LinkedIn Automation in the time of Covid-19

As you might or might not know Dux-Soup runs a bi-weekly webinar series on all aspects of LinkedIn automation.

We don’t usually publish numbers or figures, but I can reveal that our last webinar had over 1500 registrations - with just under 800 people actually attending on the day.

Additional recording views (anyone that registers for the webinar gets an automatic recording sent to them) and hits on our YouTube channel and website take the number much higher.

This upward trend (we have seen numbers climbing steadily since the beginning of March) led to me start thinking about new working practices and trends forced by lockdowns around the world, how these restrictions have impacted our users - and what they could be doing as a result.

LinkedIn usage

First it’s important to point out that social media usage has spiked since the crisis began and LinkedIn is no different, stating that it has recorded a 55% boost in users engaging with the platform over the last few weeks.

Professionals have been logging on to LinkedIn to stay informed, and to keep updated as to how other businesses are handling the situation, in order to inform their own approach.

LinkedIn engagement has been increasing for some time, so it's not surprising to see more people turning to the platform for professional advice.

And this week, LinkedIn has provided some tips on how people can make best use of its platform to better connect and engage with their networks. More of that later.

With this spike in usage looking set to continue it’s a good time to optimise your LinkedIn prospecting processes. After all there are more people using the platform and more regularly – than ever.

WFH

Ah – working from home or ‘WFH’ as it’s known the world over. Who knew that this was to become the default work setting for a huge proportion of the world’s population - and literally overnight.

But what does this actually mean? For our users, who predominantly work in or supporting sales and marketing activity, it means:

• No tradeshows or events

• No time ‘on the road’

• No possibility of face to face (F2F) contact

• No dinners, drinks or social gatherings with prospects or clients

• Deals being pushed back or drying up

• A possible need to find new revenue streams or income (quick mention here for the new Dux-Soup Affiliate program that some users have turned to for supplementary income)

Time on your hands

But, in talking to our users on support, booster or technical calls, on webinars and by email, WFH also means:

• More time to spend on LinkedIn

• More time to plan how LinkedIn might offset some of the current restrictions on sales and marketing activity

• Virtual events come under consideration – see our webinar program as an example of how people are open to accessing virtual events in place of physical events

• Now is a good time to optimize how you use Dux-Soup – people have more time to play around with all the features and buttons that they don’t currently use in order to further automate or improve their lead gen process

o Note that we’ve seen significant uptake in our booster and technical calls that supports this point.

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Housekeeping

No – we’re not here to lecture you on keeping a tidy house during lockdown! Having two small children and a dog I know this is a real headache and unfortunately one that Dux can’t solve!

But - we always recommend that you do a degree of LinkedIn housekeeping as standard practice. It definitely pays to have good housekeeping practices online when it comes to automation. But we also know that in reality its hard to get to this with everything else that is usually going on.

But with users perhaps having some extra work downtime we definitely suggest using it to:

- Delete outstanding sent connection requests. Having too many of these can be a red flag to LinkedIn, indicating you are attempting to contact people you do not know.

- Tidying up or prioritising connections – so you are focused on those whose behaviour indicates they are genuinely interested

If you track your connection acceptances, you will probably see the majority come in the first 5-7 days. Therefore, it makes sense to delete any requests that are much older than this.  You might miss out on a few late acceptances but if it keeps you safer on LinkedIn, it is probably erring on the side of caution.

Targeting

In general, the more targeted you are in your LinkedIn outreach strategy, the fewer outstanding requests you will have. And the more effective and efficient your lead gen programs will be.

On our webinars and Facebook chat we often see people saying that they are getting no results from their outreach. And this is often due to the fact that they are just ‘spamming’ as many people as possible with the same message rather than conducting a targeted list build and sending targeted, personalised messages.

Check out this blog about targeting with Dux-Soup and also this one about how a list building tool like LeadFuze can help.

Then read about best practice for writing direct messages using personalised templates - so you don’t come across as ‘spam’.

Spending time in this area will ensure your results are better. Remember, automation speeds up mundane, manual processes but only if set up right. Dux is no silver bullet in that respect.

The beauty is that once you’re set up properly you can rinse and repeat the process time and time again.

Relevance

It’s a strange new world out there and one that requires some new thinking. Here are some great tips on the types of things to share, comment on or communicate during the crisis – alongside your usual, helpful content.

And another LinkedIn infographic which shows useful insights on the type of marketing content being posted and more importantly responded to. An example of a section of the infographic is below – giving tips on what to think about when you’re creating content at the moment:

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As this article does – try to think about how you can help or solve a problem specific to the crisis or that has been exacerbated by an aspect of it. Of course, you don’t want to be seen as profiteering, but you do want to be relevant and help out where you can. We’re all trying to lessen the economic impact after all.

Conclusion

While Dux users are by nature more tech savvy and ‘online’ than many – the fact we’re all predominantly working in or supporting sales, marketing or recruitment, means the lockdown has affected us all either directly or indirectly.

It goes without saying (but we will anyway) that Dux-Soup is open for business as usual.

Our operations are all virtual and (as this blog alludes to) we are experiencing record numbers of users and interest as social platforms like LinkedIn are seen as vitally important both for information and for enabling sales when face to face restrictions are in place.

If you do have time on your hands we hope that this article gives some pointers as to what you could be looking at and focusing on to improve both your lead gen processes and communications using Dux-Soup, but also LinkedIn in general.

It’s a strange time but we will come out of it at some point – until then, all the very best and if we can help in any way at all please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.