LinkedIn – just another social media platform or a useful tool for Contractors?
- 7 Sep 2018
An article by Matt Craven, Founder of The CV & Interview Advisors, IPSE Affiliate Partner and expert on wining work in the Contract market
You could be forgiven for thinking that LinkedIn is just another pointless social media platform with endless debate about ‘nothing much’, appearing on your feed. Heck, LinkedIn themselves even think they’re a social media platform, which in many ways they are - BUT, the issue with that is, it sends a lot of people who might benefit from its capabilities running for the hills.
I prefer to look at it a different way – think of LinkedIn as one enormous database which contains every single one of your clients. If you have the Business Premium or Sales Navigator licence (which will cost you about £60 p/m), not only can you search for your ideal client, but you can also reach out to them. The search capability of LinkedIn means you can narrow your search to the endth degree and come up with the most targeted hit list of clients possible.
In many ways, searching, finding and connecting with potential clients is the easy bit; knowing how to reach out to them requires a bit more thought, but nevertheless, still achievable for the average Contractor.
The key is to combine thought leadership with a great LinkedIn profile and an outreach campaign.
This requires the writing of intelligent and relevant articles / blogs (perhaps not dissimilar to this one) and posting them onto LinkedIn. It could involve posting a video or running a webinar. Whatever it is, it should be designed to raise your profile and elevate you to authority status in your field.
Of course, none of this works if you don’t have a great LinkedIn profile. Just the same as marketing campaigns don’t work if you have a terrible sales / landing page. A good LinkedIn profile needs to include some key nuggets including a value proposition statement; a go-to-market description; your USPs; a description of what you do, who you do it for and how it benefits them; it should also include some information about your philosophy and ethos to your work; other techniques such as ‘reference framing’, ‘social proofing’ and ‘harnessing sycophantism’ can also be used. The idea is to create a LinkedIn profile that makes your target audience want to engage with you.
If you would like to learn more about how to write a LinkedIn profile and how to use it as a tool for generating Contract work, join the IPSE webinar on Thursday 13th September at 7.15pm by registering here for free.
You can also request a free LinkedIn critique here
Meet the author
