4 LinkedIn Strategies for surviving in the Pandemic and Post-Pandemic World
We are humans and we are made for connections, offline, online and anyhow possible we communicate — to educate, entertain, engage, or to inspire.
Looking at all of the existing social media platforms, it is easy to see how each channel is suited to a certain kind of content and useful for particular kinds of human relationships.
From Tik Tok, to Instagram, to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn there are mostly unwritten rules of engagement dictated by the platform and the audience.
With this in mind, it can start to feel very exhausting figuring out how to be relevant on different channels and keeping up with the trends.
This notion is even more applicable to professionals who are mostly focused on concrete — short, medium and long-term business or career objectives and we have seen that LinkedIn is often treated as an afterthought.
However, according to the Content Marketing Manager of LinkedIn, 1 out of 3 professionals on the planet are on LinkedIn and LinkedIn is the go to ‘social media’ channel for building professional networks.
As more professionals to turn to digital — to build relationships and create value for their clients LinkedIn becomes a must have and having a good strategy for how to build your network is key.
The rules for winning on LinkedIn — like many other things in 2020 have significantly changed due to COVID-19.
For most professionals, LinkedIn holds the most opportunities — assuming that your profile is already optimised (great photo, tagline, list of projects, accomplishments etc.)
Below I will be highlighting a few strategies you can apply to win on LinkedIn — now, and in the Post-COVID era.
1. Be intentional about your connections — accept connection requests only from people with whom you share a common interest. LinkedIn is not a game of numbers.
Vet your connection requests — check your potential connection’s LinkedIn profile photo (every serious profile has a business-like photo), profile tagline and their activities on their feed — this will give you a fairly accurate idea of their interests, industry, achievements and other things you’ll need to engage authentically with them.
Followers and connections mean little if you cannot initiate a useful business relationship.
Apart from strict vetting a rule of thumb is to focus on what happens in your LinkedIn inbox!
Yes, nobody sees your inbox, but the messages you exchange with your connections may lead to appointments and translate into some kind of value or even monetary transactions that are more important than 10,000 views, 1,000 comments or 1,500 likes.
In summary, it is about the quality of your network, cherry-pick the connection requests you accept and the connection requests you send.
Look for good fits, people with whom you share an overlapping business interest or who work in your industry — There is always a way that you can help one another.
Great, so you’re building a quality network and connecting with people who are a good fit for you, what next?
2. Build authentic human connections with your network — a couple of days after connecting with someone who is a good fit for YOUR NETWORK, it is advisable to send them a note:
Here’s a format that works wonders:
- Mention their name — e.g Hey, Ella great to be connected to you
- Let the person know why you connected with them and what synergies you found — e.g I noticed you are a chatbot development expert and you’ve developed customer service and media bots. Your last article on e-commerce in the COVID-era and Post-COVID was remarkable. I would like to learn more about you and share more about my business to see if there is any way we can support each other here on LinkedIn.
- Add a call to action — e.g Do you have any time this week or next to hop on a Zoom call? Best Regards, Orakwe John
The single greatest “people skill” is a highly developed & authentic interest in the other person. — Bob Burg
This is a great strategy for new connections on LinkedIn. However, if there is an already existing connection who you think is a good fit for your network, this is what you can do to engage them:
Use LinkedIn automated messages to celebrate work anniversaries, changes in roles and birthdays of people in your network. If you haven’t had a conversation with someone in your network before, you can leverage on their reply to a Happy Birthday message and start the conversation on how you can both learn about each other’s business or career and create value.
3. When posting on LinkedIn, always add a Call to Action —
If you share a post on the future of work for your industry or some insights you heard on a podcast, ask people for their opinion and how they feel the industry or their roles will evolve.
This is great for building an organic and genuine network that needs your content.
Authentic engagement is key, so you should always resist the urge to join a LinkedIn engagement pod — this is a group which serves the purpose of boosting the posts of members.
Unfortunately, this tactic backfires in the sense that, if the same set of people are always engaging with your content, the LinkedIn algorithm somewhat locks in your content to be seen only by the same set of people, which is counterproductive to the overarching aim of creating meaningful business relationships that translate to actual transactions.
Needless to say, your content must be about what the audience wants to hear, not only about what you want to talk about. And whatever shape or form it is going to take, make it authentic!
4. Practice some Gratitude — Send personal gratitude messages to people who engage with your posts, and if they respond you can start a genuine conversation with them about learning more about their work, and finding ways to help one another.
Well in 2020, and for much of the Post-COVID era; LinkedIn is no longer an online resume, it’s the core of the professional’s digital reputation and network building.
So, Be intentional about your LinkedIn Network!
