Little Known LinkedIn Tactics for Entrepreneurs with Marina Barayeva | Ep 16

After the episode numbers 6 How to Get More Clients with LinkedIn, I got questions about if LinkedIn is worth your time and what else you can do there.

Even if you don’t put much effort to LinkedIn, in this episode, we’re going to talk about little known LinkedIn tactics that can be very useful and they don’t take too much time.

In this episode, we will cover:

• [00:52] Today’s topic is ‘Little Known LinkedIn Tactics for Entrepreneurs’
• [01:08] Have you ever Google yourself? If no, do it, but put your name into the quotes “ “  and see what search results will come up
• [02:57] Take a look at your LinkedIn profile and follow the next steps to improve it as your LinkedIn profile is your first impression online
• [03:29] Improve your headline
• [04:50] Work on your summary and share about what you can do for people
• [05:19] Use the word ‘You’ more often than ‘I’ when you talk about what you offer
• [06:26] Use Unicode characters to emphasize some parts of your summary
• [06:46] Show your expertise through filling the work experience part and mentioning your achievements and publications
• [07:44] Add skills related to your area of expertise and ask your connections to endorse you
• [08:46] Get the recommendations. You can give people direction on how to write it by asking a few questions
• [09:12] How you can get the better chance to be discovered on LinkedIn
• [11:05] Start connecting to more people on LinkedIn especially those who have more connections
• [12:16] How to use LinkedIn data to get connected with magazine editors
• [14:28] Use tracking extensions such as RocketBolt or Boomerang for Gmail to track emails that you send to influencers or if you send a pitch to someone
• [15:32] Find LinkedIn groups from your area or that serve the same audience as you and start sharing useful content there
• [16:43] Social media rule: share 80% of other people content and 20% of you and your promotions
• [18:02] If you have any questions about today’s topic. Just leave me a comment on the blog post of this episode at marinabarayeva.com/16
• [18:17] For the show notes go to marinabarayeva.com and subscribe to the Marketing for Creatives show

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Download podcast transcript [PDF] here:

• Little Known LinkedIn Tactics for Entrepreneurs

Resources from this interview:

• Learn more about Marina Barayeva on marinabarayeva.com and marinabarayeva.com
• Listen to the episode #6 How to Get More Clients with LinkedIn
• Get tracking extension for Gmail Boomerang
• Follow Marina on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

Little Known LinkedIn Tactics for Entrepreneurs – Interview Transcription

After the episode number 6 How to Get More Clients with LinkedIn, I got questions about if LinkedIn is worth your time and what else you can do there.

Even if you don’t put much effort to LinkedIn, in this episode, we’re going to talk about little known LinkedIn tactics that can be very useful and they don’t take too much time.

Have you ever Google yourself? If you’ve never done it just do it. Put your name in the quotes and see what will come up in the results. Just go to Google type your name and put quotes around it. We put it in the quotes so Google will search exactly your name how it looks like, how you wrote it there. And the all results you will see will contain everything which is inside of the quotes.

So when you look at the search result, the first few links that will come up will be your website, it will be your LinkedIn profile and then some other social media. So, your website and LinkedIn profile come in the first few lines of the listing.

Then think about if other people will Google you. What they will see. They can go to your website and then look through your About page, but also, people can go to your LinkedIn profile and see what your experience is, what is your service about, what you do and what is your employment history, expertise, and everything.

Also, sometimes when I talk to people, and I talk about, for example, interview for the podcast or someone wants me to give some speeches or whatever, they ask me ‘Can you give us your LinkedIn profile link?’ and I say ‘Sure.’

Then they go and check and see what I’ve done and I don’t need to tell too much about myself, they can go and check over there. Then we can talk about more details about my experience, etc. If they go to your profile, let’s say that someone found your LinkedIn profile, they open your page and what will they see there?

Take a look at your profile and let’s go from the top to the bottom and see what we can improve in your profile.

The number one thing that you have to do, it’s just you have to do. That’s your online first impression. You need to fill your profile to show that you are an expert in what you do and in every part you cover you need to include your keywords.

Let’s start with your title. Make sure your title stands out, by adding there what you do or what you offer. If you want to learn more about how to make a LinkedIn profile stand out, just go listen to the episode number 6 How to Get More Clients with LinkedIn.

