How To Use LinkedIn For Business – Karen Yankovich
MUST HAVE RESOURCES
SUMMARY
KEY TAKEAWAYS
If you’re not on LinkedIn, you would be missing out on that chance to make a great first impression. Knowing how to use LinkedIn for business is essential for business success online.
If you’re taking the time to create a great profile, to be active on LinkedIn, and to present yourself the way you would want to be seen, that’s priceless. How to use LinkedIn for business is something everyone should know.
With LinkedIn, you can go right to somebody if you want to reach out to him/her.
When you need to kick up your revenues or you’re trying to launch a new product/service or you need to find partners, you can go to LinkedIn. For all the revenue generating activities, that’s where you could go first. This is how to use LinkedIn for business in order to generate more revenue.
As a business owner:
- Pick 5 groups you think are active and filled with the kinds of people you want to connect with.
- Start responding to every single post and blog posts.
- Read the blog post and add your little twist of genius to it.
If your comments are authentic, it’ll show you know what you’re talking about. People are going to want to start to connect with you. You’re going to start to see your connections grow, this is how to use LinkedIn for business.
Standing out on LinkedIn
- You need to remember that your LinkedIn profile needs to be client facing.
- You tell people how you can help them in your profile.
- Give them a call to action on how to use LinkedIn for business.
The first thing you need to do before you start getting active if you want that activity to be most effective is take some time to create a great profile and that starts with a great headline.
Because Google leads LinkedIn, think of a keyword and use it in your headline and summary.
Keyword research applies to all social media sites but most importantly to LinkedIn. Therefore it is very important to know how to use LinkedIn for business.
What you can do as a Call to Action on LinkedIn
- Send people to your freebies.
When connecting with people on LinkedIn:
- Be authentic and personalize your connection request.
- Be of service to them. Like, share, and comment on their post.
When you create a blog post around your podcast, you can take that same blog post and post it over on LinkedIn as a LinkedIn long form post.
People are more in networking mode on LinkedIn, so educating ourselves about how to use LinkedIn for business is going to benefit us a lot.
TRANSCRIPTION: HOW TO USE LINKEDIN FOR BUSINESS – KAREN YANKOVICH
How To Use LinkedIn for Business
Kamala Chambers
Do you know how to use LinkedIn for business?
Our guest today is going to talk about how you can use LinkedIn to basically shake money out of a tree. This episode is all about how to use LinkedIn for business, boosting it for your business, using it to network with high level people, and make money.
Luis Congdon
On today’s show, we’re bringing on Karen Yankovich.
One of the things to know about Karen is that she knows exactly how to use LinkedIn for business. She makes sales through LinkedIn. She’s generating leads there and it’s a really untapped resource.
Now, while LinkedIn is one of the fastest online growing social media sites, a lot of people aren’t tapping into its power. I have several thousand connections inside of LinkedIn and I’ve used it to network with some really hard to reach people and met some incredible professionals.
I haven’t used it very much for sales and so, I got really interested in how can I use this powerful tool that’s untapped and yet, has a huge resource of people and networking capabilities that no other website can really rival.
I contacted Karen Yankovich because I’ve been watching her. She is doing some really incredible stuff with LinkedIn. She’s really dialed it in and today we’re going to teach you exactly how you can brush up your page, use it not just for a resume thing but for a networking thing and lead generating space, a sales space, use LinkedIn in its full capacity and know how to use LinkedIn for business.
So without further ado, let’s get started. I’m really glad you’re here with Kamala and myself at Thriving Launch.
Kamala Chambers
Welcome to Thriving Launch Karen. Are you ready to launch?
Karen Yankovich
I am!
Kamala Chambers
Well, LinkedIn can be an untapped market with so many other social media platforms competing.
I’d love to hear why should we be on LinkedIn and how to use LinkedIn for business? What would we be missing out on if we weren’t on LinkedIn?
Karen Yankovich
Everyone should know how to use LinkedIn for business. You would be missing out on you. You would be missing out on that chance to make a great first impression and I’ll tell you why I said that. If you’re marketing your business online in any way, shape, or form, you’re a subject to people searching your name on a Google because they want to know more about you. What’s going to come up is your LinkedIn profile.
