you take action (unless of course the content is not there and you paid virtually for air, and sadly that happens). You might might six figures in xx minutes if you have a great product, but you wont if there is a mismatch between what you say and what you offer.

When it comes to the online world and social media the only results you can really guarantee is that if you continually stuff up your reputation will get damaged. People talk. People share.

Reputation management is imperative in today’s world and should be part of every business (and every personal) strategy.

There is a famous quote by Warren Buffet “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently”. It’s worth starting to think about it if you haven’t already.

If you are a school leaver or job seeker, what is it that will be discovered about you first in a search online? If you are trying to make a name for yourself in any industry, what kind of name do you want associated with your own

Authentic experience

This is how I see it, it’s my version of something I read at some point and it really hit home with me.

The most damage to reputations comes from a mismatch or misinterpretation of what is said about your business (or you)
and the reality of others experience of you.

So you can do all that hype, puffery and smoke and mirrors stuff, but at some point, the experience people are having of you and your business will be the defining point. You may get away with it for a while, but do you really want to end up on something like “sixty minutes” as the latest scam?

If you have a great business or product, or you yourself are the product (such as celebrity, actor, job seeker, entrepreneur) then reputation management matters!

A quote from Seth Godin comes to mind also “the key to getting a reputation for being brilliant is actually being brilliant, not just acting like you are“.
That says it all really. Be authentic.

What is it that you say you do? When someone works with you is that what they find?

At iRespectonline we get down to the nitty gritty, we explore the experience others are having of you and we help you to bring the best to the fore, and to take action on any negatives.
We don’t work with just anyone either, we look for synergies within your values and your mindset. Whether it’s producing a blueprint for your image online or our social media workshops and training to bring congruence to the whole team, it’s all about reputation.

So have you been caught up with the “bright and shiny” objects? Have you had an experience where there was a mismatch between what was offered and what was delivered?

We would love to hear your stories. Please share with us your experiences (no name and shaming please, lets keep it to respectful discussion).

Fiona Lucas.

If you would like to stay up to date, please sign up to our newsletter mailing list here. We are revamping our newsletter so you can be the first inline in 2015. We don’t spam, our reputation depends on it 🙂

If you would like to work with us, please drop us a line here.

April 2, 2014 By Fiona Lucas

Changes to Company Pages on Linkedin

Many of you should now be aware of changes which will soon occur for Linkedin Company pages. Rather than the product and services tabs (which incidentally I quite liked), there will be a move to Showcase pages and making company updates. What does this mean for you and your company page?

On 14 April the Products & Services Tab will be removed
If you have any recommendations against specific products, please contact Linkedin to request a download of these recommendations so that you can repost them later. (You should receive an email from Linkedin explaining changes and a link to customer support to request this information up to 30 May, 2014)
Right now you can edit tabs but not add any new ones.
You will be able to create “showcase” pages which are essentially like a landing page for prominent products and services but these are not intended for short-term events such as a conference, workshop or trade show. Showcase pages may also be followed individually.
You will need new images for the showcase pages. The “hero” image is 974 x 330 pixels. PNG, JPEG, or GIF. Max file size 2 M.
Square logo 50 x 50 pixels, Logo 100 x 60 pixels (both will resize to fit)
There is a limit of 10 Showcase pages per company page.

I have a small concern that the move to real-time might lead to more and posts via status updates, particularly for short-term services/products therefore Linkedin may start to seem more “spammy” with lots of posts trying to stay in the followers eye. There are positives of course, which are highlighted in Linkedin’s information on the changes.

Showcase pages will come with a URL but at this point these are not customisable which is a shame.

Here is an example of a showcase page.

Here are three reasons to use your company updates for your products and/or services content:

Updates appear on your Company Page and in your followers’ feeds on every device – plus, when followers interact with your updates, your content is shared with their connections, helping your message spread further, faster.
Company updates let you share compelling visual content, including videos that play directly in the feed, and direct members to customized landing pages rather than a one-size-fits-all destination.
The real-time nature of updates makes them perfect for sharing news about your offerings, so your content feels relevant and timely.

Having updates post on company page and in followers feeds is great. Also love the move towards more visual content, but please please, make it relevant and useful, not pictures of cats and thousands of quotes. Moving to this may let even more bots infiltrate the platform.

I also feel that by having to repost recommendations, some of the benefit of having them posted directly by clients is diminished. Does this create an opportunity for the unscrupulous to embellish recommendations thereby further eroding the transparency that having recommendations post by clients provides? It might be appropriate to approach those who have provided personal recommendations to make that recommendation on your profile.

This has been a very quick overview. I would love your thoughts and feedback.

Fiona