These common mistakes could be killing your LinkedIn leads and this episode provides practical solutions to fix them. We cover three main areas: branding, optimising your LinkedIn presence, and ensuring your activities are effective.
Today's episode is sponsored by Metricool. Make sure to register for a FREE Metricool account today. Use Code MICHELLE30 to try any Premium Plan FREE for 30 days. https://i.mtr.cool/NEDXVZ
Key moments in this episode:
00:00 Introduction: Why Your LinkedIn Leads Are Drying Up
03:25 Branding on LinkedIn for leads
08:50 Optimising Your LinkedIn Presence
12:27 Effective Activities to Generate LinkedIn Leads
18:59 Final Thoughts
ABOUT MICHELLE J RAYMOND
Michelle J Raymond is an international LinkedIn™️ B2B Growth Coach. To continue the conversation, connect with Michelle on LinkedIn™️ and let her know you are part of the community of podcast listeners.
Connect with Michelle J Raymond on LinkedIn™️ - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond/
B2B Growth Co offers LinkedIn™️ Training for teams to build personal and business brands and a LinkedIn™️ Profile Recharge service for Founders/CEOs.
Book a free intro call to learn more - https://calendly.com/michelle-j-raymond/book-an-intro-call-15mins
Social Media for B2B Growth Podcast is a fully accessible podcast. Audio, Video, Transcript and guest details are available on our podcast website - https://socialmediaforb2bgrowthpodcast.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@MichelleJRaymond
#LinkedIn #LinkedInMarketing #LeadGeneration
00:00:00
Michelle J Raymond: If your leads have dried up on LinkedIn, don't blame the algorithm.
00:00:03
Don't blame the market.
00:00:05
It's time to look a little closer to home and check.
00:00:08
Are you making one or more of the 10 most common mistakes that are killing your leads on LinkedIn.
00:00:15
And today's episode, we're going to talk about more importantly, how you can fix them.
00:00:38
G'Day, everyone.
00:00:38
It is coach Michelle J Raymond.
00:00:40
And I'm excited to be back again this week for another episode on how you can leverage
00:00:45
LinkedIn better to grow your business.
00:00:48
And one of the things that kind of drew me to doing this episode this week is that I'm seeing
00:00:55
posts more and more frequently pop up where people are talking about the fact that this
00:01:01
year business has been really, really tough.
00:01:04
That finding leads on LinkedIn is getting tough and there can be all kinds of reason
00:01:09
for this, some in our control, some out of our control, but in today's episode, I'm
00:01:13
going to talk about the 10 things that I think are killing your leads on LinkedIn.
00:01:19
Three areas that we're going to be having a look at.
00:01:21
Number one is going to be Branding.
00:01:23
So we're going to look at the branding issues that are killing your leads.
00:01:27
Then we'll move into the second part, which is not having your presence optimised on LinkedIn.
00:01:32
And the third thing that we're going to look at is probably the thing that is most important and
00:01:38
avoids you wasting your time on the platform.
00:01:41
And that is making sure that you are busy with the right activities and not
00:01:48
wasting time on the wrong activities.
00:01:50
I remember my mum always telling me, Michelle, it's not practice that makes perfect.
00:01:56
So doing the wrong things over and over and over again, were not
00:01:59
going to get me closer to my goals.
00:02:02
She says, perfect practice is how that we can achieve those goals.
00:02:08
So it's about how can we improve what we're doing?
00:02:11
How can we focus on doing the right things?
00:02:14
In today's episodes, I'm not just going to focus on the mistakes, but more importantly,
00:02:18
I'm going to give you solutions and we're going to jump into all of these areas right after a
00:02:24
quick word from our podcast sponsors, Metricool.
00:03:25
Branding is something that I've come to love more and more, the longer that I have my business.
00:03:30
And as somebody that spent 20 years in B2B sales and always thought that it was the sales team that
00:03:37
deserved all the glory, marketing really didn't do that much, I've certainly changed my tune on this.
