Used well, LinkedIn is an effective marketing tool that can take your business to the next level. Unlike Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn is a professional platform designed to help you establish, build and reinforce your business relationships.
Among the marketing advantages for businesses that are actively using LinkedIn are:
- It’s a social media platform that can be used to build brand awareness and relationships with consumers.
- By posting engaging content and participating in industry discussions, businesses can market to potential customers and partners.
- Business owners can use the platform for outbound marketing to grow their email marketing lists using their professional connections and network.
But there are challenges with using LinkedIn for outbound marketing programs, as well. In fact, there is a hot topic that is a live issue right now for businesses using LinkedIn for outreach.
LinkedIn is testing an initiative that involves increasing contact restrictions on certain accounts. This means that the platform is limiting the number of messages some people can send out per week. This is affecting everyone, including small- and medium-sized businesses.
The frustration is obvious. A limit on sending messages means a limit on business opportunities. LinkedIn is receiving a lot of negative feedback, especially from businesspeople who count the platform’s functionality to conduct manual and automated outreach.
Solutions to Harsher Restrictions
The general feeling from some LinkedIn thought leaders is that the restrictions won’t last long. But can we really count on anyone’s projections? In fact, no one knows how long the restrictions will last — or, worse, if LinkedIn’s restrictions will get even stricter.
Rest assured — there are solutions. Among them are two powerful automation tools that can help manage the issue: Kennected and Dux-Soup.
- Dux–Soup helps boost the professionalism of your LinkedIn page by automatically viewing your LinkedIn prospect profiles, endorsing their skills, following their LinkedIn activity, and sending personalized messages on your behalf. The program also allows you to set up automated LinkedIn drip campaigns for your prospects, which can stop automatically when a prospect responds.
- Kennected does the heavy lifting of LinkedIn marketing for you, so you can focus on developing your business. It delivers lead generation, automation and education with the goal of simplifying business owners’ and entrepreneurs’ lives.
Kennected Lets You Connect Smarter
An additional unique benefit of Kennected is that it helps businesses deal with the challenge of LinkedIn’s account restrictions. The software makes sure you are able to keep your account in good standing by initiating a “cool-down period.”
While this action may seem counterintuitive, it actually plays to your advantage. It’s a safety measure that Kennected implements automatically to prevent LinkedIn from putting restrictions on your account.
While it seems like an inconvenience to a business owner who just wants to send messages on LinkedIn, Kennected makes sure that your account stays in good standing, so you don’t end up experiencing long-term restrictions. The alternative is running your outreach sequences, such as email, until LinkedIn shuts down your account permanently for breaking its rules.
To avoid a Kennected “cool-down period,” watch out for the three leading causes:
- You have too many invitations to connect pending
- Too many people are marking your account as “I do not know this person”
- Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI score) is under 65
Kennected functionality also includes a “warm-up” feature to help get your account back to full capacity, by gradually sending out more connection requests and messages over time.
What is an SSI Score?
LinkedIn’s SSI score measures your effectiveness on the platform. It ranges from 0 to 100. A score below 50 is considered poor and a score of about 65 is considered good to great. You can access your score on LinkedIn.
The score is based on four factors that LinkedIn believes are essential for businesses trying to fully leverage the platform for selling products and services.
The four factors account for 25 points each:
- How well you’ve established your professional brand
- How you find the right people on LinkedIn
- How you build relationships
- How you engage with insights gathered on the platform
Your score is important for your ability to market on LinkedIn because it impacts your visibility, lead flow and reach. LinkedIn rewards activity it perceives as effective sales strategies, aggressive LinkedIn behavior, network expansion and, naturally, having a Sales Navigator subscription.
Sales Navigator is the platform’s paid service, which includes a powerful set of search capabilities, improved visibility into extended networks, and personalized algorithms to help you reach the right decision-makers.
Get Professional Support for LinkedIn Marketing
Paying attention to the important hot issues of the day on LinkedIn — like tightening outbound marketing restrictions and your SSI score — can be a lot to deal with, especially while also wearing multiple hats as you manage the day-to-day operations of your business.
That’s where the professionals at Acceler8now come in. We can handle all of this for you — so you can avoid the restrictions, maintain a high SSI and continue generating new business from today’s leading business-building platform. In other words, you can gain all the advantages of LinkedIn, while we handle the challenges for you.
Contact us today to set up a time to chat about improving your business’s performance on today’s leading business-building platform.