Leverage Your LinkedIn Newsfeed to Get More Real Time Conversations with Your Targeted Audience

Real Time? On LinkedIn? Isn’t that a Twitter thing? Yes, Yes and Yes. Twitter is a fast moving, conversation driven social platform that typically runs in real time, meaning if someone is tweeting now, they are actually active, now. That is a great way to catch someone when they are available and focused on the social and much more likely engage in a meaningful way.

If you are in business development, you might agree with me that the most challenging part of the process is getting the attention of the right person and inspiring them to want to have a conversation.

The key to leveraging LinkedIn to get real time conversations is… start paying more attention to your newsfeed.

Begin to follow the people you want to engage with. Of course connecting with your target audience is a priority, but you can simply follow them first. By doing this, when these folks post content or share an update, it shows up on your newsfeed in addition to the activity of your existing 1st degree connections’. To the best of knowledge, there is no limit on the number of people you can follow.
Filter the activity by recent rather than the default top shares. On your home page, click the three dots (…) under publish to switch to the top view.
Look at the top right of each post to identify how recently it was shared – it may say just now, or 3 minutes ago – so your targeted audience is mostly likely still on LinkedIn now and you will get a significantly higher response to your outreach.
You are going to see all types of shares, from original blog posts, to other peoples’ articles to famous quotes and more. Determine if the person is someone you’d like to engage with and if their share is worthy. If both are a yes, this is a great opportunity to begin a conversation.
Now what? Engage! You don’t have to be connected to someone to interact with their updates. You can “like” there post, comment on it, share it with your network, tweet it, and/or send a connection request: NAME, I enjoyed the article you posted on XXX, it is a topic that I discuss often. Let’s connect on LinkedIn.
Or if you are already connected send a short message: NAME, we have been connected on LinkedIn for some time, and I really enjoy some of the posts you share. We are in similar industries and it may be able to be of benefit one other. If you are open, I would like to set up a brief introductory call so we can explore ways we may be able to help each other now or into the future.

This strategy will work with laten posts and activity as well, but the response rate on real time is outstanding.

If it is about creating more conversations with the right people, give this a shot, you might be pleasantly surprised.

This strategy is available with the basic account, but this feature becomes even more powerful with Sales Navigator, as you can completely customize your newsfeed to only show the activity of your targeted audience.

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“This book from Brynne Tillman encapsulates the social selling ethos. Page after page of tips and best practices for sales professionals. I see this as a workbook and the most up to date reference material for sales people learning to leverage LinkedIn. Keep this book on your desk, the information within will provide value for a long time. – Koka Sexton, Global Senior Social Media Manager at LinkedIn”