I have a long-standing love-hate relationship with LinkedIn.
There are days when I think it’s the most awesome thing ever. Those days are rare, though: most often, I find it to be the 5th Beatle. An afterthought in my social media marketing time. It doesn’t have to be that way – and, for you, here are the 20 minutes you should invest to make it suck less.
Set the Egg Timer to 20 Minutes. And…
5 Minutes: Answers. Go there, now. (You will have to go where it says “More” on the navigation bar.) Look for something interesting that has been asked and answer it with your expertise. Seriously: you don’t have to be right. You just have to be there.
Be sure to “Browse” the categories on the right hand side to see if anything strikes your fancy — imagine your ideal prospect and think about what they want to know about. Niche, baby, niche.
5 Minutes: Check your contacts. Pick a couple, reach back out to them to say hi. No reason, other than checking in and saying hi.
What is currently wrong with LinkedIn? It’s not SOCIAL. It’s networking, but it’s not SOCIAL NETWORKING. And, other than craptastic “hey recommend me” lame-ohs who do this for SEO purposes, it’s not really SOCIAL MEDIA.
1 Minute: Get off your soap box.
8 Minutes: Prune. That’s right, get rid of those who you cannot see a reason for having connected with. I’m serious: if you don’t know why you connected with them, and you cannot help them, exit stage left and don’t look back.
Their name should spark a memory. “Hey, it’s that guy in Melbourne who does tech recruiting.” Or, “it’s that woman who graduated from my alma mater and was looking for a job last year.” Keep ’em.
1 Minute: Recommend someone. Look at your list of contacts. Don’t over-recommend. But do the unsolicited recommendation.
Beep Beep. Timer’s Up.
BTW, have we connected yet?
Leave a Reply