Is it possible for busy lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, consultants, and other professionals to develop business and clients using LinkedIn for only 30 minutes a week?! And to do so without posting content? The answer is yes, but with some caveats. Read on for best practices, how tos, and tips.
LinkedIn 2021: LinkedIn has now been around for over 17 years! It currently has over 610 million members and approximately 303 million active monthly users (40%, or approximately 120 million, of whom visit the site daily), and includes 90 million senior-level influencers and 63 million decision-makers who are active users. Plus, LinkedIn has over 700,000 users with a General Counsel title, and over 800,000 with the title Corporate Counsel.
Yet many busy lawyers and other professional services providers still do not use LinkedIn regularly, or do not use it optimally, even though – in this largely remote and digital world – LinkedIn is one of the best places to develop new clients and referral sources and nurture and expand existing relationships.
Main reasons busy professionals have not optimized using LinkedIn: The fact is that learning and mastering LinkedIn is a science and art in and of itself. It can be extraordinarilytime-consuming and distracting, and there is always something new to learn about it.
The main reason busy lawyers and other professionals do not use LinkedIn optimally is due to a lack of time. Billable time demands, plus life, easily take up 24 hours each day, so busy professionals simply do not have the time to devote to LinkedIn. Other reasons LinkedIn is underutilized by busy professionals include:
Fear of making mistakes or fear of social media in general;
The misconception that you must post content on LinkedIn to get anything out of it; and
The lack of enough knowledge to be confident when using LinkedIn.
I am here to help. Why me? One law firm retained me to join LinkedIn in 2003 to learn and master it for them, get all the firm’s interested lawyers on LinkedIn, and then train and coach them how to use it and get the most from it (which I continue to do). As a result of my joining LinkedIn early on, I now have over 15,000 connections, have been named a Top Thought Leader in Legal on LinkedIn, and consider myself an expert user of the platform. In 2020, my program that handholds busy lawyers and other professionals through the process of getting on LinkedIn and making the most of their LinkedIn presence and connections has been in great demand.
Here are some tips from my program on how to optimize your connections on LinkedIn in 30 minutes a week (assuming you already have a profile on LinkedIn and ideally have optimized it – a separate and complex topic that this article does not cover).
An important note: Do not feel like you need to do all these things at one time on LinkedIn. Instead, I recommend you do one of these things for 30 minutes maximum each week (or spend more time on LinkedIn if you have it or are getting results, but make sure your notifications are set appropriately so you can be responsive).
1. Commit to Self-Discipline and Consistent Use of LinkedIn Over Time: