Picture this. You are riding shotgun in a car through the mountains. Right now, out your window are endless trees, but in the distance, you can see a break in the trees that looks off into a magnificent sunset before the endless trees begin again.

Suddenly, a vision of this sunset on your Instagram feed becomes absolutely necessary, for everybody knows that sunsets get the most likes besides puppies and babies. But what do you need to do before reaching the tree break to ensure that the snapshot you get is just the right one you need?

One might put their window down to get more visibility, set their camera to the right filter, or even tell the driver to slow down.

All of which is preparing to get the exact picture you want at the precise time before you lose the opportunity.

It would help if you had the specific tools to zone in on that perfect sunset before it passes by. Finding your target audience is very similar, and as long as you have access to a LinkedIn profile, internet and computer, your toolbox is complete.

1. Relevant keywords

Putting relevant keywords into your search allows you to find and engage with your ideal audience. Although considered an art, it is crucial to master.

For example: If you are selling cyber protection for cloud API, your audience is probably engaging with keywords such as cyber security, cyber, API security, etc.

Searching with general or even unrelated keywords can result in missed audience members when trying to find an audience interacting with specific keywords. You will not find people interested in cyber security following music festivals, at least not as confidently as those following a hashtag of cyber security. The possibility is there, but we aim with precision and efficiency, the more specific and relevant, the better.

Remember—the sunset.

2. Relevant Timing  

When on Instagram, your feed shows you posts from the last 24 hours, maybe 48. Once the time since posted reaches three days, the post disappears from the general feed and becomes… irrelevant.

Relevance applies to not only the words we are searching for but also the time frame. If the search turns up a post that matches our keywords exactly, none of that matters if the post is from five years ago. Anything longer than a week is no longer relevant.

We are settling for nothing less than that perfect sunset.  

3. LinkedIn

Now that we know that relevant keywords are the key to our success, the question becomes where do we put that to use.

One way is targeting activity on LinkedIn through posts, events, groups, companies, etc. But by using keywords to find posts that include them, the people that interact with these posts or attend these events having to do with the relevant keywords now become our targets.

Finding the right post with the right keywords and then the right people that interacted with those posts could take a long time, so we have some tips and tricks to save you some time.

Now you might be thinking, great, this is a lot of data you have given me for a potential audience, but it’s still up to me to comb through each post, group, event, etc., until I find specific people I can engage.

I’m not going to leave you hanging like that. Let me show you just a few more tools in our toolbox.

4. Boolean Search

In order to sift through the thousands of posts uploaded to LinkedIn every day, there is a little hack to compile valuable data in a lot less time.

May I introduce you to a Boolean Search.

A Boolean search allows you to insert words or phrases into a code to turn up results.

Specific terms help signify which items the computer should look for. For instance, we might be looking for people with a particular job title or geographical location. So when producing a search using code, we would specify that we only profile want of Marketing Interns working in New York City.  

Using simple and easy-to-learn coding, we can conduct a particular search that will yield results that correlate only to the qualifications specified in the search.  

5. Phantom buster

Phantom Buster, a secret weapon disguised as a chrome extension, helps you scrape the internet for relevant data you can use for prospecting.

First, you find a post where the people engaged with it would be relevant to you.

For instance, you are trying to find people interested in cyber security, and you find a post on LinkedIn where someone has posted a new update about cyber security, and 100 people have liked it. However, seeing that this post has 100 likes does nothing for you except tell you some people are interested in this post about cyber security.

That is where Phantom Buster comes in. Phantom helps you get the data of the people who have liked the post to then create an outbound sequence to reach out to them.

You read that correctly. All you need to do is find a relevant post where the people who have engaged with it would be suitable to you, plug the post into Phantom Buster, and let them scrape the data and spit out a secret message just for you.

6. Your Competitors

Familiar with the quote, keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Well, you are about to become acquainted.

Besides your own company, your biggest competitors should be where the rest of your attention resides. Think about the people who are interested in your product. Are they interested? Because if they are not engaging with you, they probably are with your competitors.

Checking out your competitors’ pages, sometimes even daily, to see if they have any webinars, updates, and new features can help you stay afloat in this shark tank.

7. Hashtags!

Hashtags? On LinkedIn? But I thought we were at work where fun goes to die!  

Yes, we are encouraging you to use hashtags on your LinkedIn posts.  

What truly happens when you attach a hashtag to your job update or article post? It gets archived– Archived into a library containing only content of the specific hashtag. So now, when other users search for posts and job updates, they can find your posts instead of just disappearing into the void.

Hashtags are often ignored on LinkedIn, but they can be a valuable tool when used correctly.

8. Influencers.

If you were shocked about the hashtags on LinkedIn, you better buckle your seatbelts for this next one.

~Influencers~

Yes, influencers on LinkedIn. No, they aren’t selling you skincare or offering you promo codes to your favorite retail website. Instead, they are experts on content sharing, their profiles attracting tremendous amounts of traffic and engagement on their posts. More than me or you anyway.

Finding the right influencers for your niche and reposting their content can save ample time as opposed to blindly searching for content on your own.

9. Twitter

Okay, I lied. For this 8th and last tip, you will need more than a computer, internet, and LinkedIn profile. You’re going to need a Twitter account. Everything from influencers to hashtags and boolean searches can be performed on Twitter.

Just one more platform with more people to engage with!

Conclusion

If any or all of this sounds overwhelming, remember we at Samplead are here to help. Our advanced technology allows us to do this with just a click of a button while you sit back and watch in amazement. All you have to do is ask!

Check our blog for more business tips and tricks, and contact us for further opportunities! As we say at Samplead, it just takes the perfect message to the right person at the right time.