Stop Thinking “Advertising” and Start Thinking “Useful”
You’ve established your profile. You’ve started making connections. Now comes the question nearly every new PAL Affiliate eventually asks:
“What am I supposed to post?”
The answer is easier than you think. Post things that people in your professional network might actually find useful, interesting or thought-provoking. Don’t begin your LinkedIn career by turning your feed into a nonstop factoring advertisement.
Your Objective Is Visibility and Credibility
You want your connections to gradually associate your name with:
- Small business
- Cash flow
- Business growth
- Commercial finance
- Factoring
- Useful business information
That doesn’t require constantly selling factoring. Suppose you see an article about staffing companies struggling with weekly payroll while customers extend payment terms. Share the idea and add a short observation:
“This is one of the hidden challenges of rapid growth in staffing. Employees are paid weekly while commercial customers may take 30–60 days to pay their invoices.”
You’ve just demonstrated commercial-finance knowledge. You didn’t ask anyone to buy anything.
Become an Educator
Factoring provides an almost unlimited supply of educational topics. For example:
- Why can rapid sales growth create a cash-flow shortage?
- What’s the difference between profit and cash flow?
- Why do staffing companies experience payroll pressure?
- What happens when a large customer changes from Net 30 to Net 60?
- Why might a profitable company still be declined by its bank?
- What exactly is accounts-receivable factoring?
- Why can a major new contract create a financing problem?
You don’t need to write a 2,000-word article every time. Sometimes three or four sentences are enough. LinkedIn currently permits posts of up to 3,000 characters and lets users choose whether a post is visible to everyone, connections only or a Group.
Share Content From Your PAL Website
This is where a small PAL Affiliate website becomes a powerful sales tool and particularly useful. Suppose your website contains a blog article:
Five Reasons Growing Businesses Experience Cash-Flow Problems
Don’t simply post:
READ MY ARTICLE!
Instead, write:
“Growing sales don’t always mean growing cash. When a B2B company must pay employees and suppliers today but waits 45 days for customers to pay invoices, rapid growth can actually increase the need for working capital.”
Then provide the article for someone who wants to learn more. Now your website and LinkedIn are working together. LinkedIn creates visibility. Your website provides depth.
Commenting Can Be as Valuable as Posting
You don’t always have to create content.
Suppose a local manufacturer announces a major new contract. Congratulate them.
A banker announces a promotion. Congratulate her.
A CPA publishes an article about small-business tax planning. Add a thoughtful comment.
A staffing executive discusses growth. Participate intelligently.
This is social media networking, not simply social media advertising. And for a very part-time PAL Affiliate, it is manageable. Ten productive minutes can maintain visibility without consuming an evening.
The Do’s and Don’ts of LinkedIn
The basic rule is simple: behave online the way a respected business professional would behave at an in-person networking event.
DO educate, comment intelligently, congratulate people, share useful information, ask reasonable questions, participate in relevant Groups, respond when people engage with you, and maintain a professional tone.
DON’T repeatedly post “Need Money?” advertisements, spam Groups, immediately pitch every new connection, argue about unrelated controversial subjects from a business-development profile, copy other people’s material without attribution, exaggerate your factoring expertise, or use automated tools to indiscriminately generate connections and activity.
LinkedIn warns that prohibited automation and excessive invitation activity can result in account restrictions. And LinkedIn’s own Groups guidance emphasizes relevance, thoughtful conversation and avoiding promotional behavior.
Don’t Make Every Post About Factoring
This is especially important. If every single post is: Factoring! Factoring! Factoring! people will quickly tune you out.
Think broader. Share information about:
- Small-business growth.
- Employment trends.
- Interesting developments in your industry.
- Cash-flow management.
- Business financing.
- Local economic development.
- Entrepreneurship.
- New business openings.
- Industry statistics.
Occasionally share something about factoring. You’re building a professional identity around business knowledge, with commercial finance as one of your areas of interest.
A Simple Posting Formula for PAL Affiliates
As a PAL Affiliate, you don’t need to post every day. For someone with a regular 9-to-5 job, even one or two worthwhile posts each week can begin creating visibility. Combine that with occasional comments on other people’s posts and participation in a couple of Groups. That’s enough to get started.
You might spend 15 minutes after dinner Tuesday and another 15 minutes Saturday morning. This isn’t supposed to become another full-time job.
Don’t Sell—Rather Simply Become Recognizable
The PAL Affiliate philosophy has always been based upon something very simple:
Be in the right place with the right knowledge.
LinkedIn dramatically increases the number of places where you can be.
- A connection mentions a large new order.
- A staffing-company owner discusses rapid growth.
- A business owner complains about slow-paying customers.
- A banker posts about tightening credit requirements.
- Someone in a Group asks about financing accounts receivable.
Because you’ve learned the fundamentals of factoring, you recognize something an ordinary LinkedIn user might completely overlook:
A potential SQL.
And because you’ve spent months sharing useful information instead of constantly pitching people, your connection may already know something else: You’re someone worth talking to. That is the real objective of LinkedIn for the PAL Affiliate.
You don’t have to become an influencer.
You don’t have to become a social-media celebrity.
And you certainly don’t have to spend all day online.
Build a professional profile. Build the right network. Share useful information. Stay visible. Learn to recognize the opportunity when it appears. For a very part-time factoring Affiliate, that can be an exceptionally powerful marketing strategy.