But the basic idea is you need to put there the area of expertise that people will search. For example, if I’m a photographer I can put there ‘photographer’ or I can specify even more I can put their portrait photographer. Then, portrait photographer will be my keyword, and I will use this keyword in other parts of my LinkedIn profile.

If, for example, you’re an artist you will put there an artists or hairstylist or whatever. You can include the area where you live, or maybe you can specify your profile a little more: I am a ‘copywriter for small businesses.’ Or maybe you write about the specific topic or you may be in social media marketing and specialize on Facebook.

The next step you need to set your country and city so people will know where you are located and that they can reach you there to use your service.

The next thing is your summary. It is about what you do and how other people can benefit from working with you. The biggest mistake people make there is they write a few sentences about how cool they are but nothing what people can get.

You have plenty of space to explain your service and make an offer. Start talking about people stop talking about yourself.

When you write about service for other people try to use more word YOU – ‘you will get’: you will get a professional portrait, you will get your article ready for your blog posts or you’ll get social media marketing strategy for your business, instead of ‘I can do social media marketing for you’ or ‘I can write an article for you,’ ‘I will do the photo shoot for you.’ That’s not about you. It’s about the person who you want to work with.

Focus on what you can do for people. Give them the reason to get in touch with you.

You also can mention some of your outstanding achievements or some other credibility but don’t forget to use your keywords over there. If my keyword is a portrait photographer, I’m going include it there.

If you specialize in social media marketing for small businesses, then you’ll need to include this keyword over there.

When you fill your summary, use Unicode characters to emphasize some parts of your summary. You can add arrows, stars or other symbols there. And at the end, you can add some media to complete your profile with visuals or other articles.

Then the next step: complete your experience with more details about what you’ve done, and it’s another place besides of the summer where you can show your expertise and tell people why should they work with you. Because there is a limited space for the summary to fill, to tell about yourself to fill that part and then you can tell more in the part when you show your experience.

The next thing, add your publications, links to online articles, your YouTube videos, or other sources that show your credibility and authority. Maybe you were published somewhere, maybe someone had the interview with you, maybe you were working on some charity projects. Try to fill your profile as much as you can. Include your education there, certificates, training that you took.

All of these will just benefit your profile when someone will look at it.

The next thing you can add up to 30 skills related to the area of your expertise. Ask your connections to endorse you. Some of your friends or some people who you worked with before can easily do that for you.

Another big important step is your recommendation. Ask about recommendations and be ready to give them to others. There’s nothing better if someone will say good things or give good feedback about your business. It’s not only you promoting yourself: ‘Oh, look at me I’m so cool.’ But other people tell others what kind of good experience they had with you.

So when you ask about the recommendation you can even give people directions: can you please write a few sentences about your experience with my company? What did you like there? What results did you get? If you would recommend us to your friends what would you say?

Even a few sentences of the recommendation will be good. And ask if you can use those recommendations for your other social media. Because you can put this little feedback on your website as a testimonial, you can share on other social media, or you can just refer other people to take a look at your LinkedIn profile and see what other people say about you.

Then once you feel all of these as much as it can in your profile… Why we do this? When someone searches for specific service, your service, there’s the higher chance that your profile will come up first because people on LinkedIn can search not only for other people by their names but they can search specific topics there. For example, someone who will look for the photographer or someone will look for social media marketer and then they will have a list of people who are relative to this request.

You get to the search result up to 2nd connection. For example, I connected with you. We are friends on LinkedIn. And then you have a friend.

So if your friend will look for a photographer, there is a chance that I can come up in their profile. Or if you, for example, do social media marketing, some of my friends on LinkedIn will search for social media marketer, and you have it on your profile, you talk about it, you mentioned this several times, there is a higher chance that your profile will come up higher in the search result if they search with this person for this keyword.

There’s also search for people in the particular area so that more people can find you. For example, if you mention that you live in New York and you, for example, and actor in New York, if someone will search ‘actor in New York’ or ‘actresses New York’ there’s a chance that your profile will come up first. It will come up higher.

Once you finish your profile, start to get connected with people who know many people. What does it mean? For example, if I know a hundred people and I will search for some friends, of course, I can get connected to my friends, or my colleagues, or some other people who I knew a little bit. It’s easier to be friends. But I also can search for influencers, those people have like 10,000, a million followers, it means, if they will be my friends and think about the second connections search results, if some of their friends, if some of their followers will search for the photographer there is a higher chance that I might come up in their search result. This is one thing.

