Uncategorized

LinkedIn Engagement Challenge September 2018

0 Comments
August 31, 2018
by Charlie
Charlie Whyman LinkedIn Services

7-Day LinkedIn Engagement Challenge – September 2018

Learn about the 8-week LinkedIn Masterclass

Watch the webinar replay from 7th September

 
Learn about the 8-week LinkedIn Masterclass
Challenge Day 1: Webinar Replay

Click here to download the webinar slides

Challenge Day 2: Engaging with others

Welcome to day 2 of the challenge!

Today I want to talk to you about engagement – not the marriage kind, but the real-life, communicate with others in an authentic way kind.
There’s a lot of chatter online about using LinkedIn to collect connections and contacts and just sit on them until they come to you, however this seems a bit strange to me.
In my world this is a bit like giving someone your business card at a networking meeting and then walking off before introducing yourself or getting to know the person you gave the card too!
Believe it or not – behind 99% of LinkedIn profiles are real people. Real life human beings with personalities, interests and a unique network of their own.
Yesterday I asked you to introduce yourself in the LinkedIn group and today you’ll find out why.
Your challenge for today is to head back into the LinkedIn group and read through the comments. I’d like you to send a direct message to ONE person in the group that you’d like to learn more about – use what they wrote in their introduction as a conversation and starting point.
If you struggle with what to say you can always resort to ‘Charlie told me to and we’re both in the same challenge so hi’ but ONLY use this as a last resort I’ve every confidence that you can think of something more imaginative than this.

As a bonus why not work with this person over the next 7 days to sense-check content or ask for their opinion on something. I know this challenge is only 7-days but having an accountability buddy or someone who’s in it with you can also help out massively!

Don’t worry if you’re not directly connected to that person – you don’t even need to send them a connection request as LinkedIn will let you contact up to 10-15 members of the same group per month even if they aren’t a 1st degree connection. That’s good of them right?!

So to prove you’ve done this (this is a challenge after all and also LinkedIn engagement is all about strength in numbers) please comment on the latest thread in the group something you’ve learnt about this other person and what they have to offer their ideal customers.

So that’s it and you should be able to do this in less than 20 minutes!
If you have questions or need help with anything please post your question in the group and I’ll get back to you – remember, I’m here to support you throughout this challenge!

 

Challenge Day 3: WHO's attention are you after?
Welcome to day 3 of the challenge!
I know it’s a Sunday and not a working day, however I did tell you this was a 7-day challenge so it would be a bit daft of me not to give you something to do or at least think about for each of the 7 days right?! 🙂 I also hope you are enjoying your weekend and doing something for you and not just working.
Anyway, today’s challenge is more of a thinking challenge (still very important though!)
I want you to think about – and ideally decide – who is the ONE person you’re going to target for the next 5 days? Is it your ideal client, a potential investor, a journalist or editor you want to target for some media coverage, a potential new candidate for a role you’re recruiting for?
Do you remember the one thing I wanted you to take away from the webinar?
When you speak to everyone you actually end up speaking to no one.
So for the next 5 days you’re going to be much more specific and targeted about who you aim your content at in order to stand out and truly be heard by the people that you want to hear you.
For example – if you’re keen to attract new clients using LinkedIn and you have a local business then you might have more luck (and higher quality leads) if you talked about the region or area you are targeting in your content. It would be a bit inefficient to attract the interest of someone far away that you couldn’t serve right?!
So this is your first task – get a clear idea in your mind about the ONE person (not group of people) that you’re going to aim your content at.
Your second talk is to think about what you want to be KNOWN for or REMEMBERED for and write down a few ideas.
Here’s another example to explain – I’ve seen a few people post very negative or grumpy comments and posts on LinkedIn – I’m pretty certain that these people don’t want to be known for being grumpy or negative all the time however this is the impression they are leaving on the people that see their content and this is what they will be REMEMBERED for as time moves forwards. The same goes for knowledge and expertise – do you want to be known as being an expert or specialist in your field or someone more generic or broad?
Can you think of anyone you’ve seen post on LinkedIn that’s got a generic or broad experience and doesn’t specialise? I’m guessing not as people that come across as generic aren’t remembered as much as people that are specific and targeted.
So this is your second task as this is important for your long term success on LinkedIn – what do YOU want to be KNOWN for. Write it down if you can and pin it somewhere obvious! It will help I promise! Also if you can please post what you’ve decided in the group I can support you and hold you accountable too! I’ve created a new conversation in the group for you to comment on too.
If you’d like some help or support on this please post your questions in the group and I’ll get back to you!
See you in the group!
Challenge Day 4: Posting Activity - What do you wish your market knew?
Today’s challenge relates to yesterday’s thinking and involves posting!
Have a think about the ONE thing (try and be as specific as possible if you can) you wishthat ONE person you decided on yesterday, knew about your industry and market. Something you know that they probably don’t.
Just ONE thing.
It’s so easy to try and talk about lots of things in one post, one article or one video however if you can cover just one thing at a time you will achieve much greater success.

