Summary

The article provides insights on leveraging LinkedIn to grow a business by focusing on engagement and meaningful connections rather than just profile optimization.

Abstract

The article emphasizes that while having a well-crafted LinkedIn profile is important, the true potential of LinkedIn for business growth lies in active engagement and building relationships. It suggests that sharing content and automating posts should be complemented by genuine interactions, such as commenting on updates, answering questions, and liking articles. The author recommends a strategy of consistently engaging with a select few connections daily and connecting people within the network who can benefit from each other. The key takeaway is that businesses thrive on human connections, and LinkedIn should be used as a tool to foster these relationships by being interested in others and offering help without expecting immediate returns.

Opinions

The article downplays the importance of a perfect LinkedIn profile, suggesting that it's an ongoing process that should not consume excessive time.
It criticizes the approach of merely sharing links or automating social media posts on LinkedIn, advocating for more personal and meaningful engagement.
The author believes that LinkedIn's feed algorithm favors those who actively engage with content, similar to Facebook's approach.
The article promotes the idea of using LinkedIn to connect individuals within one's network for mutual benefit, thereby enhancing the network's overall value.
It posits that the true essence of LinkedIn is in relationship-building and that businesses grow through the connections and interactions facilitated by the platform.
The author suggests that a "how can I help" mindset is more effective for networking on LinkedIn than a transactional "what's in it for me" approach.

How to Grow Your Business with LinkedIn

If you’d expected this to be another article on how to build a profile on LinkedIn, you’d be wrong.

There are countless of great articles explaining how to build your LinkedIn profile. But this is not one of them.

In this article, I’ll share how you can grow your business with LinkedIn’s help.

Whether you are a successful business owner, a startup, a freelancer, or simply want to know how to elevate your Linkedin profile, this article is for you.

Of course, it all starts with a great personal profile. So spend some time crafting your profile on LinkedIn, but don’t get stuck in it.

There is no such thing as perfect. You will be perfecting your profile as you build expertise, as you work on different projects, or even when you change careers and businesses.

Bottom line here: don’t spend too much time, just do it.

How to Grow Your Business with LinkedIn

Now comes the juicy part.

LinkedIn is not a social network where you just share links to your own content or others you find on the web.

You may be tempted to do that because you read you have to automate social media. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Yes, you can share your content and curate content that could be interesting for your network. You can automate that, but your work shouldn’t stop there.

It’s about engaging

LinkedIn is about connecting with people. So focus your time on the platform engaging with your connections.

This means commenting on their status updates, answering their questions, like their articles.

If you don’t know where to start, start with your feed. Go through your feed and comment on what catches your attention.

Another way to do it is to go to “My Network” at the top of your feed, and click on “See all connections.”

You’ll see all your connections from the most recent ones to the oldest.

Choose three people from the list, go through their profiles and activity. You don’t have to spend all day on LinkedIn, just as little as ten minutes when you take a break from work.

The key here is not the amount of time spent, but the quality of it and being consistent.

Here is a secret: if you want the updates from a certain person to show up in your feed daily, just like their articles/status updates.

LinkedIn feed works just like Facebook’s: the more you like and comment on some posts, the more you’ll see those people “show up” into your feed.

So, make a list of the people you want to keep in touch with and start engaging with them.

You can approach this two ways: you go through your entire network and create the list with everyone you want to engage with, and then choose three people to engage with every day, or you can choose only three people to start with, engage consistently for a month, and then add more people to your routine.

They key here is the process has to work for you.

It’s about connecting

Your LinkedIn network is not there to serve you. The sooner you understand this, the easier it will be for you to find business opportunities.

Let me explain.

Building a network on LinkedIn is not different from building a network in the offline world.

Instead of connecting with people face-to-face, you connect with them through an app.

The principles are the same: care and be interested in the other person. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Here’s how you can up your game on LinkedIn.

As you go through your contact list on LinkedIn and learn more about them, what they like, want, and do, think of ways your contacts can help each other.

Who in your network can better answer Sally’s question? Does someone in your network have a podcast you listen to and like? Add it to Andrew’s list. Make sure to tag them in the comments, so they can connect and take the conversation further.

When you look at your network from the “how can I help” perspective, everything around you will change.

You become more interested in people and what they do. You’ll stop randomly asking people to connect with you, and will focus on making meaningful connections.

LinkedIn is about building relationships.

Yes, you have to share your content for people to know more about you and your work, but you have to do more than that.

You have to be genuinely interested and connect with other people.

Conclusion

Business comes down to people. Brands don’t do business with other brands. People working for those brands do business.

LinkedIn is a fantastic opportunity for you to grow your business. It takes time and effort to build meaningful relationships, and sometimes you’ll find people with a “what’s in it for me” attitude.

But that’s OK. Focus on helping your network, connect them with each other where it makes sense. It will come back to you tenfold. Just be patient and consistent.

Now, I’d like to hear from you: how do you use LinkedIn to grow your business?

Originally published on NutsPR.