Daily LinkedIn Checklist

daily-linkedin-checklist
 
You do not want LinkedIn to take over your life or become an addictive time waster. As with any of your regular marketing activity, it is good to have a routine that you can appoint set time to each day.
You should be able to complete the following ‘five key engagement tasks’ in 20 minutes per day. Or you may find that two ten minutes slots work better for you.
Keep in touch: On the home page of your LinkedIn profile, there will be a box in the top right-hand corner notifying you of various happenings among your network of connections. It will include work anniversaries, birthdays and new job announcements. The LinkedIn default is ‘congrats’ and if you just do this, then you will be announcing to everyone that you are lazy and couldn’t be bothered to engage properly.
Say something genuine or not at all would be my advice. Remember, other people in their network could well see what you have written and by writing an interesting note, you will stand out from the crowd.
Check your updates: The updates bar at the top of the page has icons including messages, notifications and connection requests. Any activity here is highlighted in red and you should respond to everything each day. I tend to check this for a few minutes, twice each day. These updates are the starting point for your responses to comments, likes, requests, messages, profile views and any other type of interaction opportunity.
Be conscious of the time you spend on LinkedIn and prioritise responding to those who fit your avatar (the reason you are on LinkedIn) and ignore others. Be confident enough to refuse to connect with the wrong sort of people altogether (pictureless, scarcely populated, irrelevant profiles).
Scan the newsfeed: Quickly scroll through your newsfeed to look for interesting articles and shares from your connections. This is good because there is a lot of useful, informative, educational and insightful information out there that you could learn from. Once you get connected to enough really smart people, the “learn something new every day” philosophy could happen just on LinkedIn. This is also a great way to find new proactive, forward-thinking people to engage with. As a general rule, I suggest trying to comment on or share 2-3 pieces each day.
Post an update: This is should not be a full-on post, but a simple update. It could be a link to an interesting article (on LinkedIn or elsewhere), your thought for the day, or a quote/photograph. This is a daily discipline that will keep you firmly on the radar of your contacts on LinkedIn. I suggest doing this at least once or twice a day. A great ninja trick with updates is to ask a question about a post you had previously written and attach a link to it. Another is to mention specific people in the update (start typing their name until LinkedIn adds the hyperlink). Both of these subtleties will usually prompt a reply (interaction).
Read and share: Choose someone who you would love to have as a customer and read their article or a post they have shared. It takes just 3 minutes to read 500 words and I’m sure you can spare that. Then comment on it. Trust me, this is gold dust and probably the single most powerful thing you can do to make them notice, respect and maybe even start to love you.