Leap Forward into Daylight Linking Time (DLT): 4 Tips for Social Selling Success

Did you remember to set your clocks forward one hour when you went to sleep Saturday night? If not, I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now otherwise you were an hour late to work today.

The purpose for daylight savings time is to extend after work daylight hours for additional activities like working on that golf game, playing catch with the kids, or getting those yard projects finished. We give up one hour in March and gain from it all summer long. That’s a pretty good ROI.

Want an even better ROI? Invest one hour a week on building and nurturing your professional network. The best way to do that is with a daily LinkedIn routine that can be done in 12 minutes a day (M-F = 1-hour).

Here are three big payoff activities that should be part of that routine:

1. Review Your LinkedIn Homepage:

Spend 3 minutes reviewing your personal business news portal. A quick glance will reveal information from your connections, companies that you are following, and industry news. It will keep you up-to-date on what’s going on and give you an opportunity to engage your business network via Comments and Likes.

2. Nurture Existing Connections:

I am a strong advocate of using the LinkedIn Contacts feature that automatically notifies you when your Connections have been promoted, changed jobs, moved, been featured in the news, or when it’s their birthday. These are all great trigger events for you to reach out and strengthen your relationships. LinkedIn makes it so easy that another 3-minutes will result in your being top of mind with 8-10 Connections. Don’t be surprised when you get a “I’m glad you contacted me. I’ve been meaning to call you…” response.

3. Invite Your Profile Viewers to Connect:

Spend 3 minutes viewing “Whose Viewed My Profile” and invite the people who look like they fit your network criteria. I keep boilerplate text in a Word doc like this:

I noticed you recently viewed my LinkedIn profile. Since I am a LinkedIn trainer, I send invites to people who have viewed my profile and ask them to let me know how they found me.

Please accept and I’ll send a link to some free resources top help you get more out of LinkedIn.

Kurt Shaver

4. Review Your Update Metrics:

Spend the last 3 minutes reviewing the “Who’s Viewed Your Updates”, a feature that that LinkedIn introduced within the past six months. (You are posting Updates, right?) This feature shows the results of your content sharing. I’m encouraging clients set up their own internal competition to see which posts draw the most Views, Likes, and Comments.

Do these things on a routine basis and your business will grow. The momentum will give you the opportunity to leave the office on time and enjoy that extra Summer hour for golf, playing with the kids, or working in the yard.