9. INTERACT

With a growing network and a growing repository of quality content, you should keep the conversations going.

Don’t waste time on your LinkedIn home feed.

It’s where LinkedIn’s algorithms post messages from advertisers and other users.

Based on what shows up in my home feed, LinkedIn is not doing a very good job, but you can judge for yourself. Instead, check your Sales Navigator and observe what your connections and leads are doing and interact directly with them.

Keep in mind that although LinkedIn is the home of millions of professionals, not all of them are active. When you post something, only a tiny fraction of your network will see it. There are two reasons why.

The first reason is that they are not on LinkedIn around the time when you post. That happens often if you are in different time zones. A scheduling tool as Buffer or Hootsuite can help you overcome this issue. The second reason is that LinkedIn deliberately exposes your post to only a fraction of your connections. I think it’s around 100. If the post doesn’t get any major engagements within the first couple of hours, then they will kill the visibility of your post. If you only have a small target group, say less than ten million individuals and you post about niche issues, then it is unlikely that you’ll get enough organic engagement for LinkedIn to boost it.

The smaller your market is, and the bigger the deals you do, the more personal and specific you should be in the content you share.

Narrowing your focus on single companies is called Account-Based Marketing and Sales Navigator is an excellent tool to help you do this. You can pay LinkedIn to post your content in the feeds of a certain type of people within named companies. You can also find these individuals yourself and initiate contact and conversations.

You can use robots to send personalised direct messages to your 1st level connections. However, only do so with messages that have genuine value to the recipient and don’t do it too often.