Your LinkedIn company page is a mini-website where you can share company news, updates, and current job openings. It is easily found in LinkedIn searches and in Google search results, giving your company great exposure to millions of people.
In the next chapter, we’ll explore LinkedIn Search, which is the most powerful tool on LinkedIn. Mastering the search function will give you access to the invaluable data in the rapidly growing LinkedIn database.
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Chapter 8
LinkedIn Search
It’s hard to remember the days before online search engines. Today we search for everything, whether it’s a good restaurant for dinner or a consultant with specific skills.
LinkedIn is a business-oriented search engine that works the same way as more general search engines, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! LinkedIn has its own proprietary search algorithm, which isn’t as sophisticated as Google’s (no search algorithm is), but it’s evolving rapidly. Once you master LinkedIn Search, you will have access to an unlimited number of prospects at your fingertips.
LinkedIn Search has two functions. First, it can be used to find other people, companies, and Groups on LinkedIn so you can build your professional network, follow companies, and join industry-related Groups. The second function of LinkedIn Search is for people to find you. Most people don’t think of LinkedIn Search from that perspective, but I think you need to stop and consider the possibilities. What would it do for your business or career if you appeared when people searched for specific skills or industry terms? With more than 500 million of the best top business professionals looking for industry experts by searching LinkedIn, you career would skyrocket if you appeared on the first page of the search results. If you want to optimize your LinkedIn profile so you appear in search results, I invite you to visit Chapter 4.
WHY USE SEARCH
For now, let’s start with using LinkedIn Search to find people, companies, and Groups. As you can see in Figure 8–1 below, the LinkedIn search box is located on the left side of the LinkedIn menu or toolbar. To see this expanded menu, click once in the search box then click on the magnifying glass icon.
FIGURE 8–1. The LinkedIn Search Menu or Toolbar
You have the ability to narrow your search results to People, Jobs, and Content. Clicking on More will expand your search to Companies, Schools and Groups. If you leave the search box on the default Search All and just click the magnifying glass, LinkedIn will display a list of all your 2nd-degree connections. You can also see a full list of your 1st-degree connections if you go to the My Network tab on the LinkedIn menu and click See All. If you want to find people outside your network, you need to enter specific keywords like a job title, company name, industry, school, or skill in the search box.
LinkedIn’s people search is a very powerful tool that can help you find new customers, recruit new employees, and build your professional network. You can also use people search to:
■ Find an industry expert to speak at an event your company is hosting
■ Find an industry expert to hire as a consultant for a project
■ Find people you want to meet with when you are traveling
■ Find speaking engagements
■ Find consulting engagements
■ Connect with other industry experts to join you in a project or business venture
■ Find people who want to join you for charity events
■ Find people who want to start a local networking group
When you can search a database of more than 500 million business professionals, the benefits are endless.
KEYWORDS ARE STILL KING
Keywords, keywords, keywords! You are going to get tired of hearing me talk about keywords, but they are the foundation of LinkedIn Search so it’s important you understand how to use them effectively. In Chapter 9, I’ll teach you everything you ever wanted to know about keywords (and probably a little more!), but for now let’s focus on the fundamentals of using the search function.
LinkedIn Search works a little differently from Google. If I search Google for web marketing expert, I will see results that contain the word “web” or “marketing” or “expert.” This is called a broad match search because Google will return all results that contain any of the keywords I searched for.
I can also do a phrase search to narrow my results. If I search Google for “web marketing expert” with the quote marks, I will only see results that contain the entire phrase “web marketing expert.” This gives me a more focused search result, saving me time.
When I do a phrase search for “web marketing expert” on LinkedIn, the search results will include every person who used the phrase “web marketing expert” in their profile, whether it is a job title, in their summary, or in one of their job descriptions. You can also sort by jobs, companies, content, and Groups when you select the appropriate sort option, as shown in Figure 8–1. As you are typing keywords in the search box, people, LinkedIn Pages, Showcase Pages, and Groups appear in a dropdown list, just like the Google Autocomplete dropdown you see when you do a Google search. By default, the initial search will show you 2nd-degree connections and jobs if you don’t choose one of the sort options.
Once you have the basics down, you can use Search to your competitive advantage by reframing how you think about the feature.
Competitive Analysis
Let’s get into more detail about doing a competitive analysis search, and I’ll show you how to use the Search sort option to expand your search results and find exactly who or what you are looking for. A great example of a competitive search is looking to see what keywords your competitors are targeting. Let’s say you’re in the cloud computing business and want to see who’s ranking well in LinkedIn search results. Figure 8–2 on page 78 shows your competitors once you enter your initial search term (“cloud computing”).
The top search results begin to appear as you type your keyword phrase. In this example, we see the top search results for people and jobs. The top people result is a fake personal profile called Cloud Computing. This is proof the LinkedIn search algorithm isn’t perfect and nowhere near as sophisticated as Google’s.