If you’re taking the time to create a great profile, to be active on LinkedIn, and to present yourself the way you would want to be seen, that’s priceless.
Kamala Chambers
Absolutely.
Luis, you’re on LinkedIn. You’re using and we’re both kind of using it.
How To Use LinkedIn For Business And Network With Professionals
Luis Congdon
I don’t really use LinkedIn a whole lot though. I still need to know how to use LinkedIn for business perfectly. It hasn’t been a fun social media for me and a platform that I really dived into but one thing I know is for business purposes, you’re actually going to be dealing with some of the highest quality types of contacts. Is that right, Karen?
Karen Yankovich
Absolutely. You can go tap down.
If you need to reach somebody using LinkedIn, you can go right to them versus finding a receptionist, passing through all those walls that we’ve put out to get or people to be able to get to us or to get to the people that we want to reach. Knowing how to use LinkedIn for business can make your dream come true, which is exciting at the same time.
Kamala Chambers
So what’s something that we need to be doing on LinkedIn if we’re not already doing it and how to use LinkedIn for business actually?
We’re all listening saying, “Well maybe, we’re already hustling on LinkedIn,” or “We want to start using it.” What’s that thing that we need to be doing for sure as a business owner?
Karen Yankovich
I love social media. I use all, probably, almost every social media platform. I love them all for different things and I get what you’re saying Luis, that it’s not fun for you but when I need to shake some money out of the trees, I go to LinkedIn and that’s fun for me. Therefore I recommend everyone to know how to use LinkedIn for business.
When I need to kick up the revenues or when I’m trying to launch a new product or service or I need to find partners, I go to LinkedIn. For all the revenue generating activities, that’s where I go first.
One of the things that you could do Kamala is like you can’t go to LinkedIn and say, “Okay, I’m here. What happens now?” You have to spend time there just like any other social media sites.
Let’s just use groups as one example. I hear a lot about how groups are dead and there are not a lot of activities. So, be the person that’s creating the activity. Post questions. Go in and respond to other people’s questions.
Pick 5 groups that you think are active and they’ve got people filled with the kinds of people you want to connect with and start responding to every single post. Start responding to blog posts. Read the blog post. Add your little twist of genius to it. People are going to want to get to know you. They’re going to be like, “Who’s this guy that always commenting on my blog post?”
Especially if your comments are authentic, they show that you know what you’re talking about. People are going to want to start to connect with you. You’re going to start to see your connections grow. Your growing connections, those are leads.
Karen Yankovich
That’s one thing you could do. Just go in and start sharing your genius all over the place and let people start coming to you and they will come to you. This is how to use LinkedIn for business particularly if you are new to this platform.
How To Use LinkedIn For Business Using Its Groups
Kamala Chambers
How to use LinkedIn for business using its groups? I’m hearing leveraging your groups on LinkedIn and really going in there, finding good quality groups, connecting, and posting on there.
It’s just like what Luis does on Facebook. You use Facebook to shake money out of trees.
So now, how do we stand out on LinkedIn? There are so many opportunities to post your resume and different things, what are some things that we should include in our LinkedIn profiles?
Karen Yankovich
We need to take care of few essential things in order to know how to use LinkedIn for business. First of all, you need to remember that your LinkedIn profile needs to be client facing. It’s about you with your personal brand but make sure you’re telling people how you help them because that’s going to be more interesting to them. They’re going to want to connect with you if you’re telling them how you can help them.
So maybe you’re the CEO and maybe that sounds impressive but most people aren’t searching for CEOs. They don’t really care that you’re a CEO. So make sure when you’re writing your profile, you tell people how you can help them which is important in knowing how to use LinkedIn for business.
