LinkedIn Strategy For Brokers (2020) [social media business coaching]

Hey, hey, Andy Neary here. Question for you. Are you actually leveraging social media to grow your business? If you're an insurance broker or financial advisor and you're not on LinkedIn right now, you are missing a huge opportunity. I get it, I get it. Social media is a waste of time. There's so much negativity out there, nobody's posting anything good. Listen, don't look at what the other 90% are doing. Focus on what you can do to make good connections on social media, mainly LinkedIn, that's the B2B platform on social media. And then figure out how you can direct those connections to pipeline opportunities. It's that simple. But how do you do it right? How do you spend the time? How do you have the right strategy? How do you make the right connections? That's what I want to share with you today. I'm going to share four steps, four things you can be doing right now on LinkedIn to start growing your business by growing good connections and turning them into prospecting opportunities. Now, here's the first thing you cannot do when you go on social media. Yes, it's going to require you to post some content and bring some value. But when you look at your peers, you look at your colleagues right now and they're all posting stuff about insurance companies, the healthcare system, something tied to your industry. I want you to think about who is reacting to those posts, not the prospect, your buddies, and that does nothing for your business. So if you're just on social media, on LinkedIn for the vanity metrics, you're trying to rile up your peers by having a good laugh, you can go ahead. But know that is not going to help you grow your business. So let's dive into the four things you can actually be doing to be effective. To use LinkedIn and other social media platforms to grow your business. Step number one, you need to time, block time to connect with people. You need to be blocking time into your calendar. Just like you block time to pick up the phone and dial to go to that networking event, you need to pick block time to be connecting with your target prospects. Trying to find your target prospects on LinkedIn is actually really easy. Why? Because you can go on the platform, search people, try to figure out what industry that they're in. You can target the position they have, you can target their geography. It is really simple to find your targeted prospects on LinkedIn. If you have Sales Navigator, the additional feature to LinkedIn, it's even easier. But now what do you do? Okay, you've targeted you found those prospects. Here's what you want to do. The first thing you want to do is check on how active are they on LinkedIn. Here's an example. You connect with a CFO who's in the oil and gas industry in Colorado and they have 132 connections on LinkedIn. Yeah, you can probably guess they're not on LinkedIn very much. But if they've got 500 plus connections, my guess is they're somewhat active on the platform. So here's my advice. Step one, make good connections. Go find your target prospects who are on LinkedIn and who are active, those who have 500 plus connections because it probably tells you they're spending some time on the platform. Now, when you send the connection request, don't use the generic LinkedIn request that they give you. Actually take time to type a note, say, hey, Rob, hey Greg, hey Becky, I'd love to connect with you. I love Learning about what CFOs are doing in the Colorado market. Wherever you are located, send a personal message in the invite, not just a generic LinkedIn template. So now you've sent the connection request. I challenge you to try this and do this and send out 5 to 10 connection request every single day for a week. Let me know how it goes. Now what's going to happen is some people are going to connect, others are not, and it's okay. At this point, it's kind of a numbers game. But here's what you want to do. Those folks that are accepting your request, you now need to turn around and send them a nice message. You have two choices. You can type a private message back to them or what's really nice is now that you're a first connection, if you use the mobile version of LinkedIn, you can now send them a voice text. So here's my challenge to you. When they accept your connection, go to your voice text. Send them a voice text via the LinkedIn mobile app and say, hey, Rob, just want to thank you for your connection. If there's anything you need, you know where to find me. Other than that, I just wanted to thank you for the connection. That's it. You're not selling anything. You're not asking for an appointment. You're just thanking them for the connection. That is step two, when they accept the connection, send a voice text. It's still a little outside the box these days. It catches people off guard. They're like, hey, that's really cool. And now they're gonna take that connection to the next level. Now step Three, this is where your consistency has to come in. You need to be on social media, on LinkedIn, posting good content and you need to do it consistently. Now, consistently could mean once a week right now, and that's fine, could mean a couple times a week or could mean every day. But you need to start showing up consistently, bringing value, because now that that targeted prospect is your first connection, they're going to start seeing your content. So step three is you need to start posting content and you need to do it consistently. Now here's the last piece, and probably the most important piece is after three or four weeks of being connected with that individual, you're going to go back into your connections on LinkedIn. And the beautiful thing about the platform is they show you who is connected with you in chronological order. So you're going to go back three, four weeks and you're going to start reaching back out to those folks, the same folks you connected with three, four weeks ago. And you're going to send another voice text and say, hey Rob, you and I have been connected for about a month now. Love to put a voice to the face. Would you be open to a quick 10, 15 minute phone call? I'd love to see what you're up to. Love to meet ya. The whole goal in step four is to pull that prospect off of LinkedIn so you can now actually have a real conversation, whether it's a phone call or a zoom chat. So let's review that quickly. Step one, you need to start spending time on LinkedIn trying to make connections with your targeted prospects. Use the tools available to find the prospects you want to go after. Remember those that are active 500 plus connections. Step two, when they accept, send that automated that voice text. It's a cool feature. Say, hey, thank you for connecting. If there's anything you need, let me know. I'm always here for you. Just wanted to thank you for the connection. Step three, post good content, start showing up consistently, bringing value to those targeted prospects you're trying to go after. And then step four, about three, four weeks later, you're gonna reach back out to them with that voice text and invite them to a phone call or a zoom chat. Yeah, it takes a little time. This is no overnight hack. There is no such thing as an overnight hack. But if you start showing up consistently, you play the long game and you do these activities consistently every day, every week, I promise you, you're gonna make better connections on LinkedIn. You're gonna start to turn those connections into pipeline opportunities and you will be damn happy LinkedIn has become a source of business growth for you. So go make it happen. Use the platform effectively and I promise you'll get the results you want.