One of the most underutilized social networks, from a marketing and marketing standpoint, is LinkedIn. Despite more than 396 million users, the truth is that most users have no idea what to do with their LinkedIn account in addition to randomly collecting connections . It's actually a very robust business tool that you should use to develop your brand, your network and your social credibility.
I only have space to dig into some of the major ways you should use the tool, but even doing it will put you jumps and limits ahead of most of.
It's hard to deny the importance of having a big list these days. Most organizations use digital communication tools to deliver some of their marketing messages. But one of your most important list sources, your LinkedIn database, is missing all these communications unless you have these connections in the email marketing tool that you using.
On the other hand, you have a lot of contacts that you have made over the years that are not part of your LinkedIn profile. The reason why it is so important is that some of these people may very well be connected to someone you are trying to reach. If they are not part of your LinkedIn network, you can not tap these connections to your advantage.
Here are step-by-step instructions on how to easily perform both.
Upload your mailing list to LinkedIn and send your connection requests
- Connect to LinkedIn
- Hover over the "Connections" from the LinkedIn menu and click Add Connections
- From here you can enter the password of your email address and LinkedIn will go into your email account and match all your contacts with their member directory. LinkedIn will ask you if you want to send a login request to everyone who matches their directory. The first time you follow this process, you will probably add hundreds of new LinkedIn connections to your profile.
Why is it important? As I said earlier, the more connections you have in your database, the better you can really log in and request introductions, and so on. But beyond that, your ability to see leads in LinkedIn's advanced lead generator depends on the number of network people (1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections). If you expand your network, you will increase the number of leads you are allowed to see.
Once you have imported your mailing list, do not forget to communicate regularly with your contacts. You should start sharing articles, Facebook posts from your company, etc. on LinkedIn. Keep in mind that the more people you have in your network, the more people will potentially see and share your content.
Export your list of LinkedIn connections and upload them to your mailing list
LinkedIn is the only social media platform that allows you to export the email addresses of your connections. By adding them to your database – you can better navigate, tag and communicate through newsletters, and more.
- Click on "Connections"
- Click on the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen
- Click the Export LinkedIn Connections link under the Advanced Settings option
- Click on the Export blue button and you will be able to download a CSV file with all the data of your connections
- You must then download the CSV file to your marketing automation software or e-mail tool
None of these elements of action is a type of thing once done. You regularly add people to both databases. You should therefore repeat the export and import strategies at least once a quarter to keep both sides of the system as up-to-date as possible.