Let’s say you’re a financial planner. You may be the most credential financial planner on earth and you have all you credentials listed there but if you tell me that you’re a financial planner with all these credentials, I feel like you’re the same as 50,000 other financial planners on LinkedIn. However, if you put in your headline, “I’m a financial planner that help women over 50 years old migrate their finances from a corporate paycheck to a work from home or entrepreneur or retired lifestyle.” Now, I’m paying attention. You need to know these in order to learn how to use LinkedIn for business.
Luis Congdon
This is making me think a lot about our interview where we talked about the About Page and how an About Page has a lot to do with not talking just about yourself but talking about how you serve the person who’s chosen to visit your website.
On LinkedIn, we don’t really think that way. We think, “This should be my resume,” but what I’m hearing from you Karen is it’s a lead magnet. Your LinkedIn page should really talk about how you serve your potential client or ideal client who’s coming and visiting your page. This is how to use LinkedIn for business.
Karen Yankovich
Absolutely. You know the essentials of how to use LinkedIn for business.
Just like you should on your About Page, give them a Call To Action. Tell them what you want them to do next. Tell them, “Here’s how I want you to call me,” “Get/Grab my free whatever,” “Listen to my podcast” “Subscribe to my podcast.”
Tell them exactly what you want them to do next and they will.
Kamala Chambers
Yeah, absolutely. That’s one place we need to always focus on. It’s the Call To Action.
Okay, so you’re there, you’re scrolling through, now what? What do you want to do next in learning how to use LinkedIn for business?
How important is it to spend time and energy and getting endorsements on LinkedIn and really pimping out your profile? What are some key pieces of the profile that you absolutely need to have in place?
Karen Yankovich
I think it’s extremely important to do that and I think that’s the first thing you need to do because if you’re getting active in groups, what you want is when people check you out, is for them to be impressed with you.
The first thing you need to do before you start getting active, if you want that activity to be most effective is take some time to create a great profile and that starts with a great headline.
Again, your headline is not your job title. It’s how you help other people and I like to see it who you are, who you help, and how you help them. Put that in your headline.
Also, remember when you’re doing all of this in your profile, think about keyword because Google leads LinkedIn and LinkedIn is a huge search engine and of itself, so if people are searching a LinkedIn speaker, I want my profile to come up. So I make sure I use that in my headline. I use it in my summary, which has 2,000 characters that Google reads.
You want it to be client facing but you also want to be very keyword rich. This is one of the important thing in knowing how to use LinkedIn for business. Think about what people are searching for that you want to have as the search result and use that over and over throughout your profile so when people scan it, there is no doubt what it is you do and how you can help them.
Kamala Chambers
You just do that through Google keyword search? Is that how you find which words to use?
Karen Yankovich
Yeah. That’s a great a way to do it. If you’re not sure, ask some of your clients. Like if I close my business tomorrow, what would you be searching for to replacement? Ask people what they’re looking for that you can help them with.
Keyword research applies to all social media sites but most importantly to LinkedIn because, as you said and I love that you mentioned the About Page because you can talk about the About Page and you probably know that most often, the most visited page on a website and that’s because we want to know more about the people we do business with. So that’s leads me right to why you need to be doing all of those same things on LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn, people are checking you out so you need to check out.
How To Use LinkedIn For Business to Get Potential Clients
Luis Congdon
What do you think is a good call to action and why is it important in learning how to use LinkedIn for business?
That one’s definitely got me stumped. What should I be doing as a Call to Action on my LinkedIn?
Karen Yankovich
It really depends on what you really want to happen. I know people that have quite literally grab the URLs like talktokaren.com and said, “Let’s talk for 15 minutes” and they put their call to action. So they have that tied into an automated tool and it literally get people go right on their calendar.
To me, I like to warm them up a little first. I have a free video series. So, I tend to put that in my head or image, which I don’t think it’s there at this moment but it probably will be there in a day or two.
So, typically send people to my freebies or whatever I’m promoting that’s free, that is typically the beginning of a funnel to something. Everyone who is looking for how to use LinkedIn for business should know this.
I like to bring people into my freebies. It may even just be, “Check out this three blog posts. These are my 3 most popular blog posts” or podcast interviews. It’s just about getting people into your funnel. I love it if I can make it something that at least gives me their email address.