TOP TIP: This is a good way to create lots of content because you can create 4-5 posts out of the one post you were originally going to publish! 🙂

Now you’ve thought about this you can either write it down in a new post and publish it OR if you’re feeling confident record a quick video with your phone and publish that!
Before you hit publish, please end your post with the hashtag #LEVELUP. When you do this I can see that you’ve actually posted it and completed Challenge number 4 and other members of the group can find it and support you by engaging with it.
If you’ve got an extra 2 minutes spare, once you’ve published your post – click the #LEVELUP hashtag and have a look at what other members of the challenge have posted and give the post a friendly like or better still a comment of encouragement!
That’’s it for today!
Be sure to comment ‘DONE’ on the latest thread in the group relating to Challenge Day 4!

Challenge Day 5: Helping others & adding value
Are you starting to build a bit of momentum yet? If you’ve had any successes – even small wins please post them in the group as they will encourage and support others too! Believe it or not but simple acts like this can really help others and this leads me nicely into today’s challenge.
Helping others.
LinkedIn is a network and successful networking is all about the win-win. It’s as much about how you can help the people in your network as how much they can help you!
Today I’d like you to spend a bit of time scrolling through your newsfeed and reading the posts that other people have published. When you see something you could add value to – offer a recommendation, answer a question, share a resource or be of use in some way then do so.
If you know someone that could help then tag them in the comments by using the @ mention option on the mobile app or by typing @ and then the person’s name.
TOP TIP #1: Don’t just tag someone in a post and leave it there. Explain why you’re tagging that person in the post – this will help give the person you are tagging a bit of context and also help them stand a better chance of the person responsible for the post taking notice of them or reaching out to them in the first instance because they have context.
TOP TIP #2: SHOW don’t tell – if you’re offering advice add some context or an example. Your comment will be seen by your network and also the network of the person who posted so you have an opportunity to reach a wider audience. The more relevant/interesting/valuable/thought provoking your comment – the more likely someone is to go and view your profile, like or comment back and also remember you.

 

The key with all content on LinkedIn is to reduce the amount of direct promotional content to less than 20% of everything you publish. Promotional content puts people off right away and will make them scroll past, even if you have some really valuable things to say – set yourself up as an expert, be visible, be authentic and the rest will come.

Don’t forget – if you’ve got questions I’ll be hanging out in the LinkedIn group to answer so be sure to post your questions in there.
Until tomorrow..

