by I get messages every other day on LinkedIn from strangers telling me all of the things they do and how their service can help me so much. If you’re one of those people, I have bad news. You all sound the same. There is no differentiation. Even the ones with some cheeky brand voice that doesn’t sound like a Google Translate copy-paste sound the same.
Here is how you can get my attention.
Send me a link to your blog. Don’t tell me how awesome you are. Don’t tell me the laundry list of your services. Interest me. A cold call to my LinkedIn message box is top of funnel. Not in terms of me knowing about your services, but in terms of me knowing you. And when you all sound the same, I’m going to act like I already know everything you’ll say and ignore it.
So get tactical.
Cold-calling in LinkedIn messages is the new junk mail
A robotic message in my inbox is going to make me mad. I get the momentary excitement of a personal message only to see it’s a monstrous copy-pasted sales letter. That’s the worst. You don’t want to excite and then disappoint somebody right as you are trying to sell to them, right? This is just like the people who call me from a phone number that is one digit off from my wife’s number. All you’re going to do is make me frustrated.
Adopt a custom approach to getting leads from LinkedIn
Now once I share this, everyone I’ve ever talked to on LinkedIn is going to be suspicious of me. Look, I don’t do this, I just wish the people bugging me in my inbox would do this.
Ok?
We’re cool?
Ok, so here’s the deal. Read my posts on LinkedIn. You don’t have to friend me (because if I don’t know you, I won’t accept your request) to see my public posts. Read along and check back for a few weeks. Comment or like one of my posts, then when appropriate, comment. After a few posts, I might say something that resonates with your business. That’s your chance! That’s the moment you’ve been waiting for! If you really want to connect and talk about SEO or digital marketing like you said in your SPAM inbox message, here is your big chance!
Then comment and leave that relevant link to one of your blog posts that furthers the conversation. This is getting to know me at the coffee shop, 2023 digital style.
But this technique takes forever!
Yep. But scale it up. What if you genuinely got to know a lot of people like this? You’d actually build a community! You might build a whole bunch of acquaintances on LinkedIn that would follow you, instead of you getting rejected out of their inboxes.
That lady that messaged me above? I searched for her name on LinkedIn and I couldn’t even find it. Of course I’m not going to do business with her if I’m not even sure she’s a real person!
Be real. Respect and communicate with real people and you’ll become irresistible on LinkedIn.