How to Skyrocket LinkedIn Outbound Responses by Building a Personal Brand

LinkedIn might feel impossible to master, but like it or not, it’s a vital tool for sales reps. The good news is that with a few simple steps, you can level up your LinkedIn game and skyrocket your outbound responses.

So, if you’ve been a bit of a LinkedIn lurker up until now and want to change that, tune in to this episode of The Revenue Playbook with Daniel Ryan. Daniel sits down again for a LinkedIn live stream with Daniel Disney on The Daily Sales show.

The two Daniels swap their tips for LinkedIn success and explain why you need to prioritize engagement and building connections over the dreaded “pitch slap” that makes prospects switch off. They explore the dos and don’ts, and Daniel Ryan explains how becoming a familiar face on LinkedIn means that his cold emails are no longer cold.

Keep reading or press play to hear the full discussion.

Watch the full episode here:

How can you start building your own personal brand that helps you level up your prospecting results? Daniel takes us through the stages of getting to grips with LinkedIn.

Stage 1: Start with your profile

Whether you’re brand new to LinkedIn or you’ve been a long-time lurker, the best place to start on your journey to LinkedIn success is with your own profile.

When prospects see your posts on LinkedIn, many of them will click through to your profile, so it’s got to be good. After all, you don’t want them to find an empty page with an old Facebook photo of your cat as the profile picture. Not a good look.

Before you start trying to sell, make sure:

• Your profile picture is a good, clear photo of you
• Your experience and skills information is all up to date and detailed
• Your About section and tagline are filled in
• You have recommendations and endorsements from your existing network, if possible

Stage 2: Start engaging

Once you’ve given your profile a makeover, it’s time to head out into the big wide world of LinkedIn and start engaging with people.

This goes way beyond firing off dozens of connection requests. You need to start really engaging with others.

Engage in the comments of your own or other people’s posts. Start small with people you know in your industry, and then gradually widen your scope.

The more conversations you get involved in, the more your name spreads across LinkedIn. You may only have a handful of followers right now, but if you start appearing in people’s comments, then you can quickly grow your audience.

According to Daniel, all social media users can be split into three with the 90-9-1 rule:

• 1% of users post
• 9% engage
• 90% lurker

If you can get from the lurking stage into the engaging stage, you can then get to the next stage…

Stage 3: Start posting

The next natural step is to start posting your own content. This is the bit people get nervous about. They worry people will judge what they say or that they’ll sound stupid. But the sooner you can begin, the more confidence you can build, and the results will come in fast after that.

In Daniel’s view, everyone has a story. Everyone has something interesting and valuable to share, no matter where you are in your professional journey. So try to ignore that fear and post anyway.

The dos and don’ts of LinkedIn

It’s easy to get LinkedIn wrong. For someone who spends a lot of time on the platform, Daniel’s seen all the horror stories. Here are a few quick dos and don’ts:

Do:

• Build relationships and engage like a real person
• Build a wide network
• Start conversations and contribute to existing ones on posts and DMs

Don’t

• Act like a sleazy salesperson
• Connect with someone and immediately fire off a pitch
• Use generic messages you send to hundreds of people

Daniel’s tips for consistently posting on LinkedIn

Starting your LinkedIn journey is a bit like starting a new exercise. The early days are going to feel painful and awkward. But you have to push through that and keep at it to see results.

Back when Daniel started, he would spend so much time writing and rewriting and getting feedback on things to post before any content saw the light of day. It’s how a lot of people start off because they’re worried about what other people will say.

But one thing that helped Daniel was to get into a routine and make a plan for the week, for example:

• Monday = Post a poll e.g. what’s your favorite cold email opener?
• Tuesday = Post a story/anecdote
• Wednesday = Post something you learned from a co-worker or your boss
• Thursday = Post the results from the poll from day one to spark a discussion
• Friday = Weekend related post

As Daniel got used to posting consistently, it became less of a daunting task. Now he doesn’t have to plan so rigorously to stay consistent. He takes notes whenever he finds inspiration throughout the day and jots down ideas for new posts in his downtime.

Using LinkedIn for prospecting

Building a personal presence is all well and good, but you also want to see tangible results.

Daniel uses LinkedIn for prospecting all the time and uses company insights to see what’s going on in his prospect’s company. Things like whether they’re hiring, growing, shrinking the team, or raising money are all useful insights to have before you reach out to them.

Daniel’s process for prospecting on LinkedIn is…

• Plan to reach out to
• Connect with people with zero agenda for now
• In three to four months, start prospecting them

In Dooly’s case, he needs to send an email with a demo invite. But for the prospect to book that demo in, they first need to read the email.

Opening the email is step one, so he decided to focus on how he could improve those open rates. Surprisingly, LinkedIn was the answer.

Daniel realized that the first thing he looks at when he receives an email is who the email is sent from. That’s before he even looks at the subject line. With that in mind, Daniel realized that the sent from name needed to be familiar for the prospect to open the email.

And that’s why he’s put so much time and energy into LinkedIn engagement.

With consistent posting and engagement in the industry, Daniel ensures that his cold emails aren’t really cold. There’s already a little connection there and that improves his open rates.

It may be a slow and intensive process, but it’s all about sowing the seeds. Adding hundreds of people and throwing a random pitch is quick and easy, but it just doesn’t yield the same results.

So, when in doubt, try Daniel’s approach. You can see his work in action on LinkedIn by following him today. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a cheat code for prospecting on LinkedIn, use Dooly’s Chrome extension to add contacts and convert leads from LinkedIn, email, and more.