7 Ways To Market Yourself On LinkedIn

Marketing Yourself On LinkedIn

1.  Give

This is important to do on any social networking site, not just LinkedIn, but it’s particularly important to do on LinkedIn when so many people are focused on wanting to receive something for themselves or their business.

The best way to give to others would be to make recommendations.  I see a lot of people asking for recommendations from people all the time, when they haven’t written any for others first.  The more you recommend others without asking for one in return, it will give them a refreshing feeling about you and they’ll want to be helpful in return.

Making introductions is also a great way to give.  If you are trying to make a name for yourself then connecting two people together who you think could help each other build their business and achieve their goals will give you two people willing to help you in return, as opposed to one.

2.  Complete It 100%

Your profile.  It needs to be completed 100% in order to properly market yourself.

Most people do background checks on others whenever we want to buy something from them, bring them in to speak, or do anything with them.  We Google people to do our research.

LinkedIn is usually one of the top five search results that pops up for anyone’s name.  First impressions leave lasting perceptions about people, and you don’t want someone to come to your profile and realize that you make spelling mistakes, you don’t have a picture, no one has recommended you, there is no personal story in your summary, and so on.  You need to make sure you complete it 100% and have your profile make you look like a rock star.  Doing so will ensure your maximizing your marketing opportunities.

3.  Connect With Everyone

It pains me to see when people only have less than 100 connections and they think that having a “small trusted network” is the way to go.  That’s a joke, and those with that mindset are going to be asking themselves why their message isn’t spreading to the world and why they haven’t achieved their marketing goals.

Connect with everyone on LinkedIn.

You never know where an opportunity, or big breakthrough can come from.  If you only share ideas with those you know and don’t branch out to connect with new people, then you will only know about a limited amount of opportunities, and the same people that you talk to on a daily basis will be helping you connect with the same limited network.  It’s a never ending circle of limitations, and it’s time you break through that mindset if you haven’t already.

The best way to start connecting with everyone is to import your entire contact list and ask them all to connect with you, start adding your personal LinkedIn link to your email signature, on other social networking sites, on your business cards, and anywhere else you think would help inspire others to connect with you.  Once you start receiving 10-20 inbound invitations to connect on a daily basis, then you know your doing a good job marketing yourself.

4.  Make It Personal

In general, people love human interaction.  We don’t want to connect with a business, we want to have relationships with others who we know, like, and trust.

Every time you send an invitation to connect with someone, make it personal.  Take out anything generic and make it as personal as possible.

Your profile should also include a personal element.  Instead of making it look like a boring resume with a bunch of bullet point achievements, share your personal voice.  Tell people who you are, who you help, and how you help them throughout your headline, summary and the rest of your profile.  Adding this will make others want to connect with you instead of put them to sleep with your boring resume.

5.  Start Your Own Community

I like to make things easy, don’t you?  Wouldn’t it be fun if you could lead a community of the exact people you wanted to market yourself to?  That would be pretty sweet, huh?

That’s what I did a while back when I wanted to market myself and my sports business blog.  To achieve accelerated marketing success I started the “Sports Industry Network” group on LinkedIn.  When people join the group they see my name as the creator of the group, and my website as the primary website.

There is a built in discussion forum, job opportunity section, and you can send a message to all of the members of the group once a week.  My group currently has over 30,000 of the top sports professionals from every major sports company in the world.  It’s the largest sports related group on LinkedIn and on any other major social networking site.  This gives me a platform to market myself and share valuable content with the network.  Creating a LinkedIn group may be one of the best ways to get your message out there and the most powerful way to leverage LinkedIn for a number of reasons.

6.  Create A Call To Action

People need to be lead in the right direction.  You can’t just expect people to come to your LinkedIn profile, learn about some of things you do and how you help people without telling them what to do next.  If you don’t create a call to action, then you are guaranteed to get less than what you desire.

You can create a call to action by customizing your website links.  LinkedIn lets you post three links, and instead of having them say “my blog”, make it say “Contact Me Here” or “ Download My Free Report”.  The more direct you can be the better.

Also, in your summary, after you tell people who you are, who you help, and how you can help them, tell them how they can and should get in touch with you or what they should do next.  If you want more leads and sales then tell people to email you, or call your personal number.  Whatever you desire, just tell them to contact you or do something in a way that best meets your needs.

7.  Use Advanced Applications

The advanced applications are designed to help you market yourself better.  You an author?  If so, there is an Amazon app that you can put on your profile and showcase a picture of your own book.  When people click on the book, it’s takes them to Amazon where they can buy it.

Simple as that.

Do you have a blog?  If so, the wordpress or blog app allows you to showcase your most recent article on your profile to help you drive traffic back to your site.  There are other applications to help you showcase your creative design work, your slide show presentations, white papers, Tweets, and you can even have a video of yourself auto play when someone lands on your profile using the slideshare or google document application.

If you are looking to promote an event, then use the events application to help you spread your event in a viral way throughout the entire LinkedIn community.  There are a number of applications you can use to help you market yourself, just start trying them out and see what fits your needs best.

LinkedIn Marketing Tips

I’m only scratching the surface here with these seven points on how to market yourself on LinkedIn.  Once you start to maximize each point, you will start to realize how powerful LinkedIn really is and how big your personal brand will take off once you use it aggressively.  It was the launchpad for me to build a large network and get my message out there to the world, and if you follow my steps the right way it could be yours as well.

How else do you personal use LinkedIn to market yourself?  I’d love to hear your tips in the comments section below.  Also, are we connected on LinkedIn yet?  If not, feel free to send me a personal invitation here.

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This post is featured on Hubspot.com as they recently launched a new ebook on LinkedIn.  Download the free copy here.

Image Credit: tychay

Image Credit: brianjmatis