One way to trick LinkedIn is to add your top skill as your last name. This will almost always rank you at or near the top of the search results for that skill. I don’t recommend this tactic for a few reasons. First, it’s against LinkedIn’s terms of service, and it can suspend your account. Second, when you add extra words in your name field, it makes it difficult for people to find you when they search for your name.
FIGURE 8–2. Keyword Instant Search Results
Let’s move on to the search results for companies. The top company for the phrase “cloud computing” is Cloud Computing Technologies. Let’s reverse-engineer the search result and see how it achieved the top ranking and which other keywords it’s targeting. Your goal is to outrank that company for the search term “cloud computing.” Note that you will receive different search results if you search for cloud computing, which looks for LinkedIn profiles that contain the words “cloud” or “computing.”
Reverse-Engineering
As I examined the Cloud Computing Technologies company page, I did a search to see how many times the phrase “cloud computing” appeared on the page, as you see in Figure 8–3 on page 79 (Ctrl-F on a PC or Cmd-F on a Mac).
Keywords
Using your target keywords in your company page title can help your search rankings significantly. It’s also important to use the target keyword phrase a few times in the first two paragraphs of your summary. This strategy is almost identical to SEO best practices for ranking in search engines like Google. But be careful not to overuse your keyword phrases. The summary should read naturally and provide a comprehensive overview of your company in the 2,000-character space you are provided. In this example, Cloud Computing Technologies uses the phrase “cloud computing” four
times in the first two paragraphs of its company description.
FIGURE 8–3. Checking Keyword Density
Followers
To rank well in search results on LinkedIn, you must have a significant number of followers. I’ve seen companies with literally no summary or company information other than their company page title that have more than 800 followers, and they rank number one for their search terms. (I assume they hired offshore workers to follow their company just to receive the high ranking, and I obviously don’t suggest you try the same thing.)
Take a look at the search results in Figure 8–4 on page 80 and click on each company to see how many followers they have. Cloud Computing Technologies has 771 followers, Cloud Computing Experts has 322 followers and Cloud Computing Intelligence Magazine has 390 followers. My assumption is Cloud Computing Experts has 25 employees and Cloud Computing Intelligence has only one, so it ranks lower. LinkedIn doesn’t publicly share its search ranking factors, so we can only make educated assumptions.
FIGURE 8–4. Company Search Results
LINKEDIN ADVANCED SEARCH
Now that you’ve had a taste of the basic LinkedIn Search it’s time to dig into the main course: LinkedIn Advanced Search. This is the skill you need to master to become a top-tier LinkedIn user. Whether you are a salesperson hunting for prospects, a recruiter looking for top talent, or just a regular LinkedIn member, becoming an expert at searching on LinkedIn will take your career to the next level.
Advanced Search has changed dramatically with each LinkedIn redesign, and now you only have access to the additional search fields when you subscribe to Sales Navigator. In the old LinkedIn dashboard, you used to be able to sort the search results by relevance, relationship, relationship + recommendations, connections or keywords. This was confusing, and very few people knew what these categories meant. Today, it’s much easier to sort your search results based on keywords, first name, last name, title, company, school, location, country, and postal code. When you subscribe to a LinkedIn Premium account, you will have access to even more data fields, like Groups, years of experience, function, seniority level, interested in, company size, Fortune 500 level, and when joined LinkedIn. The higher your subscription level, the more data you will see.
Figure 8–5 on page 81 compares the available search fields on LinkedIn and Sales Navigator. On the left you see the All People Filter search options when you are using LinkedIn’s free or premium version. In the past, you received additional search fields when you subscribed to LinkedIn Premium, but today you need to upgrade to Sales Navigator to access Advanced Search.
On the right side of Figure 8–5, you see the Advanced Lead Search fields from Sales Navigator. This is what you need to dig deep to find your ideal clients and to be able to save your searches. You can read more about Sales Navigator in Chapter 19.
FIGURE 8–5. All People Filters vs. Sales Navigator Advanced Lead Search
Obviously, you don’t need to connect with everyone on LinkedIn, but you can build a strong professional network of 150 colleagues that you can carry with you for the rest of your career. No longer will you have to worry about recessions and high unemployment. When you surround yourself with a strong international professional network, you can lessen the impact of an economic downturn on your career.
While the economy and unemployment were seesawing over the past 20 years, the number of millionaires and billionaires around the world increased significantly. According to The Wall Street Journal, there were 306 billionaires in the world in 2000. In 2017, there were 2,208 billionaires—a 622 percent increase.
How did so many people become billionaires during the worst economic conditions in our lifetime? They built a strong personal network so they could withstand the recession and even make a significant amount of money.
