LinkedIn’s popularity among businesses isn’t a surprise, given that it has the ability to drive companies to maximize their reach and get their message across to their target audience. Be it for businesses or individuals, LinkedIn is simply the go-to platform for building a vast network.

However, like any other platform, there’s a huge audience to tap into and it’s simply growing by the hour. Trying to connect with each user through a manual process does not only lead to frustratingly slow progress, but it also means you can’t make as many connections as you need in a given period.

This is where free LinkedIn automation tools come in handy. LinkedIn automation tools make it easier for you to win connections compared to a manual, non-automated approach. They make it simpler and faster for you to pitch your products and showcase your content to newly gained followers. They also get rid of time-consuming and repetitive tasks, letting you focus on the more core functions of the platform such as building real relationships with real people.

In this article, we discuss the importance of free LinkedIn automation tools and why many providers of digital marketing and SEO services use them to accelerate their campaigns.

LinkedIn Automation tools: Why do people do use them?

As LinkedIn and other social media platforms become the preferred channels  for professionals to connect and network, traditional channels for gathering sales prospects like cold calls and outbound emails have become less effective.

For instance, with outbound emails, you send out at least 500 hundred emails, only to incur a 15% open rate with a 2% reply rate, and often the majority are just unsubscribe me’s. Cold emails might have been effective in the past, but it no longer holds true today. It’s outdated and most people treat cold, unsolicited emails as spam. They’ll delete them from their inbox the moment they receive them.

Additionally, it’s likely that a good percentage of your emails never make it to your intended recipients. Google and other providers of email services are getting more advanced at detecting cold emails, sending them to the junk/spam folders directly. Email deliverability is just not where it used to be anymore.

What about cold calls?

Cold, unsolicited phone calls are even worse. No one likes getting a random phone call during the middle of the day from someone trying to sell a product or service. It annoys buyers and we’re pretty sure your sales team doesn’t like a cold calling as well. Not to mention it’s time-consuming, expensive, and doesn’t bring you the ROI you deserve. This is simply a tactic that sales teams should have dropped a decade ago.

As cold outreach becomes less effective, free LinkedIn automation tools offer more flexibility and functionality. Plus, you get to connect and engage with prospects when they have your full attention, which ultimately opens more sales opportunities.

What are some examples of free LinkedIn automation tools?

Automatic sending of connection requests

Auto-inviting is indispensable when it comes to lead generation on LinkedIn. With this tool, you can automatically send hundreds of connection requests. This saves you hours of manual work and significantly scale up your business.

Follow-up automation

Following up significantly increases your chances of winning leads and converting prospects. Automated direct messages can help with managing follow up and making sure it gets done. Just set a number of days after which you want to automatically send a follow-up message. Automating this process also leaves with more free time to focus on prospects that positively respond to your follow ups, ultimately helping you close more business. Once you get a reply, further follow-ups will instantly stop.

Response and Acceptance tracking

These help you get the right message to the right people – at the right time. Just make sure to personalize each message so that it’s relevant and engaging to the intended recipient.

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What are the benefits of using free LinkedIn automation tools?

These help you get the right message to the right people – at the right time. Just make sure to personalize each message so that it’s relevant and engaging to the intended recipient.

Building your network of connections and brand ambassadors

Visiting profiles, sending invites, automatic follow-ups, and other related activities have taken social engagement to a higher level. As LinkedIn automation tools allow you to personalize invites plus arrange and automate repetitive engagements, you’ll have more time to do more important tasks such as relationship building. In other words, more time to create meaningful and engaging content that not only builds brand awareness but also helps you stay relevant within your network. In turn, this will generate more leads to grow your business.

Building brand awareness through network effects

Network effects are one of the major defensibilities that create value for sales managers and business owners in the digital world. Facebook, Google, and Apple are just some of the multinational companies that use this defense mechanism to ensure their products and services continue to sell once the usage has reached a specific level. Now, how exactly do network effects work on LinkedIn? Simple: when your network engages with the content you put out, their corresponding networks on LinkedIn will also see that they’ve engaged with your content. It serves as social proof, making your offering more enticing and valuable to others.

Giving value to your network at scale

Automation on LinkedIn reduces the time you spend on repetitive and mundane tasks that bots can and should handle. This gives you enough time to deliver relevant content to your network and provide a cohesive experience.

Many providers of digital marketing and SEO services have been using content marketing strategies to attract prospects and convert them into customers, while also communicating with their network at scale. You can also do this by creating a content marketing plan that covers the type of content you produce, how often you should publish them, and the type of information your target audience will find valuable. Additionally, check out these simple growth hacking techniques for LinkedIn that will help you to skyrocket your leads.

Isn’t LinkedIn automation spammy?

Many people think LinkedIn automation is spammy and ineffective, which it can be when you abuse its features. The key to avoid spamming is to be genuine and honest, and not engage in activities such as:

  • Endorsing someone you don’t know.
  • Sending a sales pitch instantly after someone accepts your connect requests.
  • Self-promotions of any kind.
  • Pitching your company in comments.
  • Sending follow-up messages over and over again.
  • Scraping and sending emails to personal addresses.

Instead, you should:

  • Go to LinkedIn profiles and send connect requests to users who show interest in your products and services. This is a big step from cold emails — an approach that’s considered more spammy.
  • Follow up with new connections and provide them with valuable quality content.
  • Treat prospects kindly and build genuine relationships like you would in real life. See new connections as new friends, not just as customers.

Growing your business with free LinkedIn automation tools

Digital marketing has cemented its authority as a powerful mode of spreading the word about a brand and its products online. For many businesses across different industries, especially those catering to B2B clients, LinkedIn is their digital marketing platform of choice.

It’s time you take sales beyond just cold, disruptive, unsolicited, and sales calls and emails. B2B lead generation through the LinkedIn platform is a much warmer approach, and it’s more effective than outdated call and email tactics.

LinkedIn automation is definitely the next evolution of sales enablement. As long as you don’t abuse the tools, you’ll build relationships with your network that will bring in more sales and revenue.