helps make LinkedIn considerably more efficient and effective when you know what you're doing and are using it regularly and properly.
Think about it in this way …
Most people can get fit at home; you don't need to go to a gym. You can exercise at home or in your local community and achieve great fitness goals. You can lose weight, you can build muscle, all without paying to go to the gym.
However, the gym offers many benefits. The gym has all of the great equipment to enhance that process and help you take it to the next level.
Where many people get it wrong with gym membership is they pay it, use it for a month and then never go back! They just keep paying their membership fee. The other common mistake people make is that they pay their membership and actually go to the gym, but they don't know what they're doing (I did this for many years). They jump on the variety of machines doing what they think is right, but then never seem to get as fit as the other people in the gym.
This is where the value of a personal trainer comes in, and to relate it back to LinkedIn, this is where the value in getting proper training on LinkedIn and Sales Navigator is extremely important (you've clearly got the right mindset here as you're reading this book to learn how to use LinkedIn in the best way).
After years of going to the gym but never getting the results I wanted, I started to use a personal trainer. The results I achieved in the first month were better than the results I achieved myself in nearly 10 years of going to the gym on my own.
Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Premium work when you know what you're doing and you're using all of the features (regularly and consistently).
The big mistake a lot of people make is thinking that just by clicking upgrade and paying the monthly cost, their inbox is suddenly going to burst with amazing sales leads! Sales Navigator works when YOU use it properly, and it works best when you leverage all of the free stuff first.
Personally, some of the best features that LinkedIn's Sales Navigator offers include:
1 – View EVERYONE who views your profile
2 – Perform way more searches
3 – Utilise advanced searching filters
4 – Save searches and add notes
And that's only scratching the surface; it's full of amazing features.
My advice?
Work through this book and spend the next few months mastering LinkedIn's free features. When LinkedIn and social selling become a regular part of your sales and business routine, and when you are starting to hit some of the free limits, that's a good time to look at whether upgrading is valuable to you.
At the end of the book there will be a bonus chapter on Sales Navigator where I will share some of my top tips and some of the best ways you can leverage it, so if you're not using it now and would like to know more about it, have a read so you can see what it can be used for.
CHAPTER 3 THE PILLARS OF LINKEDIN SUCCESS
There are so many components to LinkedIn, many that most people never even think about or do anything with, that it takes a while to go through all of the key parts.
Your profile can be broken down into micro‐sections. There are many different search techniques to find prospects, messaging styles, content strategies, and personal branding principles, which means it's a complex process to get the most out of LinkedIn.
To make this as simple as possible, I've broken it down and simplified it into these five key pillars:
1 Profile
2 Network
3 Messaging
4 Content
5 Personal Brand
Not only are these the key pillars of LinkedIn success, but they're also in the order in which I would recommend that you work on them (which is also how this book is structured). The reason that the order is important is due to how they are all so closely connected.
For example:
Your LinkedIn profile is the first thing to work on and in my opinion is the foundation of all success on LinkedIn. You could read this book, skip the first two pillars and jump straight into content. Let's say you read everything I've shared about creating amazing content on LinkedIn and creating viral content and you go out and create a fantastic post that goes viral straightaway! You're feeling pretty happy with yourself; your post starts clocking above 100,000 views.
A large percentage of those people, having enjoyed this amazing post that you've created, are now going to want to learn more about you. What is the best way they can do that? Look at your LinkedIn profile of course!
But you haven't updated your profile.
It doesn't have a background image, your summary is just one paragraph long and doesn't mention anything about the product or service that you offer now, it simply summarises how great you are. There's not much information in there and as people read through it, they don't actually know what you do, what you offer or how it can help them.
So like water pouring into a bucket full of holes, all of those people just wash away, leaving your profile with an interest in buying from you or even worse, leaving your profile with an interest in the product that you sell, but not realising that you sell it.
Had you updated your profile first, you could have ended up generating some great business from that post, which is why they go in this particular order and why I would suggest following this book in the way that I've structured it.
My goal is to help YOU generate leads and sales from LinkedIn and I'm working as hard as I can to make sure this book is built and structured to do just that.
I'm going to start by showing you how to create the ultimate LinkedIn profile, one that will help you convert the people viewing it into prospects, leads and customers.
Then I'll show you how to grow a valuable network of prospects, customers and peers. Your network is your net worth and I'm going to help you build a very valuable one.
After that we will cover how to turn your network into leads and sales opportunities through effective messaging. I'm not talking spammy sales‐pitch messages, but well‐crafted conversation‐starting messages.
Next I'll show you how to create super‐engaging content on LinkedIn that provides value to your prospects, generates leads and builds trust.
Finally, we'll cover your personal brand, and how you can become a trusted and respected figure in your industry.
PART 2 THE PERFECT PROFILE
‘Your LinkedIn profile is like your own personal website. Your prospects and customers will be viewing it and it will influence whether or not they buy from you’.
