LinkedIn is an invaluable tool for branding and business development – for individuals and businesses alike. That said, the sheer task of keeping up with everything going on in the network can be overwhelming. This article focuses on a few different types of tools that can help you develop your brand and expand your network, while saving your time for when it really counts the most. The general principle is to “automate the boring stuff” so as to free up the time you have to conduct interactions – deepening old relationships and growing new ones. This article focuses on LinkedIn engagement automation tools. It covers three general categories of engagement automation tools which can work for a variety of needs, ranging from individual personal branding to team use by a larger business. These tools can help you and your business save time time while building and maintaining relationships.
Light Duty: LinkedHelper
LinkedHelper is an affordable tool in the $5-$15 per month range (with a wide variety of pricing options ranging from monthly to annual billing). This is a self-help tool that’s designed to run in the background while you are actively using your computer. As such, LinkedHelper’s features mostly focus on people: endorsing contact skills, sending messages to existing contacts, sending connection requests to new contacts, extraction of contact info, and similar. An established product with 70,00+ users, LinkedHelper has excellent reviews, a helpful support staff, and a library of how-to content. To make an analogy, LinkedHelper is like a bionic arm that can make what you already do on your own become faster and more powerful.
Medium Duty: Jarvee
Jarvee is a highly multifunctional tool in the $30-$70 per month range. It is a Windows based social media automation software that needs to run continuously on your machine in order to do its job. Regardless of whether your go-to operating system is Mac or Windows, there’s a way for you to set this up as a virtual machine. This tool boasts a wide variety of features, both for content management and for relationship management. These features include multi-platform support (LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and much more), as well as social media scheduling, advanced targeting options, viewing profiles, commenting, liking, etc. If LinkedHelper is a bionic arm, then Jarvee is a full-fledged robot that can cook and clean for you, day or night. That said, LinkedHelper is easier to set up, and much less expensive, so, ask yourself what you really need out of your engagement automation tool. For example, LinkedHelper might be the right choice for individual users, or for startups on a budget, whereas Jarvee might make more sense if you have several thousand LinkedIn connections on your individual account, or if you work for an established company with significant budget.
Heavy Duty: Usher Connect
Usher Connect is a mix of automation and outsourcing, weighing in at the $1,000-$2,000 per month price range. This hybridized tool provides you with a team of (human) experts who work to maximize and leverage the full impact of your LinkedIn profile. They help you set up outbound campaigns and strategic follow-ups on major networks. This means that you will only need to respond to leads who actually express interest in your product or service – at which point Usher Connect can set up calls or meetings between you and those leads. If LinkedHelper is your bionic arm, and Jarvee is your robot, then Usher Connect is your outsourced (human) administrative assistant who is equipped with a bionic arm. While this price point is not for everyone, it could make a whole lot of sense if you are looking to interact with high-value clientele. For example, if you are raising funds for your startup, or are selling luxury services to high net worth individuals, the human touch component that Usher Connect provides could be just what you need.
Using LinkedIn Automation Tools Responsibly
Of course, for each of these categories (Light, Medium, and Heavy), there are several competitors that aren’t listed here. Do your own research to find what tool works best for your needs. The purpose is to simply highlight the general types of product that can come in handy for your professional development.
Warning: The concept of “too much of a good thing” definitely applies to LinkedIn automation in a number of ways. What separates good LinkedIn automation from annoying spam is a question of quantity and mutual relevance.
Quantity limits: It’s generally advised that you limit any automated interactions to around 50 per day. If you do not, you run the risk of LinkedIn flagging your account.
Quality standards: Only reach out to people with whom you share a true potential for *mutual* benefit. If you do not, you run the risk of a user flagging your outreach as spam – not to mention of losing clout in your network.
Some of these tools may fall into a bit of a gray area from LinkedIn’s perspective. There are some remarkably spammy actions someone can take with some of these tools – but there is also a wide range of legitimately useful actions as well. To my knowledge, LinkedIn tends to discourage the use of automation tools for some circumstances. So, if you decide to use one of these tools, I'd caution you to focus on quality over quantity. At the expense of stating the obvious, adding a thousand random people a day is a good way to get an account blocked / shut down – whereas, sending out automated messages to 50 people that you share genuine mutual networking potential with could end up opening incredible opportunities for you and your business, while saving you a significant amount of time.
Curious to hear where you end up with your LinkedIn automation needs! If there are any tools that you swear by, I'd love to look into them as well, and maybe write more about them. Feel free to drop me a line on LinkedIn or in the contact section of my site:
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