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LinkedIn is known for being a hub for corporate networking. As a result, many entrepreneurs and small business owners overlook the platform and assume it isn’t for them. However, if your ideal clients are on LinkedIn and you don’t have a LinkedIn strategy, you’re likely missing out on business.
With this in mind, we are thrilled to have Deirdre Martin—founder of Deirdre Martin Consulting—on the Priority Pursuit Podcast to go over LinkedIn strategies for business growth.
According to Deirdre, many small businesses grow rapidly because their founders are excellent at what they do, but they reach a point when they outgrow their brand, marketing, and customer experiences, which impacts profitability and sales.
Deirdre knows that most small business owners want to outshine their competition, increase market share, and have a reputation that precedes them so that sales and growth will take care of themselves. To do that, they need a unique brand strategy—and that strategy should include LinkedIn.
What kinds of small businesses should use LinkedIn and why?
B2B Services
If you are a B2B service business, Deirdre thinks LinkedIn is definitely the platform you want to be on. Since it is a professional platform, most businesses are there already. And when you are searching for other businesses or potential clients, LinkedIn allows you to filter and search for the exact people you want to connect with.
In contrast, looking for these specific people on other platforms can be extremely difficult. Imagine trying to find a bookkeeper using Instagram. You’re going to have a much more difficult time filtering through accounts to find someone that actually matches what you’re looking for. Meanwhile, on LinkedIn, you’d be able to quickly search and find both people and businesses that are aligned with your search.
With this in mind, it makes sense for you to use LinkedIn above all other platforms if you’re business is focused on B2B.
B2C Services
If your focus is on B2C but the customers you serve are individuals who are showing up on LinkedIn in a professional capacity for the companies or organizations that they work with, they’re again much more searchable on LinkedIn.
For example, imagine that you’re a business coach. Using LinkedIn makes it much easier to search for individuals that may be interested in your specific services. Let’s say you want to have more C-suite executives as clients. It’s much more difficult to find these people on Instagram or Facebook or any other social media platform. But again, it’s easy to search for and find your target audience on LinkedIn.
According to Dierdre, LinkedIn in 2024 has become a bit like what Facebook was like when it first came out. It’s much more accepted now to post less structured and more personalized content like what you did over the weekend. This makes it easier to authentically be yourself and connect with the right people on LinkedIn above all other platforms.
How can individuals leverage LinkedIn to build a strong personal brand?
Deirdre shares that there are actually a few different ways you can leverage LinkedIn strategies for business growth and the growth of your personal brand. One of these is through thought leadership.
If you’ve got an opinion about anything related to the industry or a sector that you’re in, share what your thoughts are. These posts don’t need to be big long articles. They can be posts styled like tweets or you can repost things from other organizations and businesses.
When Dierdre worked in financial services before she started her own business, she started building a personal brand on LinkedIn. She had around 3000 followers, and those were mostly clients and colleagues from her work in finance. However, that basis gave her the ability to build her personal brand.
She admits that at the beginning she was nervous that these people would judge her for what she was posting. After all, she worked in financial services and was posting about business tips. However, as time went on, many of her followers also left financial services and ended up hiring her to support their new businesses. Those initial thoughts of anxiety turned out to be limiting beliefs that she had about the platform and about marketing herself as a brand on LinkedIn.
According to Dierdre, it’s important to articulate your thought leadership opinions into different types of content. If you’re comfortable on video, share it on video. If you’re comfortable speaking or talking on podcasts or audio, record audio posts and share them in that way. If you’re comfortable with writing, write your thoughts in posts, articles, or newsletters.
How to Stand Out on LinkedIn
Deirdre believes there are two things that really help you stand out on LinkedIn in terms of personal brand: Top Voice and engagement.
Top Voice
On LinkedIn, there’s now an opportunity to create what’s called a Top Voice. As a Top Voice, LinkedIn invites you to share your thoughts and opinions on various collaborative articles—which can help lend to your credibility as a thought leader. For this, you will see you have been invited to collaborate on an article via a message on your newsfeed. And when you choose to add to the article, it again gives you an extra layer of authority or credibility to your personal brand.
What can help you be invited to these Top Voice articles is to create the type of content that gets you a large number of followers or engagement quickly. To create this kind of content, Deirdre recommends focusing on a great hook.
It’s that hook that’s going to get people to stop scrolling and pay attention to what you’re saying. They’re only going to read what you say when they’re brought into what you’re saying. When you write a post with a headline that makes people stop scrolling, you’re getting your audience to pay attention and engage with your content. And, that is what helps the algorithm come back and find you so that you can get invited to become a Top Voice contributor.
Engagement
Another way to stand out and build your personal brand is to engage with other people’s pages. There are also niche groups that you can join to find more like-minded people and accounts. You can post in these specific groups which can help peers find and connect with you as well as build up your credibility in that field.
Likewise, you can go out and create connections based on other people’s connections. Again, this helps you build your personal brand and thought leadership as you grow your circle and influence.
How can small businesses optimize their LinkedIn profiles?
Deirdre explains that LinkedIn’s platform has something known as an SSI score. This SSI score calculates how much of your profile is completed—and how well it’s been done. You need to be sure to fill out as much of your profile as possible.
