I’m going to give you some simple tips on promoting yourself and your business on LinkedIn. How often should you promote on LinkedIn without destroying your visibility and making LinkedIn pay its way for the effort you put in?
The risk of over-promoting is that you ruin your engagement and visibility. The risk of under-promoting is that you get ‘friend-zoned’, in other words, people love your content but nobody understands or see’s how you can help them.
Neither is good.
Direct Promotion
20% of your content should be DIRECT promotion. One in every five posts should be unambiguously promotional. When I mean direct promotion, I mean DIRECT. Tell people how you can help, what your process is and how to buy/sign up. You can include the price in there too.
Why?
I don’t expect that you will be flooded with sales, but you will make your offer very clear. It takes 21 touchpoints to win a new client, and many of them will be content-based before any conversation takes place.
You should make 20% of your content promotional so that people understand what you do and how you do it.
When I am saying directly promotional, I mean literally ‘BUY MY STUFF’ tell people to DM you if they want to know more or book a call, but make it clear what it is you are selling and why it matters.
These types of posts are clearly promotional.
When you write this kind of post ask yourself these questions:
- Did I tell people what it is?
- Did I tell people who this is for?
- Did I tell people the results it delivers?
- Did I tell people the problem it solves?
- Did I tell people how to buy or learn more?
Remember 1 in 5 posts should be this!
If you don’t do this, you’ll have a crowd of people who have no idea how to buy from you or the value of your service to them.
In-direct Promotion
In-direct promotion is where you subtly reference your services through stories and expertise.
This could be a reference point:
“One of my clients in our Accelerator programme recently asked me….”
It could be a testimonial:
“Tim recently joined the Accelerator, he just got his second new client”
It could be even more low-key:
“Here is why I love what I do”
You’re not doing the BUY MY STUFF post, but you are in-directly referencing what you do…
This kind of post should be one of your main stables. It doesn’t tell people exactly what you do but has references, even if those references are very low key.
These kinds of posts build awareness of your offer, a little bit of curiosity and of course, help people see the amazing things you do through the lens of a story.
Think of in-direct promotion as a seed of your Direct Promotion woven into the main point of your post. A passing reference.
These types of posts should be 40% of your content – 2 in every 5 posts.
Subtle Promotion
This is even more indirect. This type of post is not about referencing your services, it’s about helping people build trust and a level of relationship.
Some might say, this is not a promotion at all.
This type of content is about showing your expertise and connecting with people.
One of the reasons I’m an advocate of giving lots of value away for free is that it helps build massive trust in the market.
Being seen as a trusted expert is important because it is one of the pillars that supports your offer to the market.
Nobody buys from people they don’t trust or believe in.
Building relatability with your audience through personal stories is foundational, people don’t buy from people they don’t know.
Finally, you need some content to attract an audience, people don’t follow you for your direct promotions. They follow you for the value you deliver.
They want to see more of you because you have something of value to offer.
This type of content should make up 2 in 5 posts.
So, the summary…
- 20% direct promotion
- 40% indirect promotion
- 40% subtle promotion
Don’t be afraid to promote.
But likewise, don’t do it too often, over-promoting your offer will kill your visibility.
The smart move is to sandwich your direct promotion in the middle of the week, then wrap your indirect and subtle around it.
PS – If you want to get more clients maybe we should talk! Drop me a DM over on LinkedIn and I’ll show you my method for growing your business.