00:03:43
And I think if you are really struggling with your business and not getting leads on
00:03:50
LinkedIn, branding is the first place that I would recommend to everybody to take a
00:03:55
look at, and there are three key mistakes that we're going to talking about, which
00:03:59
I think really kill your chances of leads.
00:04:02
The first one is not having clear positioning and messaging.
00:04:08
And what this does is this sets you apart from your competitors but it also gives you
00:04:15
clarity on how you want to show up on LinkedIn.
00:04:18
So before you even write a piece of content, before you update your LinkedIn profile, before
00:04:24
you write your company page about section, you need to understand exactly where you fit.
00:04:30
Now, I'm going to put a link in the podcast show notes to an episode that I
00:04:34
did in detail on positioning and messaging with Diane Wiredu, and it was fabulous.
00:04:40
So if this is something that you're like, Michelle, I'm not really sure
00:04:43
what positioning and messaging is.
00:04:46
I don't know how to do it, that I'm recommending that you take a listen to that episode.
00:04:51
The other thing, which I know is going to help so many people and the reason that I co authored
00:04:58
this book, The LinkedIn Branding Book is I needed a resource when I was starting my business.
00:05:04
I didn't know where these things really fit, you know, for me, branding was
00:05:10
always just colors and fonts and logos.
00:05:13
You know, that kind of stuff that makes every marketer listening
00:05:15
to this podcast rock in a corner.
00:05:18
And I totally get it, but the fact was I didn't know what I didn't know.
00:05:23
And the funny thing is, is that even when I've worked with some really big global clients,
00:05:28
I'm not sure that when it comes to social.
00:05:31
They're particularly clear on their positioning and messaging and how they want to show up.
00:05:36
So I don't think that there's any particular type of business that's immune to this, or if
00:05:41
you're an individual showing up on LinkedIn, it is definitely worth doing the work.
00:05:46
Not sure how to do it.
00:05:47
The good news is if you buy a copy of The LinkedIn Branding Book, which is available
00:05:51
on Amazon, it is going to give you a free workbook, which you can download.
00:05:57
Now, this workbook is going to step you through all of the steps that you need to address
00:06:02
to set up your brand from a foundational perspective, including positioning and messaging.
00:06:08
If you don't like reading and prefer to listen to podcasts like this one, you may not know, but I've
00:06:14
got another podcast that I co host with Michelle Griffin called The LinkedIn Branding Show and
00:06:19
we talk about this in detail every single week.
00:06:28
The second mistake that I see happen under branding, which I think kills leads is when
00:06:34
people don't have unique perspectives, unique points of view that really, you just blend
00:06:41
into the background, you sound like almost like the help desk or the Wikipedia or the
00:06:47
ChatGPT response, any of those kinds of things.
00:06:50
Cause what you have to say is just the same as everybody else.
00:06:54
So what makes you different?
00:06:56
I'll use my own case as an example.
00:06:58
So originally I was the only LinkedIn trainer in the world that was talking about the power
00:07:06
of company pages, everybody else was anti them.
00:07:09
Now it felt lonely and it was a bit tough and I wanted to give it up along the way.
00:07:13
But I realised that by being unique and having my own point of view and going against
00:07:19
the grain and not being contrarian for the sake of it, has allowed me to stand out.
00:07:24
And you know, that's how I'm getting to speak on global stages like Social Media Marketing World
00:07:30
next year in San Diego and Uplift Live in the UK.
00:07:33
So I hope that I'll get to meet some of you listeners at either of those events.
00:07:37
What's the third mistake that I see when it comes to branding on LinkedIn and how
00:07:42
that relates to killing your leads, is that you're missing from your content.
00:07:49
And what I mean by this is that there's a lot of people that share links to
00:07:53
other people's work, that they reshare.
00:07:56
Now I'm a fan of reshare if you are not at a point where you can create your own content.
00:08:03
But I'm not a fan of reshare, if that's all that you're doing and trying to get noticed.