What to Include on Your LinkedIn Profile
When it comes to the experience section, you don’t need to include every job you’ve ever had. Instead, list the ones that are most relevant and current in terms of what you’re doing now.
You can also list other things on your profile such as licenses. For example, Deirdre is a StoryBrand Certified Guide, so she puts that on her profile. These, along with honors and awards, are important to add as they can build your credibility.
Deirdre shares that adding what languages you speak is important as well. If English is your native language, list it. If you speak another language, list that too. Someone may decide to connect or work with you because you’re bilingual.
Another element that can play a crucial role is your about section. Deirdre actually uses a tweaked version of her brand script for this. It’s important to include elements of this script, such as how people can reach you, how they can connect with you, and what the three steps are to work with you.
Your profile’s headline is especially important because it follows you everywhere you go—throughout all your posts, comments, and DM. That first section in terms of what you say about yourself and your brand, that tagline that you might use, is crucial.
However, Deirdre argues that the most important part of your profile is your URL. If you’re ready to start leveraging the platform, you need to edit your profile URL. When you don’t edit this URL, it will often have your name followed by random numbers. Instead, you can change it to say whatever you want. This makes you more searchable and easier to find.
What organic LinkedIn strategies work well for small businesses?
When it comes to growing organically on LinkedIn, Deirdre explains that she uses a combination of strategies, including a 4C strategy and a three-step content process that actually work for any platform.
The 4C Strategy
Content: You need to have really good content. That being said, at the beginning, you should go for quantity over quality and post as often as you can. Eventually, as you feel out the space, the quality will improve, but at this point, you’re trying to build up an audience and get people to know and understand what you do.
Connections: On LinkedIn, you can connect with a hundred people every single week. If you take 20 minutes, Monday to Friday, and connect with 20 people, you can help grow your audience.
Conversations: When you connect with people, you need to have conversations with them. As business leaders, sometimes we spend so much time consuming content that we forget to create it. Likewise, when we’re on a social media platform, we forget to be social. You need to have conversations with people when you connect with them.
Comment: You can’t ask people to engage with your content without you engaging with theirs. Be sure to comment on other people’s posts, specifically those that connect with you and your brand.
Focus on Content
Again, content is a major part of any social media strategy, especially LinkedIn. With this in mind, Deirdre has a three-step strategy that focuses on creating curiosity for people.
She argues that when you create curiosity for your audience, people are more likely to interact with you or become a follower. Likewise, you want to make engaging content. This kind of content nurtures your followers. It enlightens them and allows them know, like, and love you—which then can lead to the third step, creating converting content.
A mistake Dierdre sees a lot of people make on social media is that they are constantly trying to convert people. Every post is a sales post, and your audience just scrolls right past it. Instead, create and share content that adds value.
When working with this strategy, Deirdre suggests spending 80% of the time aiming for content that captures and engages followers. And then spend 20% of your time aiming for content that converts.
When you do that, what you’re doing is building that relationship with people through content. What makes this really effective is that it makes you as a business owner show up with value. And that value-driven content is the content that people will start to relate.
Results
Deirdre shares that one of her clients had huge success using these LinkedIn strategies for business growth. As a quantity surveying business in the construction industry, he was first focused on Instagram because that’s where he thought his target audience was.
However, thanks to his background as a professor and working in other businesses, he already had almost 7,000 followers on LinkedIn. Within three months of switching his focus to LinkedIn, he had 1 million impressions thanks to using Dierdre’s strategies and being himself.
How can you get started on LinkedIn?
First, Deirdre suggests going back to your brand and using that information to fill out as much of your profile as possible. Then, consider what your journey looks like. If you have a three-step plan in your brand script, can you break those steps down into the types of pillars of content you might talk about?
She gives the example of focusing on mindset as one of these pillars. What is your ideal clients’ mindset about what you do or what you offer? And then how can you talk about that in a way that will resonate with them? And consider who these people are. Who’s your niche? Who are you talking to? What are you going to talk to them about? This will guide your content and who you connect with.
Overall, Deirdre shares that you should just go for it. You’ve got nothing to lose. And, if you’re worried about people judging you, it’s likely the people you are worried about aren’t your ideal clients. Just focus on showing up for your ideal clients and forget everyone else. They’re never going to pay you anyway.
If you’re interested in learning more LinkedIn strategies for business growth, be sure to listen to this whole episode (at the top of the page or wherever you listen to podcasts) to hear more about Deirdre’s LinkedIn expertise. If you’d like to connect with Deirdre, you can check her out on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, listen to her podcast—”Master Your Business”—or visit her website: https://www.deirdremartin.ie/
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Take the Free Marketing Guiding Statements Mini Course
- Visit Deirdre’s Website
- Tune In To “Master Your Business”
- Receive 50% Off Your First Year of HoneyBook
- Learn More About Treefrog’s Small Business Marketing Resources & Services
- Join the Priority Pursuit Facebook Community
- Follow or DM Treefrog Marketing on Instagram
- Follow or DM Kelly Rice on Instagram
- Follow or DM Victoria Rayburn on Instagram
The Priority Pursuit Podcast is a podcast dedicated to helping small business owners define, maintain, and pursue both their personal and business priorities so they can build lives and businesses they love.
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