Thoughts about LinkedIn failure.

I find it fascinating people will put so much effort into LinkedIn on a daily and weekly basis and be content to get almost no financial return from it.

I hear stuff like "it's an awareness thing". I had someone chat to me who said they had never got any business from it.

As someone who makes more than $1m a year from my LinkedIn profile, I find this baffling.

As a dissect why I think that people are happy to live with this, I come across a few reasons.

• They don't know what's possible: They genuinely have never considered LinkedIn could be a source of revenue. They didn't see that it could be a major source of new clients for them.
• They're dabbling: A lot of people fail at LinkedIn - Why? No strategy, no clear plan, they are just winging it and hoping something comes together.
• They won't do the work: They want the results, they want success, but not badly enough to actually invest the time in doing the right things. They're too emotional about it.
• The business piece isn't clear: Success on LinkedIn has nothing to do with knowing LinkedIn. It's more fundamental than that - understanding your customer and what drives them.

I think these are huge mistakes, especially for the people who sell their expertise in some form, like executive coaches, consultants etc, where selling is not a comfortable thing. LinkedIn is the simplest and least salesy way to marketing and sell your services - often people associate the work sell with aggressive actions, slimy salespeople or pushy pitches.

It doesn't have to be that way.

But LinkedIn takes no prisoners - there is no room for "having a go" - It doesn't have to consume your life, it doesn't have to be 2 hours a day of work on LinkedIn - but you do have to have your ducks in a row.

1. Total clarity on what you are selling, who you want to buy it and why they would want to buy it now. Without this you have a nice service, which is vaguely relevant, but not pressing or important enough to act.
2. A clear and coherent message which survives a short attention span. Your message needs to be simple enough to digest quickly and see relevance - so they want to consume more and look more deeply.
3. Without a process, you'll be pissing into the wind and calling it brand awareness. You need to build a process, refine a process and work it daily. I've been doing the same process for 6 years with only minor tweaks.

I can't promise anyone results on LinkedIn, unless they are prepared to approach it with the seriousness it demands and are prepared to focus on the 3 points above.

There are plenty of people who will sell you a secret shortcut - I'm not one of them. I help people avoid the pitfalls, but there is no shortcut to success.

I find it funny, so many people buy $47 courses on business success and social selling expecting it to unlock some big miracle, like a 1000x ROI - yet at the same time, will tell their own clients - there are no simple answers or quick fixes. 

It's a paradox.

Closing off - you can get success on LinkedIn - it doesn't have to be difficult - but it's more difficult if you're ducks aren't in a row.