Challenge Day 6: The power of a frequently asked question
Welcome to Challenge Day 6!
Today is a REALLY exciting day as the new LinkedIn groups features are now being rolled out so you should find interacting in the group much easier – you can also reply to comments on posts, add images AND upload video straight into the group if you like! 
I’m guessing you might not be as excited as me however I remember the good old days of LinkedIn groups where you could use them to have interesting and valuable discussions with people in your industry! It’s a sign of good things to come i’m sure of it!
Even more of an excuse to learn more engagement tactics in this challenge!
Anyway….
Today’s challenge is all about content again and making life easy for yourself when it comes to generating content ideas and what to post.
Think back to that ONE person you identified on Day 3. Try and think of as many questions as possible that you might be asked if they wanted to work with you.
For example, when I worked for a company called 3D Laser Mapping I was constantly asked what the difference was between accuracy and precision when it comes to looking at the technical specification of a laser scanner. The first time I was asked this question I literally had no idea however I’d heard someone ask a colleague before so I set out to find the answer. Shortly after, I went to a trade show where I was asked this question again and again and heard others being asked this question. As it turned out most people didn’t really understand the real difference between the two and some people didn’t even ask it because they didn’t want to appear stupid.
This was in my trial and error days of using LinkedIn so I created a post which answered the question very briefly and received a huge amount of engagement that day – more than I’d ever received before – including MORE questions. I later turned that post into an article with the help from the technical team which went on to receive a lot more interest as well as quite a few leads and opportunities off the back of it – INCLUDING an opportunity to write an even more detailed article for a specialist laser scanning publication.
The moral of this story is not to presume that everyone in your industry and market knows what you know. What you think is obvious isn’t the same for your ideal customers. The technical team at 3D Laser Mapping would never dream of posting an article about accuracy v precision because to them it was obvious yet the market really wanted to know the answer without looking stupid and they valued us more so because we helped translate the technical info into language they could understand and relate to.
So your challenge today is to post the answer to a question you get asked a lot and a question that ONE person you identified would be interested to learn more about. If you’re feeling brave you could also do a video! 😉
If you’re struggling to think of questions relating to what you do there is a PHENOMENAL online resource called answerthepublic dot com. If you go to this website and type in a keyword relating to your industry (Try ‘LinkedIn’ and see what happens) it will generate a list of the most commonly asked questions on the web relating to that question! I’ll warn you – this website is pretty addictive however it’s also an amazing help and time saving trick!
Don’t forget to include one hashtag with your keyword and #LevelUp so we can find it. Let me know how you get on in the group!

 

Challenge Day 7: Engaging with your ideal clients specifically
Welcome to Day 7 of the challenge!
If you’re wondering if this is the last day of the challenge then don’t worry! Tomorrow we’ll be wrapping up the challenge with a webinar and you’ll also have your opportunity to get your questions answered live on the call too! I’ve added the link to register at the bottom if you’ve not yet done so.
Today’s challenge is all about engaging with people you’d really like to work with and in my experience this is a much more effective way of attracting enquiries and getting yourself in front of the right people. (It’s a bit of a ninja tactic!)
Think back to Day 3 of the challenge and that ONE person you’d like to direct your content at and engage with. Your challenge today is to go and run a quick search based on your criteria (for example Photographer, and set the search filter to just search in your area of interest), pick someone that looks to fit with your identified ONE person (ideally in your 2nd deg network) and look at this person’s profile.

This could be an ideal customer OR it could be someone that’s influential in your industry and can get you in front of a larger number of your ideal customers.

Scroll down to their activity section and look at their recent activity (what they’ve posted themselves, commented on and liked)
Have a look and see if you can find something they have commented on recently and if you can add something useful or of value to the post/conversation then add it.
If there is no activity, run the search again, choose another person and do this until you find a post you can add value to.
Once you’ve done this, post a comment in the group and let me know how you got on!
That’s it! Oh and don’t forget to register for the Challenge wrap-up and Q&A webinar tomorrow
See you in the group and hopefully on the webinar tomorrow at 3:30pm UK time!

 

Learn more about the 8-week LinkedIn Masterclass

Related Posts

Speaking as a Marketing Strategy

Speaking as a Marketing Strategy

Sep 16, 2022

Do you know how long it takes you to build trust with your audience?  How many messages go back and forth before you’ve truly built a relationship online?  I’m guessing the...

read more

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *