There are millions of users and billions of data points on LinkedIn, but most people still miss the mark in fully grasping how to leverage their profile to grow their business on LinkedIn.
What if I told you there’s a powerful method I’ve been advocating for years to help LinkedIn users get found by their ideal audience, and LinkedIn recently made that process even easier?
Here’s what you need to know.
LinkedIn Announces “Search Appearances” Feature
Your LinkedIn profile and all its data points, along with the other 500 million users on the network, make up the world’s largest search engine for professionals — LinkedIn Search.
In my business teaching others how to sell on LinkedIn, I’ve been an advocate for this underutilized feature on the network for sometime, as it is invaluable in helping grow your business on LinkedIn.
By connecting you with a hyper-specific, hyper-targeted list of prospects, LinkedIn Search is your key to find quality leads that will increase your sales.
LinkedIn is helping you realize this power even more, as it recently released a new feature called “Search Appearances.”
“With our new Search Appearances feature which begins rolling out this week, you can now go to your LinkedIn Profile on both mobile and desktop and see how many people found you from a LinkedIn search,” LinkedIn shared in a recent blog.
You can then leverage this data to see how well your profile is being found by your ideal audience.
Boost Your Sales by Reverse Engineering
In order to grow your business on LinkedIn, you can reverse-engineer the job titles and industry types or company types of people viewing your profile and roll those into your LinkedIn prospecting efforts.
Meaning, you can edit your profile to reflect the industry keywords that will show up inside a LinkedIn Search.
You can also use this information to refine the content you create and share on LinkedIn.
For example, if you sell marketing services, and you find your profile is being viewed by people in a particular industry (Accounting and CPAs, for example), you could add a job title – such as CPA – and include that as part of a headline for a LinkedIn article.
Here’s what your headline might look like: “5 Tips CPA’s need to know about Marketing on LinkedIn!”
How to Win on LinkedIn
In addition to increasing your number of Search Appearances, there are several other little games inside the platform help you improve your efforts.
This “gamification” of LinkedIn can be attributed to Co-Founder Reid Hoffman’s passion for strategy games – which he credits much of his entrepreneurial success.
“Business is the systematic playing of games,” he’s fond of saying.
Reaching “All Star” profile status for example, is part of a game featuring a meter that ranks and gives you quick tips to refine your profile.
The “Social Selling Index” is another game or ranking that measures how effective you are at establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships help you win business.
Using these features will help you crack the code to win both new business and new opportunities on the world largest network for professionals!