The Competitive Advantage

August 8, 2023

How To and How NOT To Use LinkedIn for Selling… A True Story!

In the past week, I connected with two people on LinkedIn, each from a different research firm. And I had two very different experiences with them – one that was great and one that was horrible. The contrast between the two provides a really good lesson on how to use LinkedIn effectively to support your sales effort… and how not to!

May 2, 2023

How to Maximize Impressions of a Single LinkedIn Post

The use of social media – and particularly, LinkedIn – should be an integral part of your marketing efforts. Social media, with little cost and modest effort, helps you achieve so many objectives: it builds awareness for you and your firm, it helps to cement your reputation around the topics you post about, and it helps potential buyers to get to know you a little bit better, especially if you sometimes post personal or fun content.

But here’s the problem… A single post has a shelf life of just a few seconds. It doesn’t take long for a post – even a really interesting one – to end up so far down on someone’s feed that they never get to see it. ☹ So, the question is… how do you increase the reach of a single post?

March 1, 2022

What should you post on LinkedIn? Hint: it’s not about you!

When you look at the LinkedIn posts made by most professionals and most firms in our industry, they generally fall into three categories:

1. Promoting their content – a recent blog or an invitation to a webinar
2. Office news – a company anniversary or the hiring of a new employee
3. Or a sales pitch!

And because most firms aren’t producing content very often or haven’t hired someone in a while, they’re left with selling. Far too much. Of all the things you can do on LinkedIn, selling should be the lowest priority. One rule of thumb I’ve heard says that, ‘Only one in five social posts should be a sales pitch.’ Frankly, even that is too often. Social media is – first and foremost – a ‘social’ platform. It’s about connecting with people and building relationships. Sharing will help you do that… selling will not.

October 19, 2021

The Marketing Trifecta: The 3 Tactics You Need to Achieve Your Marketing Goals

In my last post, I wrote about a few different things I would recommend to help you in preparing for putting together your 2022 Sales & Marketing plan. I’ll assume you’ve done all those things (wink-wink), so now, I want to explore the implementation of your plan, particularly on the Marketing side; we’ll talk about Sales implementation in the next post.

Look around… there are a thousand different ways – especially in light of all the technology available to everyone these days – to implement your marketing. But I want to simplify it for you. In fact, not just simplify it, but let you know that this can be done for no (or almost no) cost!

October 15, 2019

Part 2: Hard selling inside of LinkedIn? Stop it, stop it, stop it!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on how NOT to use LinkedIn in your sales efforts (read it here). It was one of our most popular posts all year. Evidently, I’m not the only one who hates hard-sell pitches on LinkedIn.

In a happy coincidence, I was telling a client contact about this post… and she told me a story about how she is using LinkedIn in a friendly, non-salesy and effective way. Here’s what she’s doing…

September 17, 2019

Hard selling inside of LinkedIn? Stop it, stop it, stop it!

I love LinkedIn… and I hate it!

It is, by far, the best platform for connecting, communicating and sharing information in the B2B environment. It is also abused far too often and by far too many people. Let me share with you a recent true story of how NOT to use LinkedIn.

December 11, 2018

Marketing & Sales for ‘Old’ Business Owners, Part 2

“Do I really need to be on social media?”

Spoiler alert… “Yes!” Yes, you do need to be on social media.

When I talk to oldsters (I can say that… I’m 60), their feelings about social media are generally like this: LinkedIn is just for job-hunting… Facebook is for looking at pictures of friends & family… and they don’t have any idea what Twitter is about.

Allow me to simplify and make the case for all three of them. Social media platforms are marketing channels through which you can communicate to clients and prospective clients. By doing so on a regular basis, social media allows you to build and maintain a level of awareness in the markets you serve, develop connections and engage with those buyers, and position yourself as a Subject Matter Expert or Thought Leader.

Let’s do a quick review of each of the platforms…

November 21, 2016

Planning for revenue growth in 2017: Part 3 of 6

5 Ways to Spruce up your LinkedIn Profile

In the first two weeks of this 6-week series on getting ready for growth in 2017, we discussed:

• Reaching out to past clients
• Blogging

Today, we tackle social media… specifically – how to improve and enhance your LinkedIn profile.

Our research shows that the first action a prospective client will take when conducting their due diligence on new suppliers is to go to their websites. No surprise. The second thing? They visit the LinkedIn profiles of the firm’s key executives and the ‘sales rep.’

So, it’s critical that your LinkedIn profiles are as up-to-date and complete as possible. To that end, here are 5 tips for sprucing yours up…