Luis Congdon
I’m curious too.
Have you found certain ways to message or to connect with people that you want as potential clients? How to use LinkedIn for business to get potential clients?
One of our guests that will be coming on the show soon, Dennis Brown, showed me a method. We haven’t done that interview yet but I’m curious, what are some ways that you found to reach out to people that you maybe want to connect with or maybe want as clients on LinkedIn?
Karen Yankovich
For me, it always goes back to just be authentic if you truly want to learn how to use LinkedIn for business. Most people will connect with you if you give them some reason to.
Fine, if you both worked at McDonald’s when you were 20 or you both went to the same college or you’ve got a couple of groups in common. When you ask that connection request, just put something and personalize it. I would say, almost all of the time, they’ll accept that.
There are people that just aren’t active on LinkedIn. You can’t make somebody that doesn’t look at LinkedIn for 2 years at a time connect with you. But, if you know they’re active on LinkedIn, chances are, you personalize your connection request and they’re going to accept it.
From there, I like to just really truly get to know them. Be of service to them. If they are writing on LinkedIn, share, like, and comment on their post. Just continue to be of service to them for at least a couple of weeks and then, maybe hit them up and say, “Hey, you know what? You do this, I do this. I think there might be some synergies here. Would you be open to a quick phone conversation?” These are the little tips you need to apply if you are looking for how to use LinkedIn for business.
It’s so much easier to do than you would imagine. It happens so easily.
Luis Congdon
Now, what about publishing articles or publishing content on LinkedIn? Have you found ways that can be helpful and that maybe we should be doing that?
Karen Yankovich
More eyes on your stuff is always a good thing. If you create blog post around your podcast, you can take that same blog post and post it over on LinkedIn as a LinkedIn long form post and you can put the media right in there. You can link your top podcast directly to each section of your LinkedIn profile.
So I would absolutely use LinkedIn as a way to get more eyes on your content. It’s quite literally duplicating it on LinkedIn as a long form post. You could change it up if you want to but, I’ve done a ton of research on that and I see no need to change it up unless you want to. There are no Google dings or anything like that and maybe I get another 100 people that see it.
Kamala
Luis, I have a question for you because we’re talking about LinkedIn but you’re a master of Facebook. You’re a master of making money on Facebook without advertising and this is what Karen’s talking about is making money through LinkedIn without advertising.
How many of these methods that Karen’s talked about apply to Facebook as well?
Luis Congdon
I don’t really know LinkedIn too well but almost everything Karen has said is just really applicable. I just haven’t played around in LinkedIn too much and I know that I really want to and that’s why we’ve invited Karen on here.
Also, one of the points that Karen made that I think is great, is the more eye on your stuff and the more places you can be, the better.
I’m at least on LinkedIn. I have a lot of recommendations. I’ve given a lot of recommendations. I have samples of my work. At least maybe once a month, I’m getting a few hits from people writing me and saying, “Hey, I see that you do this. Can we chat about this or that?” I know if I was more active on there, I could have more leads and it would be just another place to be generating leads.
I think that Karen’s just totally spot on and this stuff applies to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It applies everywhere.
It’s really great content that you’ve been giving here Karen.
Karen Yankovich
I agree with you Luis but I think that the thing that stands out for me on LinkedIn versus all of this other ones is…
Karen Yankovich
Yeah, you want to meet people on Facebook. You and I met on Facebook and we got on the phone pretty quickly. So those same things can happen on Facebook but on LinkedIn, it’s just much more common phrase to say, “You know? Let’s talk. Maybe there’s some synergies here”.
I think it just happens more quickly and that’s why I lean to it. Because, you go to a networking event, like an in-person networking event, you’re looking to meet with people. You’re looking to help each other out, support each other, and see what kind of synergies there are. I think people have that same mindset on LinkedIn. I don’t know if that same mindset is quite as prevalent on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To some degree, it absolutely is.
Luis Congdon
That’s right. Thank so much for coming on the show today Karen.
Karen Yankovich
Okay. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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