00:08:08
The problem is you're putting the spotlight on everyone else and not
00:08:12
on yourself and your own brilliance.
00:08:14
Now, if you're not creating content, this would apply to the comments that
00:08:18
you also leave on other people's posts.
00:08:21
And if you're not doing either of those things or sending direct messages.
00:08:24
Ultimately you become invisible.
00:08:26
I can't buy from somebody that I don't know exists.
00:08:29
So this will also kill your leads.
00:08:32
If you are using LinkedIn to grow your business, you have to be visible.
00:08:37
So they're my three most common branding mistakes.
00:08:47
What else is going to kill your leads on LinkedIn?
00:08:50
Well, let's move into the next section, which is all about optimising your presence on LinkedIn.
00:08:56
And there's three main mistakes that I see under this umbrella, and they're really easy to fix.
00:09:02
That is making sure that your profile and your company page have been set up and fully optimised.
00:09:11
And fully optimised when it comes to company pages can be as simple as
00:09:15
making sure everything's been completed.
00:09:17
You will get 30 percent more weekly views on average if you do this task.
00:09:23
So go back, take a look and have a think.
00:09:27
What keywords do I want to be discovered for?
00:09:29
How can I really make it obvious what I do and who I do it for?
00:09:33
You want your potential leads to know that they're in the right place.
00:09:37
You also, with your personal profile, if you're one of those people that your profile
00:09:42
undersells, you hasn't been completed properly.
00:09:45
There are episodes of this podcast that I have done to help people go back and update it.
00:09:51
If you're someone that doesn't want to do it yourself, maybe you're time
00:09:54
poor, maybe you don't like writing.
00:09:55
It is really tricky to write about yourself.
00:09:57
Then why don't you reach out to me?
00:09:59
Let's book a session and I can talk to you about my LinkedIn profile done for you service.
00:10:06
That's right.
00:10:06
You can pay people like me to do it for you, and then you can cross it off your
00:10:10
list and make sure that you are there and an obvious solution to your ideal clients.
00:10:18
This is how we get leads.
00:10:20
If it's not completed, not optimised, then they're going elsewhere.
00:10:24
It's that simple.
00:10:25
You are not going to show in as many searches.
00:10:27
And that's why this work is so important.
00:10:30
This is another thing that I think you need to be mindful of when we're optimising your presence
00:10:34
on LinkedIn is having a strategic outreach plan.
00:10:38
By building a strategic community, ie not just scrolling the home feed and
00:10:43
hoping that the right people show up.
00:10:46
It means going to the search bar, using the many different filters that we've got there
00:10:50
and looking for people in your target audience.
00:10:54
The more times you're strategically connecting, you increase your chances of getting leads.
00:10:59
Why?
00:10:59
Because you've built the right audience of people that might be interested in your service.
00:11:04
The same goes with company pages.
00:11:06
Use your 250 page invites each month and use the filters to make sure that you're inviting targeted
00:11:13
industry members to come and follow your page.
00:11:16
The third thing that I want to raise with you listeners about how we optimise
00:11:21
our presence on LinkedIn is making sure that your actions are consistent.
00:11:29
If you are all over the place and you go through stages where you're really
00:11:33
hot on LinkedIn and really doing a lot of activity, and then you disappear.
00:11:37
Then maybe when you want something, or you haven't got enough leads, you come back again.
00:11:42
What happens in that gap is that your competitors are stealing leads from you.
00:11:47
They may not be as good as you.
00:11:49
But if I can't remember who you are or who your business is, it makes no difference
00:11:54
because there is so much research that basically says people buy what's good enough.
00:12:01
Doesn't have to be the best.
00:12:02
Doesn't have to be perfect.
00:12:04
It has to be good enough.
00:12:06
They have to be confident that you can get the job done.
00:12:09
So it could be that the average person or the average company page is showing
00:12:14
up and stealing your leads and I don't want that for you listeners.
