10 LinkedIn Tips and Advice revisited

August 27, 2018 by ,

Over the past few weeks, I have sent out a series of LinkedIn hints and tips in infographic form relating to elements on the site that I have been asked about, that I have seen have been causing issues or things that have changed and were worthy of a mention.

I have decided to bring those together in a single post to save you having to search them out on my LinkedIn feed in an effort to be extra helpful .. oh, and with an additional explanation below each one in case the image does tell you the whole story!

Hope you enjoy and do feel free to share!

1. Don’t send your message before you want to

When you go to your Messenger system, there are occasions when, quite naturally, you might want to start a new paragraph and have hit the key to go to a new line in the message and yet found that the message instead has been sent. Annoying!

That is unfortunately the default format on LinkedIn. However, if you go to the Messanger area then just next to the “Send” button, you will see three dots which allows you to turn that off and allow you to format your message as you wish. Continue reading →

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Marketing, LinkedIn Tips, Optimise your Profile
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3 things to have in place before you buy Sales Navigator

August 19, 2018 by ,

I run lots of training sessions on using LinkedIn for Business Development, many just using the free account. I also do so on LinkedIn Sales Navigator and, while I wouldn’t have recommended it 3 years ago when it first came out, I certainly do now. However, not unreservedly.

My reticence is not because of the software, which is ever improving, but rather on the supporting elements we all need to ensure are in place around it which are key to it being a truly useful sales tool.

Personally I would highlight three elements to work on that are all things that you require when prospecting, whatever account you have on LinkedIn. If you can get these three things right and use all of the capabilities of the free account, then you can get a great deal out of it. However, putting them successfully in place, means that they can really come into their own when Sales Navigator is added to the equation. Continue reading →

Article Categories: B2B Advice for LinkedIn, Business Development on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Social Selling
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Saved searches and Search Alerts on LinkedIn

August 14, 2018 by ,

LinkedIn Groups searchThere’s a quick way to keep up to date with new people who fit the prospecting criteria you’re interested in, without lifting a finger. Essentially, new business prospects delivered to your inbox every week … automatically. Sounds interesting? Then read on …

When I’m using LinkedIn for targeted business development, my first port of call is unsurprisingly LinkedIn’s people search function – not just the initial search box at the top of every page but the filter filters that used to be called the “Advanced Search” in its previous incarnations.

Being able to target the type of person I’m looking to approach using a combination of job title, company, location, industry or any of the other filters that LinkedIn offers is an absolute godsend. That’s also why it always takes up an important slot in the “LinkedIn for Business” workshops that I run.

Creating the right search takes time though, particularly if you are going to make sure that you cover all the bases which will include variants of relevant job titles for the type of people you are targeting. (I talk about that in my “Think before you search” post in more details) Once you have done so, you don’t want to lose your work – instead you are going to want to use that time and time again, to build on it as required. Continue reading →

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Strategy, LinkedIn Tips, Social Selling, Using LinkedIn
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Getting the most from Who’s Viewed Your Profile page

August 6, 2018 by ,

Whenever I’m running training sessions, one of the areas we talk about that always gets a big thumbs up from the attendees is the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” page on LinkedIn.

In almost all cases, when I ask if people check out who’s been looking at their Profile Page, I get a resounding “Yes!” from the majority of those in the room. That’s great! However, their reasons tend to be more personal interest than anything else and any solid action that they take afterwards, using the information they find there, is much less clear cut.

For me, I’d encourage you to make it as practical as possible. It’s a source of potentially very valuable information and if you are already using it as such, then congratulations! For me, that more how it should be used, something which is much more useful than a simple area of interest as the information it contains can lead to both new potential contacts and opportunities. Continue reading →

Article Categories: Business Development on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Marketing, Networking supercharged
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Giving Kudos on LinkedIn

July 30, 2018 by ,

LinkedIn has been prolific in the last few months in rolling out a huge range of new elements across the site, often first on the mobile devices before then trialling and releasing them on the main desktop version.

One such feature that seems to have just received the ‘desktop treatment’ is called Kudos which was released about 6 weeks ago on mobile and allows you to thank specific people in your network for standing out in some way. They do this by giving you the chance to create and post an update containing an image which looks rather like a type of digital postcard, thanking that person for standing out in some way.

Now before you switch off, that’s really quite a nice thing to do. We know how powerful and important ‘Recommendations’ are on the site and while there are some amongst us (my hand’s firmly ‘up’ at this point) who are less convinced about ‘Endorsements’ because of the rather random way they are given by some (hey, I have double figure endorsements for my skill in ‘Extreme Ironing’ which is fairly random in itself), Continue reading →

Article Categories: LinkedIn Site Changes, LinkedIn Tips
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Who can see your email address on LinkedIn?

July 10, 2018 by ,

Since I started on LinkedIn, the site has always recommended that you only put your email and contact information in the official places – phone number goes in the phone contact field, email address in the email field and so on.

I could see the logic in that – there were automatic settings available to hide these from anyone that you weren’t connected to so the control was there. The trouble is that I wanted to be contacted by people I wasn’t connected to … that was my raison d’etre for being on the site.

If I had piqued their interest with something I had written, a comment I’d left or just what was in my profile then I wanted them to be able to get in touch, so I added my email address in particular to my Summary section so that it was visible to all.

Not exactly within the strict guidelines of the site but practical for what I wanted to achieve. Continue reading →

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Site Changes
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