By Nate Freedman

Whenever an MSP business owner comes to me to discuss their various digital marketing efforts, invariably the topic always finds its way to LinkedIn. This has become especially true over the last few years, since LinkedIn has grown to about 500 million members worldwide. Approximately 40% of those users (or about 200 million people) are also very, very active on a daily basis. Not only that, but statistically speaking it’s also where a large number of Fortune 500 decision-makers spend the vast majority of their time online.

All of this is to say that LinkedIn is absolutely a channel worthy of your time, care and attention in equal measure — making it understandable why so many people want to know more about it.

But during many of these discussions, a lot of people usually tell me some variation of the same thing when I ask where they’re focusing their activities on LinkedIn:

“Well, we’re sharing articles and company news on our business’s LinkedIn page, of course. We’re also linking it to our website and in our newsletters, and we’ve even started asking all of our employees to share our articles as well. We’ve been getting into paid ads more and more, too. But I’ll be honest with you … we haven’t really seen any results.”

That’s right about when I usually take a deep breath and ask a simple-yet-critical question:

“OK, but what about your personal LinkedIn profile?” I say.

“I’m not actively using my personal LinkedIn profile to promote my business. Would that help?” is the response I get 99 times out of 100.

Sigh.

In my opinion, LinkedIn is so much more than just a place to share the latest security breaches and company events — or at least, it can be. In terms of B2B lead generation alone, it’s one of the most powerful opportunities you have, and it’s just waiting to be taken advantage of.

Actually getting to that point and enjoying those benefits for yourself, of course, will require you to fundamentally change the way you use the network. This sounds complex, but it really isn’t. It simply begins and ends with shifting your focus from your business LinkedIn page to your personal LinkedIn profile.

That’s exactly what I’d like to show you how to do in the slideshow above.

Nate Freedman is the founder and owner of Tech Pro Marketing, a firm that has helped over 100 managed service providers get better results and generate more leads using LinkedIn over the last year alone. Over time, he and his team have helped countless clients become the one market authority that everyone feels comfortable turning to for IT-related issues large and small. Follow him on LinkedIn here and be sure to visit the Tech Pro Marketing homepage for more information.