00:12:23
As we head into the last section, which I'm just going to call.
00:12:27
Are you busy being busy or are you busy doing activities that will generate leads?
00:12:33
Let's have a look at the four remaining mistakes that I see, which are most common.
00:12:38
Because the last thing that you want to do is waste precious time.
00:12:42
That's a thing that we can't get back.
00:12:44
The first message that I desperately want to get across in this section is that when it
00:12:51
comes to LinkedIn, when it comes to social selling and leveraging it to grow your
00:12:55
business, you must, I can't say it loud enough.
00:12:59
You must focus on quality, not quantity.
00:13:05
And I know that there are tools out there, especially the AI tools that have come
00:13:09
out that make the dream of getting higher numbers, you know, connecting with more
00:13:15
people, leaving more comments, and I can see the appeal, but sometimes more isn't better.
00:13:21
And I would say on LinkedIn, it definitely isn't.
00:13:24
When I talk about my G.R.O.W.T.H framework with my clients, when I'm working with
00:13:28
them, we start with the game plan.
00:13:31
What is it that you're trying to do?
00:13:32
Who is it that you're trying to target and what services do you have that
00:13:36
would make a difference to those people?
00:13:38
And when we go into activities on LinkedIn with this in mind, then you'll
00:13:42
realise that it's not a big numbers game.
00:13:46
We can really shrink down the amount of work that you have to do, which for a lot of my
00:13:51
clients, it's the biggest sense of relief.
00:13:54
Because they're actually doing less work after we do the training than what
00:13:58
they were trying to do by themselves.
00:14:00
When we focus on quality, that could be quality of connections.
00:14:04
That could be quality of content, quality of comments.
00:14:07
It doesn't matter which area you're looking at, but every step and every
00:14:13
activity that we do is intentional with a target audience and a goal in mind.
00:14:20
And this is how we can generate more leads for our business.
00:14:24
This is how you can make sure that when those leads come into the business,
00:14:30
they are the best fit possible.
00:14:32
Not just getting big numbers just for the sake of it.
00:14:35
I always cringe when I get people reach out to me and send me those
00:14:38
emails or direct messages on LinkedIn.
00:14:41
Like we can generate a thousand leads for you or I got one where they offered
00:14:45
to generate a million leads for me.
00:14:48
Like.
00:14:49
What the heck am I going to do with a million leads?
00:14:51
So slow down if you're feeling overwhelmed and think where is the best bang for my
00:14:56
buck when I'm spending time on LinkedIn.
00:15:25
The second thing that I want to talk about when it comes to activity, which
00:15:28
probably is a follow on from the mistake of trying to go for quantity over quality.
00:15:34
And that's the distinct lack of personalisation on LinkedIn.
00:15:38
It's when you get those messages, which you just feel like you're one of a thousand that
00:15:44
was sent out that week, and they haven't done their work to take a look at anything to do
00:15:50
with who you are, what you do, checked out your profile, had a look at your recent content.
00:15:55
And if you're guilty of this, think about what it feels like to you when
00:16:00
it's done to you on the platform.
00:16:02
Everybody's got horror stories of their LinkedIn inbox being full of spammy sales messages
00:16:09
that are completely unrelated to the person.
00:16:12
In a world of AI, where these tools are making it easier and easier, be the opposite.
00:16:18
This is how we get more leads by not following the crowd.
00:16:22
You can't automate or outsource relationships, relationship building is done human to human.
00:16:29
I want people to start to think, how can I show up and have a conversation with another human on the
00:16:36
platform that is targeted for that person only.
00:16:40
And I think this is probably a great segue into mistake number three that I think is
00:16:45
killing leads on LinkedIn when it comes to being busy with the wrong activities.
00:16:49
And that is, I don't know, how do I put this nicely being self absorbed.
00:16:55
If you're on LinkedIn to make yourself look amazing, make yourself look better.
00:17:00
It gets really tired really quickly.
