How To Make LinkedIn Answers Part Of Your Routine

Using LinkedIn Answers is probably one of the most effective, yet under-used ways to build credibility and generate qualified leads using social media. I’m even guilty of focusing my efforts on other social networks, despite the fact that what I do, by definition, is B2B. I work with companies, not consumers. And LinkedIn is a more natural environment for B2B lead generation.

Why? LinkedIn is business in the front and back. No party here. Sorry, Billy Ray.

I recently sat down and created a simple mechanism to ensure building leads and credibility on LinkedIn was baked in to my daily routine. Since I start my day with my feed reader, I went to LinkedIn and subscribed to the RSS feeds of five or six categories of questions. When I start my day, I read content, share the good stuff and now take a moment to answer one or two questions on LinkedIn. It adds about five minutes to my morning routine.

There’s no rocket surgery here, kids. But I figured I’d share some visuals to help you figure it out if you need it. Follow these steps and get past the noise to start building a strong signal on a social network that can connect you with people in need of your services:

Step One

Find a category of LinkedIn Answers you have a degree of expertise in. A screen shot of the Answers page for Internet Marketing is below. At the bottom of the right column of the page you should see the orange RSS feed button. Click that to subscribe to the feed via email or  your favorite feed reader. Repeat the process for any number of other topics that make sense for your business.

Step Two

Now go to your feed reader and put all those new feeds into a folder. Mine is called LinkedIn Answers. It contains all five or six feeds and I check it now as part of my morning reading. As I browse through the various feeds, I find a question or two I have a reasonable opinion or perspective on, click through to the post on LinkedIn and offer my answer. (I guess that’s Step Three.)

Here’s the cool thing: I’ve been doing this for about a week now and already have one qualified lead from a person who reached out to me based on one of my answers. Your traction may vary, but offering up a smart opinion and being helpful will at least build your credibility on LinkedIn if not deliver potential customers right to you.

I’m sure there are folks with more LinkedIn-specific expertise out there who can give you more advice on other activities on LinkedIn to help. I’m also sure proactive follow-up with those answering the questions can lead to some potential business relationships, too. But for now, I’m happy to just participate and see what happens. For five minutes a day, it can’t hurt.

What do you think? Have you been interacting on LinkedIn for a while? Let us know how your experience has been. The comments are yours.

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