This information is directly related to LinkedIn Search because you have the opportunity to build a powerful personal network from the LinkedIn database. Everyone you need to know professionally is on LinkedIn. If for some reason you need to connect with someone who is not on LinkedIn, a LinkedIn connection can lead you to that person. Remember, success in business is about who you know, not what you know.
The better you get at LinkedIn Search, the closer you come to putting your personal dream network together. Mining through the LinkedIn database and looking for the nuggets of gold will eventually put you in a position where you will always be able to earn money. When you need a new project, one of your connections will know someone who needs your expertise. Looking for some new sales prospects? A few of your 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections are sure to need your product. It’s all about leveraging the power of LinkedIn’s rapidly growing network.
USING LINKEDIN’S ADVANCED SEARCH FOR SALES
Advanced Search can be useful for all sorts of tasks. It is especially adept at helping you find sales leads. Say you are a sales rep who sells customer relationship management (CRM) software to enterprise-level clients. Your key decision-maker is usually at the CXO level, and your target companies are in the Fortune 500. Your software has a six- to 12-month buying cycle, and there are many departments involved in the decision-making process, including sales, information technology, and sometimes marketing. Project managers from these departments are also involved in the purchase decision.
Your initial contact is usually with a manager in the IT or sales department who does the initial evaluation of your product. After that, an IT or sales director gets involved. Use LinkedIn Advanced Search to find managers who are doing the initial evaluation or directors who are involved in the second phase of the project.
In the past, an easy way to find managers or directors shopping for CRM systems was to search LinkedIn Answers for phrases like:
■ What is the best CRM software?
■ I am looking for insight …
■ Looking for advice …
■ I want a GREAT CRM system. What is the best?
■ What is your current CRM?
Now that LinkedIn Answers has been discontinued, we have to take another approach. One way is to join Groups related to CRMs. Most of these Groups are managed by vendors who are probably your competitors, so if they let you, joining will give you access to people who are evaluating your competitors’ CRM products and to their current customers, who may be having problems with their CRM. Figure 8–6 on page 83 shows you how to start a focused search to find Groups related to the CRM business. Look at the first result. There are more than 242,000 members of the Sales/Marketing Executives Group, so this is a perfect place to start.
This is where you’ll find the Groups of CRM consultants and providers, including your competitors. Consider joining Groups where decision-makers would hang out, like CMO Network, Inbound Marketers, Marketing Profs Pro, and other popular sales and marketing–related Groups.
FIGURE 8–6. Finding CRM-Related Groups
I use my competitors’ Groups and Groups related to our products to find out what people are saying about them, good and bad. It’s a great way to gain competitive intelligence about your competitors’ products. People will be discussing what they love about your competitors’ products—and, more important, what they don’t. When you’re making a sales presentation to a prospect, you will know your competitors’ weaknesses and can show them how your product excels.
To find this competitive intelligence, you have to search each Group individually. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to search for keywords in all Groups at once, so you have to go one by one. In Figure 8–7 on page 84, you can see how to search for keyword phrases in Groups.
Next you should view the person’s profile (see Figure 8–8 on page 85) to see if they are a potential prospect. Are they a decision-maker who can purchase your product or service? Are they connected to anyone in your network who can give you feedback about this person or can introduce you to this person? (See Figure 8–9 on page 86.)
If you think this person is a good prospect, you can send them a message if you are al
ready connected and let them know why you’re reaching out. For example, I know Ervin Grinberg, so it’s easy to check in with him and say hello. One ice-breaking phrase I like to use is, “Are you still looking to use LinkedIn to grow your business?” If they are successfully using LinkedIn, they will let me know. If not, this often leads to a phone call to explore ways we can work together.
FIGURE 8–7. Keyword Searches in Groups
You can customize the message to fit your needs. Start with something like, “Are you still looking to [fill in the blank with the solution you can provide]?”
Let’s say I come across the profile of Mike Samboy, and I think he’s a good prospect, but I’m not connected with him. In Sales Navigator, I can view our mutual connections and ask for an introduction. Figure 8–10 on page 87 shows you how to view our mutual connections and Ask for Intro with a single click.
FIGURE 8–8. View Their Full Profile
FIGURE 8–9. My 1st-Degree Connections Who Are Mutually Connected
A More Direct Route to Hot Prospects
While it is relatively simple to look for prospects in Groups, you can see the obvious drawback: There is no easy way to prequalify the potential leads you find there. You have to take that extra step of reviewing a member’s profile to find out if she works for a company that meets your demographic target. Unfortunately, there isn’t an Advanced Search capability for Groups that lets you filter by anything other than keywords. It would be nice to be able to filter group discussions by the same fields as people search, but LinkedIn doesn’t offer that option as of this writing.
In my experience, it’s rare to see high-level executives asking questions about products in Groups, since they enter the buying process toward the end, after much due diligence by managers and directors. You can target managers and directors in Groups, but you have to use a different approach to connect with the C-level executives who are the final decision-makers.
Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business Page 8