3 Time Stealers On LinkedIn

If somebody asked you right now what is the single MOST crucial aspect of business to focus on to ensure success, what would you say? Some would choose sales. Some would say recruiting.

Many would claim its Leadership. Others believe its systems and procedures. More than a few would believe with conviction that it’s all about knowing the financials.

All obviously very important aspects of running a successful company, but in our opinion, there’s one aspect that trumps all others listed above in level of importance. And that to us is Marketing.

Without marketing, your business may have the best products or services in the industry, but none of your potential customers would know about it. We truly believe that as entrepreneurs we are all in the business of marketing, regardless of industry, location, size or the products and services we offer.

And to us, the key to marketing success is getting your message right and then finding innovative ways to get that in front of key decision makers. Period!!! This is why we love LinkedIn.

With 500+ million members and 49% of them being key decision makers the ability for you to search, find, connect and then build a relationship with potential clients has never been easier. Over the past 5 years of educating over 20,000 in 60 industries and 35 countries we’ve come to realize that there is certain time waster mistakes business owners make when leveraging LinkedIn to help them grow their business.

And one of the BIGGEST we see entrepreneurs making is spending way too much time on low priority activities that are not at the core of LinkedIn’s core existence. LinkedIn is no different to any other social media platform, it’s a place that millions visit daily to connect with other professional one-on-one in order to build meaningful long term relationships.

The key to you attracting potential clients, partners, and media opportunities is not pumping out a tonne of content, joining more groups, posting up 10 posts a day. It’s about keeping it simple. Reaching out and connecting with these professional on a personal one to one level, then starting a real conversation with them.

When you break it down it’s really is that simple. So to help you make the most use of your time on LinkedIn, below we’ve provided you with the top 3 most common time wasters you need to avoid:

1. Joining Too Many Groups

We see this over and over again, business owners join 20, 30 and in some cases 50 groups relevant to their target audience. Then they spend hours per week writing up content to post inside the group.

Now unless it’s a group that has high engagement it’s very unlikely that the post will get any traction or visibility because most people who join groups are not that active anyway. And with all the latest changes to the group rules it’s become harder and harder to stick to the guidelines.

So instead of wasting all this time posting content that doesn’t get traction anyway, you are much better off connecting directly with the group owner of the group, building a relationship with them and then asking them to promote you to the group. We used this very same strategy this with one group owner who had over 80,000 members and as a result we managed to generate 2,492 leads to an upcoming webinar we held together.

2. Starting a Company Page

Every day there are over 1 billion searches for names on LinkedIn. What this tells us is that customers no longer buy into companies or their products until they buy into the person they are about to do business with. Gone are the days where people buy into company brands or products, sure this is still important, but nowadays people are buying more into the people behind the brand or service.

Did you know that the about us section on your website is the second most page on the internet? Yep, that’s right. This is why building a compelling personal brand that resonates with your target audience is so critical in business today.

So unless you have a well-known brand or looking to leverage the “Sponsored Post’ advertising feature of LinkedIn, instead of spending your valuable time creating a company page, divert that time to making your personal profile shine above the rest. Click here where you will learn 10 steps you can take TODAY to build a more compelling profile.

3. Writing Too Many Blog Posts

Out of all the time wasters this is by the far the biggest. The amount of content being created is increasing exponentially, whereas the amount of human attention is finite.

The consequence? Every day, we are all faced with a barrage of blog posts and articles that we feel we ‘need’ to read. Often we don’t – but we share them anyway. The reality is, no one nowadays can be on top of everything. Let’s face it, there is just too much content out there.

Are we saying you shouldn’t write blog posts? No because our founder Alex Pirouz do that himself but he only does one per week.

What we are saying is for you to not get caught up writing 2, 3 or 4 posts per week. Spend that time instead connecting with your target market on a one on one level.

If you’re concerned whether if you go out and market yourself on LinkedIn alone that you may make similar mistakes then it’s always best to work with experts to ensure things are rolled out successfully. When venturing into anything new that is going to be so critical for your business it’s not worth the risk to your company and personal brand.