Do…develop a personal profile and build it out. In other words, make sure that your personal profile has all the necessary elements. LinkedIn will tell you how complete your profile is. It should be 90% complete or more.
Do…post content from your LinkedIn profile. You can add daily updates. You can even post to your LinkedIn profile from Hootsuite or other tools. We get a lot of clicks from the personal profiles of our employees.
Do…join groups. LinkedIn groups are an incredible tool that allows marketers to leverage their relationships, share content, and meet potential clients and partners. Just search for groups that are interesting and join them. For example, I’m in about 40 groups related to content marketing, SEO, and marketing analytics. You can also find college alumni groups and geographically local groups.
Do…start discussions in groups. You can pose a question about a problem you’re facing, or share the results of a case study. This is a great way to basically get some free consulting when you ask specific questions.
Do…comment on ongoing discussions in groups. You’ll notice that within groups you can share your thoughts about ongoing discussion topics. If someone asks a question, feel free to answer it. If someone else shares an article, you should comment on that article, and perhaps, share one of your own.
Do…share content in groups. LinkedIn groups allow members to start discussions by posting an article. Share articles from your blog and share other articles that are of interest to you. These articles will spark new discussions and will drive traffic to your blog or site.
Do…reach out to individual people within LinkedIn groups. If you share a group with someone on LinkedIn you can actually message them directly. They don’t need to be your connection. You don’t need to know them. Simply sharing a group with someone is enough to send them a message. You can use this to directly prospect potential clients, reach out to possible partners, and even inquire about jobs.
Do…develop a very detailed and powerful company page. Look at the LogMyCalls company page and the Hubspot company page as examples. You’ll notice that we promote and list White Papers and other content. We’ve also taken advantage of videos and other promotable content. The company page is a great tool for you to build a following and promote your content.
Do…share content on your company page. As with a personal page, you can share updates. These updates should be interesting articles and pieces of content, perhaps from your own blog.
Do…look at LinkedIn as a lead generation tool. You can gather leads and generate awareness about your company as a you reach to people within groups, post to groups, and post updates to your company page and personal page.
Do…try LinkedIn PPC. It is hyper-targeted PPC advertising. Try it.
Don’t…post in groups too much. Some people (and I was guilty of this for a time) post in groups several times a day. That’s annoying. Eventually the moderator will ask you to stop. Iff you continue they’ll just kick you out of the group altogether. Posting one article a week is probably enough.
Don’t…just post stuff and then fail to get involved in other discussions. If you just post articles from your own blogs within groups you will eventually annoy everyone. Get involved with other discussions as well. Try not to promote too much.
Don’t…just hope people will find your profile. You need to seek other people out. You need to build your own connections. No one will come looking for you. You have to do the looking. Make connections with people that you can assist in the future, or that can assist you. Look for mutually beneficial relationships.
Something that may be helpful for LinkedIn is Wayne Breitbarth’s book The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success. He really stresses a lot of key points in building your profile and marketing strategies for LinkedIn. http://www.powerformula.net. Every little thing helps! Good Luck!