The LinkedIn Million-Dollar Pipeline Secret

There are 3 things you’ll learn from here today:

1: How your LinkedIn location affects your reach

2: How company or brand pages grow

3: The million-dollar pipeline secret

Let’s get into it.

The LinkedIn Location Saga

I changed my LinkedIn location this past week. I did this for 2 reasons - first, I wanted to verify my account (using government ID) and also I wanted to test this hypothesis.

I have been using a VPN on LinkedIn for a long time. And this is to keep my location consistent regardless of where I go or I’m logging in from.

By the way, if your IP address is too inconsistent, LinkedIn will start to assume you are a bot and also the algorithm would be confused as to where to throttle your post. And yes, LinkedIn uses your location (via your IP address) to distribute your posts.

So, I changed my IP location from North America, to West Africa. And I am going to make it remain this way for the next couple of weeks. If anything significant changes, I will inform you here. But for now, I have noticed a few things.

As of writing, I am yet to verify my identity on LinkedIn. LinkedIn says that accounts that are verified gets 60% more profile views on average. So, I look forward to confirming that.

But one thing I noticed is that my feed became better once I switched from North American IP. The algorithm seems to rely more on keywords (and engagements) to suggest posts to me. And they have been very spot on and relevant.

I had another viral post this week with 100+ reactions, 10+ reposts and 40+ comments, but it is just about 16k impressions. Previously, a post like that would be doing close to 100k impressions already. However, I am still conflicted. Is it because of my location change?

Or is it something else?

So, for now, I’d say my feed got better, no data on profile views yet, and nothing conclusive on content distribution yet. But I was able to make more niche comments with ease because of the relevance of the content that is shown to me. I think of that as a win.

Should you use VPN for LinkedIn? Right now, I am leaning in the direction of “no”.

However, you have to clean up (and train) your feed and become very tactical in your approach to engagements (i.e. reactions, DMs, comments, etc.).

How Company Pages Grow

I launched a LinkedIn page for this newsletter a few weeks ago and started growing it from zero. Here is a bunch of things that hasn’t worked:

1. Posting daily. (Make no difference. There is barely any engagement)

2. Sharing links to get newsletter article views. (Didn’t work)

3. Using fancy visuals

4. Non-promotional content

5. Hashtags and efforts to build a community

However, here are things that worked and what they produced:

1. Teaching content in a simple, actionable list works. But it is weak for reach

2. Commenting on accounts in the same niche. Creates visibility, but doesn’t drive followers

3. By far the most thing that contributes to the follower count is when I mention the page on a post from my personal account

In other words, if you have a good personal brand, you would have to use it to propel the company page to get people to follow the company page. Of course, not everyone will be interested, but there is always someone who will be.

Posting regularly does not drive growth. Comment within the niche and mention the page on your post helps the page grow.

The alternative to this (which I have not tested) is LinkedIn ads. However, LinkedIn ads is way too expensive to just grow a following.

The Million-Dollar Pipeline Secret

95% of people on LinkedIn who are ideal clients for you are not ready to take action now. Sometimes, the percentage is more than that.

What most companies or businesses do is that they focus on trying to steal this 5% that are ready. Meanwhile, there is some other company that has been nursing the relationship for much longer. It is hard to think they will lose when the deal is close to the finish line.

The idea here is that if you are only making content for someone who is ready to buy now, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. And honestly, it is not that effective.

It would be very smart to think of it this way:

You do LinkedIn content for the pipeline. This is why it is hard to justify LinkedIn content creation for people who are not thinking long term.

Yes, you should always have your offer ready and very accessible. But don’t expect that people would take it the first time they see it. Have it at the back of your mind that B2B sales take about 18 months (through content marketing channels).

It could be shorter. But don’t plan short term. Too many people give up before the deal becomes successful. B2B sales is often a game of patience and tenacity.

The million-dollar secret here is this - the longer your pipeline (in timeframe), the more success you will have in selling.

Make content for people who are interested but are not ready yet. You can go a step further by making a special lead magnet for them. The longer the time they’ve been with you, the lesser the chance that they will ditch and go for a competitor.

Think about this for your strategy.

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