Partner Article

Avoid the pitfalls of LinkedIn to attract customers

It’s online marketing focus week on Bdaily. Here, Nevil Tynemouth, director at New Results Training, describes how to avoid making mistakes on LinkedIn which would be detrimental for businesses.

In this article we look at the top 5 mistakes on LinkedIn (and how to avoid them). Look for our next piece on creating real value on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a powerful tool (200m users +) and we like LinkedIn a lot at New Results. We have looked at the most common mistakes that people make on LinkedIn and have created a checklist to help you avoid them.

1. Dead on arrival profile. People will look you up on LinkedIn and want to find out about you. Potential customers might look at your profile to see if you are a credible supplier. You could be missing out because you don’t have a great profile. Here’s how you improve this:

• Have a good professional picture (remember people buy from people)
• Have a full description of what you and your organisation does
• Keep all of your information up to date

2. Wrong keywords in your description (the words that appear just below your name on your profile). Lots of people have their job title or a few words saying what they do, but how effective are these? Do they show what you do (not usually your job title).

Look at the keywords you currently use. Do these words match how customers will try and find suppliers or contacts? You need to take time to get the right key words in your profile (to make yourself easy to find!).

3. Bland connection requests. You know the bog standard LinkedIn request with no additional information. Let’s get rid of “join my network on LinkedIn & I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” Nothing screams out “can’t really be bothered” more than this. Tell me why I should connect with you specifically.

4. No contact information. If you look at LinkedIn profiles there is a little box to click on to find contact details. Lots of people haven’t completed these details. Get your email address, phone number, websites (up to 3) on there. Make it easy for customers to get in contact with you

5. Sell, sell, sell ………… Not something that we really like (individually or from a business perspective). We have all seen it, you get a connection request and accept it at 10.00 and by 10.15 there is a “Have we got the ideal product or service for you!” It doesn’t work, there just isn’t a relationship yet, there is no interaction and if anything it might just put people off.

These are 5 common mistakes we see and if we are honest they are simple to avoid. Invest a small amount of time and make so much more of what is an incredibly useful and powerful business tool.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Nevil Tynemouth .