LinkedIn might seem much less active of a platform than say, Facebook or Twitter, but make no mistake, you are being watched. Those who follow you (and even those who don’t) read everything you publish on the LinkedIn publishing platform.
LinkedIn has more than 467 million total users. 106 million are active users, 1.5 million are groups, and the platform available in 24 languages, which makes for more than 40% of users active on a daily basis. LinkedIn InMail, in particular, has truly been a way to reach absolutely anyone on LinkedIn.
It’s a fantastic way to get heard, make business happen, do outreach, hire people, and more. It has a ton of potential, however, most marketers and business owners don’t use it as they should.
Here are a few mistakes marketers and entrepreneurs do when it comes to LinkedIn InMail:
LinkedIn InMail is not a corporate email
Honestly, even corporate email shouldn’t have to be so boring and rigid (but we aren’t getting there). However, LinkedIn InMail should never sound like you are addressing and writing to 50,000 slaves. There have been plenty of InMails that we’ve seen that start with “To whomsoever, it may concern”. Even a simple “Hi” works better than anything fancy you might want to try. Know why you are sending the InMail in the first place, be clear and keep the InMail short, but keep it personal.
Do your due diligence
Whatever you do with LinkedIn InMail, don’t use it for spam. Just getting that out of the way…
Now, before reaching out to be people, it helps if you do some research and find out a little about them at least. Who are they? What do they do? Where do they live? What are they passionate about?
Just a little digging around fetches you a lot of information about the people you are trying to connect with. Anything starting with “Dear LinkedIn User…” is a disaster even before you begin typing it.
Your tendency to sell
If you could make money just by shooting out template emails to hundreds or thousands of people, anyone could have made money doing it. Sadly, it just won’t work. Although sending emails or LinkedIn InMails specifically is easy enough.
This approach doesn’t work since people are programmed to avoid sales messages. We don’t like being sold to. We don’t want others to keep badgering us until we part with our hard-earned cash. When you try to be aggressive with selling, you turn people off, simply because we like to buy stuff when we are ready for it, when we can, or when the time is right.
Using LinkedIn InMail to sell is the worst thing you could do. If you’ve been trying to do it, it’s best to stop now.
Not building relationships
LinkedIn InMail is a way for you to reach anyone on LinkedIn. Meanwhile, LinkedIn, in general, is a platform built with the sole purpose of connecting people professionally. As such, you were to use a LinkedIn email to build relationships.
As Melanie Dodaro of LinkedIn puts it, you should use LinkedIn email to let people know why you want to connect, look for ways to build the relationship genuinely by finding commonalities and seek to actually get to know the real person behind the profile. Build these relationships by being proactive – share their posts, respond to their updates, congratulate them when they reach milestones, and be their advocate.
Not Providing value first
Your first tendency to put a LinkedIn email to use is to reach out to people, explain why you want to connect, and more. If you noticed, all of that is selfish. The focus is on you.
Use LinkedIn InMail to reach out to them with a specific solution to a problem they wrote about somewhere either on LinkedIn, their blog or within a group. Send InMail to provide the data, insights, or a quick solution to something you are exceptionally good at or that which your business is based on (or relates to).
How do you use your LinkedIn InMail?
Let’s help your business get social! We can help create, manage and execute a creative social media marketing plan that will provide the best content and results for your company using all social media platforms.