Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Linkedin Automation Tips & Tricks

By Gerald B. Akins


LinkedIn automation starts with a Chrome browser extension you add to your local machine. This records profile search strings in LinkedIn, then tells your browser to automatically visit everybody in your search. It requires a Premium account to work.

You can visit a maximum of up to 800 profiles per day. The strategy works using the power of reciprocity and attraction. When you visit a large number of profiles, a certain percentage will visit you back to find you who you are. Then, if they are interested in connecting, they will send you a connection invitation.

This is a numbers game but that's not all -- it's also an engagement game. You can visit up to 800 profiles per day with a Premium account but sheer numbers of profile visits are not the only thing required. The key is generating interest from the people whose profiles you have auto-visited. This starts with how you construct your searches.

You can't just buy the browser plugin and start auto-visiting a ton of profiles and expect it to turn into new business.

Searches must match your ideal target customer profile or the invitations you get will be irrelevant. You need to determine which job titles, cities, keywords, etc. represent your best buyers, then concentrate searches on those. You also need to vary your searches each day or it will look repetitive. LinkedIn doesn't like repetitive behavior and you could get dinged for it. If your market is large enough as most are, then you shouldn't have any trouble finding enough target profiles to visit.

You need to get your profile found. You need to encourage potential customers and clients to connect with you and message you directly. This comes down to your profile and content. Without a strong profile and content, visitors won't see value in connecting with you and using automation won't get the results you're looking for.

You need to publish solid content -- this means Posts and Updates. You should also comment and share other network members' content, particularly if it's relevant to your sales prospects. You don't want to get sucked into political, racial or religious topics, even though a lot of them are in the stream these days. Make sure all content you touch is relevant to your potential buyer's business, including any industry pains and solutions. This adds value and establishes you as a credible "go to" source of information in your network.

Getting found in LinkedIn's search engine is really important. This depends heavily on using the right keywords and getting endorsed for the right skills What keywords do your prospects use to search for what you sell? Those are the ones you should use throughout your profile. LinkedIn's search engine uses brute force, so don't be afraid to load up your profile, job descriptions, etc. with the keywords you want. Make sure you also have your visibility settings opened up so people can find and engage with you!

One thing to note: don't get pulled into Facebook-like conversations about politics, provocative images, religion, race or other non-business topics. LinkedIn is a business platform and using it as a social platform will damage your credibility and cause important people to disengage from you by leaving your network. This defeats the sole purpose you're on LinkedIn, which is to make sales! If you're using LinkedIn automation to increase your network size, then turning around and decreasing it by behaving poorly, this is counterproductive.

What keywords do your prospects use to search for what you offer? Make sure those keywords appear multiple times in your profile.

Doing these activities will help LinkedIn automation work better overall, and create a self-reinforcing loop that grows your network and incoming sales leads steadily.

Infrequently turning LinkedIn automation on and off will help a little but it won't give you the continuous network growth and incoming connection requests you're looking for. Consistency and process will drive the growth of your first-degree network growth. Preparing your profile, publishing content and engaging with others a little bit per day will achieve big results for your sales pipeline.

It's helpful to have a daily process checklist and make this part of your morning routine. This keeps you on track and helps keep you from falling into the social media content trap. You're not on LinkedIn to waste time. You're there to make sales!

LinkedIn Automation can run in the background while you do outbound sales prospecting and manage client relationships. This is great, because you don't want to stop a contract negotiation or important meeting just to turn automation on and off. It can run in parallel to your daily work, effectively becoming a separate lead generation channel.




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