00:17:03
So being self absorbed and not curious about what's going on in the other person's
00:17:08
world, and by being curious, you could ask questions in comments on posts, ask
00:17:13
them to explain things a bit further.
00:17:16
If you're in the direct messages, a lot of people to me say they get
00:17:19
stuck after that first connection.
00:17:21
They've done a little bit of work to personalise the invite request.
00:17:25
But what they haven't done is gone back and taken a look and said, well, how can
00:17:30
I ask another question as a follow up?
00:17:32
So there's the, hi, thanks for connecting full stop game over nowhere to go.
00:17:38
So think about what is a question that you could ask them?
00:17:41
So I often ask people questions like, what is it that you love most about your job?
00:17:45
What's the biggest frustration that you have going on right now?
00:17:49
Have you been to such and such?
00:17:50
Have you seen this release of this new feature?
00:17:54
Find something else that's that common interest and get interested in knowing about them.
00:17:59
The more that you can relate to them, the higher your chances of them wanting to work with you.
00:18:04
And the last thing that I'm going to put, which I think is a big mistake, and that
00:18:10
is ignoring direct messages and comments on your posts and not responding to them.
00:18:16
Now I'm putting my hand up.
00:18:17
There are times when my LinkedIn direct message inbox gets out of control and I
00:18:23
end up, you know, going back to people and apologising that's taken me a little longer
00:18:27
than I would like to, to respond to them.
00:18:30
If you can relate to that, that's a different scenario to people that think posting
00:18:35
content or getting a ghostwriter to do it on their behalf is all that you need to do
00:18:39
on LinkedIn and it will take care of itself.
00:18:42
I've seen people do that.
00:18:43
And I've seen the ghostwriters get frustrated because they're saying, you know what?
00:18:48
I write the post, but LinkedIn comes from having conversations and building communities, and
00:18:53
that takes engagement and not just on your own posts, go and support other people as well.
00:18:59
You've now got a list of 10 things that are potentially killing your leads on LinkedIn.
00:19:03
And more importantly, you've got the solutions on how to fix them.
00:19:07
We're coming into the final stretch of this year.
00:19:10
You have three months left.
00:19:12
We're not slowing down.
00:19:13
We are the kind of people that are going to keep pushing to get better results
00:19:18
when our competitors are giving up and they're taking the foot off the pedal.
00:19:22
I just want to do a quick shout out to Regina Larko, who is now officially the head of the
00:19:28
Social Media for B2B Growth podcast fan club in Austria because she loves listening to
00:19:34
this podcast and I really appreciate the post that she did to share with her audience about
00:19:40
the value that she gets from this podcast.
00:19:43
It's just the coolest thing to know that these things are making a difference to people
00:19:47
and it's helping them grow their business.
00:19:49
So if this sounds like you and you are kicking goals, I'd love to hear about it.
00:19:54
Let me cheer you on and celebrate with you.
00:19:57
Until next week.
00:19:57
Cheers.
Related Episodes
The Secret to Creating Weeks of LinkedIn Content in Just 30 Minutes (No It's Not AI)
Are you a small marketing team or a solo entrepreneur struggling to keep up with content demands? In this episode, Michelle J Raymond shares her best-kept secret for creating endless content without burning out. Learn about the tools and strategies she uses, and how you can implement them today! To...
Why Your Team Thinks They Don’t Need LinkedIn (and What to Say)
Ever heard ‘I don’t need LinkedIn’ from a sales rep? Or maybe a team member saying, ‘That’s not my job’? Join Coach Michelle J Raymond as she tackles the seven most common objections to LinkedIn and reveals how to flip the script to get your team on board. Today's episode is sponsored by Metricool ...
Check This LinkedIn Data Privacy Setting Urgently
LinkedIn changed this data privacy setting without notifying members, which means many members are now automatically opted-in to allow LinkedIn AI to use your personal data and content for training LinkedIn's generative AI content. UK listeners read this - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy89x4...