And another thing, why you need to look for people who know a lot of people who have a lot of connections is that you can send a friend request to people up to 2nd connection. If it’s the 3rd connection and more than only you can send an InMail request.

What does it mean? For example, I want to find a publisher one of the magazines, or I want to find an editor of this magazine and rather send them my email, or I will pitch someone in the magazine, if I find an editor I can send an email directly to him or her, but I don’t have too big network, and I don’t know the editor of Vogue, or Elle, or Cosmopolitan magazines.

So, what I would do, I would find someone who knows the person there, who connected on LinkedIn there. Then I would get connected to the person. If it’s up to 2nd connection, I can just send a friend request, but if I will send an InMail directly to the editor of Vogue magazine, for example, then I can send the only InMail request. I have to pay for that. I have to pay for this service to LinkedIn and they will know that there are no any people between us. Just a random person sent an InMail.

It is the same like I would send just called emailed to them. But once you get connected to the person, even if you don’t know them personally, but to get connected on LinkedIn, then you can find their email in summary. Usually, there’s personal email.

As LinkedIn is a network for professionals, many people care about that profile by themselves. Once Jay Bayer wrote on his blog: ‘I don’t understand why people send me random requests on LinkedIn.’ When I saw that I thought to myself ‘Ha. That’s how I got to know your email.’ And it’s a good way to get connected and find the emails of influencers, editors of the magazines, podcaster’s hosts or owners, or owners of the big websites, or just anyone who you can potentially work together.

Once you get that, think about how you can collaborate with them. Let’s say you want to pitch them an article for the magazine.

You’ve got their email. Use the online version of Gmail to write them. Get an e-mail tracking extension such as rocketbolt or boomerang and when you send an email click the checkbox that you want to track an email. In that case, you will know if a person opens an email and if they clicked on the link if you had them in the email.

Also, then you will know for sure that the person got and read your email. If they didn’t reply to your pitch in, let’s say, 5-7 days, send them another e-mail saying that “Maybe you didn’t get my email (even if you know they did), so here is the copy of it again and I wonder if you would like to publish my article, if you want to publish my photos on your magazine and etc. Or if you would like to work on this project with our company.’ This is a good way to follow up your previous email. It worked for me great many many times.

Then, the last advice with the little-known LinkedIn tactics for you for today is getting to the LinkedIn groups around your area or go to the groups where your potential clients hang out.

When you got in start sharing useful content in those groups. Not to your content, especially, when you just got to the group. If you’ll start spamming with your content and promoting your service there, there’s a big chance that their owner or moderator will just kick you out of the group.

You need to share the content that may be useful for people. You need to gain the authority and build the trust of these people so they will know you as the person who shares valuable content. Then, you just start connecting with those people. They will see what you post on your personal wall. Then there you can share your work and the information about you, but still, you need to share our people content.  That’s a good mix.

There is a social media rule that 80 percent of content you share on social media should be from other people and 20 percent from you.

So, if you got to the right groups and there are people who are may be interested in your service, and you got connected to them, they became your friends, they will see what your post, they may be interested in your service too. They may reach you out, or just you can reach them out and, again, find the way how you can work together, offer a service or find a way to collaborate.

A lot of people miss these LinkedIn opportunities. It doesn’t take too much time and effort, but you can get bigger results. Everything I talked about today, you can fill your profile within one day, find the groups within another day, and find influencers or people with a lot of connections on the third day.

So, half of the week and you improved your LinkedIn profile and expanded your business opportunities.

The one thing I want you to remember. Even if someone will not reply you, will not work with you will not collaborate with you, it’s now the end of the world. Just send another email. Just go to another group. Just connect to another person. And you’ll find the right person who will want to work with you.

Hope it helps and let me know if you have any questions about today’s topic. Just leave me a comment.

Marina Barayeva

Marina Barayeva is an international speaker and coach who helps women entrepreneurs become recognized experts and confidently sell their services. She is also a TEDx speaker, has presented to audiences in Asia and North America, and has been featured in such media as ArtPeople, CCTV, China Radio International, and others.