Almost every business professional has a LinkedIn account but sadly, most are not active LinkedIn users. An active user is someone who logs into LinkedIn more than once a month. According to LinkedIn, active users increased to 40% last year, up from 23% which is great news.
According to Hubspot, LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter.
So how do you find active LinkedIn users who are interested in your products or services?
One of my favorite ways to find and follow targeted, active users is to find hashtag communities with a large following.
In case you’re not familiar with hashtag communities, go to your LinkedIn home page and look towards the bottom of the left column where you will see a widget with Groups and Followed Hashtag links. Click on Discover More and you will see a grid of hashtags you can follow.
Another way to find popular hashtags is to search for a hashtag in LinkedIn search. Let’s say you’re a coach and you’re looking for people who want to learn about motivation or are interested in motivational content.
Search LinkedIn for #motivation and you’ll see a list of all hashtags using motivation.
When you Follow a hashtag, content posted or shared on LinkedIn using that hashtag in the description will appear in your newsfeed. This is a great way to customize the content you see in your newsfeed.
As you see, #motivation has a large following with over 13 million LinkedIn users who are interested in motivational content.
Not bad if you’re a motivational coach looking for new clients.
As you scroll through your newsfeed, you’ll see content which contains #motivation posted by 1st, 2nd and 3rd level connections. You know these people are active LinkedIn users because they’re sharing content right now.
If you see interesting content posted by a 2nd level connection, you can Like, Comment or Share the content. You can also invite that person to connect with you. Remember to customize your invitation note and let them know you enjoyed their post and would like to connect with them. You’ll get at least a 90% acceptance rate.
After they accept your invitation to connect, follow up with a short welcome message/thank you for connecting message to continue the conversation. Now is not the time to start selling. Now is the time to get to know each other. Sales will come after they get to know, like and trust you and if you have a product or service that will solve a problem for them.
If you want more LinkedIn and social selling tips, get my #1 best selling book Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business Third Edition and visit my website at YourLinkedInCoach.com
