I have used LinkedIn for many, many years now. When Viveka wrote LinkedIn Marketing, she wrote it in 2012. I remember many of the things she wrote about. Unfortunately, LinkedIn has stopped a number of these features. I am disappointed because many of the features removed were great.
In LinkedIn Marketing, Viveka walked through step-by-step how to get the most out of LinkedIn. The book has 354 pages and is divided into 11 chapters. In each chapter, Viveka focused on what you should learn one week at a time. She has you do specific tasks throughout the work week from Monday through Friday. At the end of 23 weeks, you should be a master of LinkedIn.
Why LinkedIn
In chapter one, Viveka talked about the theory of inbound marketing, provided some history on LinkedIn, and talked about the future of LinkedIn. Viveka strongly believes in the importance and power of LinkedIn, and this comes through repeatedly in her book. She believes LinkedIn is a tool to help you not only find other people but to be found as a business entity.
Personal Profile
In the first few chapters, Viveka provided direction on how to create your profile. She did this by having you research yourself and collect information that she later instructed you to use while developing your profile. One of the things that I liked was that she had you capture this information as an external document such as a Word or Google document rather than rely entirely on LinkedIn. She also shared how to explore profiles as a PDF. In great detail, she walked the reader through basically everything LinkedIn had to offer and gave a great orientation to the program. She helped make you feel comfortable before diving in and actually using LinkedIn.
Throughout LinkedIn Marketing, she provided additional resources through links. These links went out to documents, blog posts, or other applications that will enhance your experience with LinkedIn.
As you develop your profile, Viveka shared detailed insight to what will help you get the best results. She is truly an expert in using this program. While setting up your LinkedIn profile, she also wanted you to understand why you are taking specific actions. Basically, you have to establish goals and make decisions for improving your profile based on these goals. When developing a profile, Viveka had you do a deep dive on keyword searches relevant to your business. You use these keywords throughout your profile to increase your ability to be found. She shared many different ways of finding these keywords and ways that you can use them to improve your profile.
Throughout LinkedIn Marketing, she used great examples that she apparently uses as part of her business. She shared various scripts, email examples, and other templates to help you get the best results from LinkedIn.
I will be personally returning to chapters two and three to benefit from her lessons as I improve my personal profile.
Company Profile
Next, Viveka moved into creating a company profile. She recommended if you have a company or are part of a company, your company should have a profile. Just as she had done with the personal profile, she went into great detail on how to develop company profiles. One area that specifically grabbed my attention was being able to list services, since I am presently drafting descriptions of my services. This is something that I will benefit from.
In both their personal profile and the company profile, Viveka explained the relevant analytics and how to access them.
Building Networks
Viveka wanted you to spend 6 weeks on creating your network, managing your network, and growing your network. She differentiated between open and strategic networkers and why you should have some of both as part of your own connections. She talked about how to add connections through the various means LinkedIn provides. She provided insights on how to properly engage connections, connecting with people you know as well as conducting cold calls for people that you do not know yet. To find new connections, you should use LinkedIn’s search feature. Viveka provided a lot of great information on how to get the best out of the search.
At one time, LinkedIn had a very useful way of using tags to be able to email connections. Unfortunately, LinkedIn has removed this capability; hopefully, they will add it in the future. Nonetheless, Viveka provided guidance on tagging contacts and being able to regularly communicate with them. She also shared details for how to monitor your network and how to ensure you are getting the messages you need to help your business.
Groups
Viveka provided great guidance on interacting with groups. She does believe that you need to be part of different groups and she gave guidance on which groups to join. She emphasized the importance of interacting with groups to set yourself out as an expert in your field. She also indicated one of the best ways of doing this is to create your own group. One of the things I am thinking of doing for my area is creating a group so that I can talk with various business leaders to learn more about their needs. Part of working with groups is the importance of building processes and templates to help you communicate easier and better with those that want to participate.
Other LinkedIn Options
Chapter 7 of the book was basically no longer relevant. A great majority of the features such as LinkedIn answers, LinkedIn events, many of the applications, are no longer a part of LinkedIn.
Putting It All Together
In Chapter 8, Viveka shared a content and communication plan that you could use with your connections. She explained how to create an inbound marketing connection strategy, how to create a content calendar, and how to develop messages for the content calendar. One of the useful ideas that I found in this particular chapter was called the “Understand 3 and 3.” This idea had you reaching out to 3 past connections and reaching out to 3 new connections every week. She provided some guidance on how to do that.
Getting It All Done
In Chapter nine, Viveka shared a checklist that would help you not only get your account started but also keep you on track every day, every week, and every quarter so that you were getting the most out of LinkedIn.
LinkedIn for Specific Groups
The very last chapter of Viveka’s book, LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day,
All in all, I thought it was a great book; however, I was disappointed that I got to it four years too late. Would I recommend it? I would have to say yes. Viveka shared a lot of insight on how to use LinkedIn for business, and she shared these insights throughout this book. In order for you to benefit from her lessons, you will have to closely examine LinkedIn and find the ideas that work for you. When I was reading this book, I had a computer open and I explored LinkedIn in great detail. As I was reading, I discovered what things no longer worked. While doing this, I also learned a great deal about LinkedIn. There are still a lot of great lessons in this book.
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