At a recent Freelance Mum Netwalk, I found myself talking about LinkedIn.
I was sharing some recent client successes when I realised that several of the business owners I was chatting with hadn’t considered what the platform could offer them.
Some had always sold directly to consumers. They associated LinkedIn with corporate careers, recruitment or businesses selling to other businesses.
But as we talked about their skills, I could suggest potential offers they could sell to businesses using the expertise they already had.
Those conversations highlighted something I see often: business owners can overlook LinkedIn because they haven’t recognised a potential buyer for their expertise there.
So, how do you work out whether LinkedIn could support your business? And what should you actually do when you get there?
Here’s where I would start.
1. Understand what LinkedIn could help you achieve
Before you start writing posts, decide what you want LinkedIn to contribute to your business.
That might mean:
- Reaching potential clients who need your services.
- Meeting people who could recommend you.
- Finding businesses to collaborate with.
- Securing workshops, training or speaking opportunities.
- Building credibility with people researching your expertise.
- Staying in touch with contacts you’ve met elsewhere.
These are different objectives, and they need different approaches.
If you want to sell workshops to employers, for example, you need to identify who commissions those workshops, what they are trying to achieve and what would make your session worth paying for.
If you want referrals, you need relationships with people who serve a similar audience and understand when to recommend you.
Try this: Finish the sentence:
“I want LinkedIn to help me connect with ______ so I can generate opportunities for ______.”
“Get more visibility” is difficult to build a strategy around. “Connect with local employers who might book my team workshops” gives you a direction.
2. Look beyond the customers you already serve
If you currently sell to consumers, you might assume LinkedIn has little relevance to your business.
Start by separating what you currently sell from the expertise that makes it valuable.
A photographer might currently sell family photography. Their expertise could also support businesses that need staff portraits or brand imagery.
An artist might sell individual commissions. They could explore creative workshops commissioned by businesses or venues.
The opportunity begins with a question:
Who else has a reason to pay for what I know or can do?
Here are some illustrative possibilities to explore:
Family photography
A potential business offer: Staff headshots or business brand photography
People to research: Founders, marketing managers, office managers
Consumer baking orders
A potential business offer: Corporate gifts or event catering
People to research: Event organisers, office managers, business owners
Art and creative classes
A potential business offer: Team creative workshops
People to research: People teams, team leaders, venue managers
Home organisation
A potential business offer: Practical workplace organisation sessions
People to research: Office managers, coworking operators
Personal styling
A potential business offer: Styling support for professional photography
People to research: Brand photographers, business communities
These are starting points for research, rather than proof of demand. You still need to check whether people want the offer, have a budget and are a good fit for your skills.
You also don’t have to change your entire business. You could test one additional offer alongside your existing work.
3. Translate your expertise into a reason to buy
Being good at something doesn’t automatically make it clear why a business should pay for it.
You need to connect your expertise to something the buyer wants to achieve.
Consider the difference:
“I’m a photographer.”
And:
“I organise headshot sessions for growing teams, so businesses can update their website and staff profiles without arranging separate appointments for everyone.”
The second explains who it is for, what is being bought and why it is useful.
Use this structure to describe a potential offer:
I help [specific buyer] achieve [useful outcome] through [clear service].
For example:
“I run guided creative workshops for teams looking for an organised activity where colleagues can spend time together.”
Keep the outcome realistic. A creative workshop can offer a shared experience; you don’t need to promise that one session will transform company culture.
Try this: Write down:
- Who would buy the service?
- What problem or requirement would prompt them to look for it?
- What would you deliver?
- Why would that delivery be useful?
If you struggle with these questions, spend more time developing the offer before planning posts about it.
4. Check whether your potential buyers are on LinkedIn
You don’t need to commit to a full content strategy before doing some basic research.
Start by searching for relevant job titles, businesses and industries.
For a corporate photography offer, that could mean researching marketing managers, local business owners and companies with growing teams.
Look for evidence:
- Are relevant people posting or joining conversations?
- What business priorities do they mention?
- Are they organising events, hiring or launching something?
- What questions do they ask?
- Who already works with or supplies them?
You are looking for context, rather than collecting names to pitch immediately.
Also distinguish between the person who benefits from your service and the person who buys it. Employees might attend a workshop, while a people manager researches it and a director approves the budget.
Try this: Find ten relevant people or businesses. Note what makes each relevant and one thing you have learned about their needs.
If you struggle to find suitable buyers, revisit your audience or consider whether LinkedIn should play a supporting role in your marketing.
5. Make your profile explain your business clearly
Imagine someone hears about you, visits your profile and has thirty seconds to decide whether to find out more.
Can they understand:
- What you do?
- Who you work with?
- What they can buy?
- Why they should trust you?
- How to take the next step?
For an owner-led service business, I would start by making your personal profile clear and useful.
Write a specific headline
“Founder” tells someone your position. It doesn’t tell them what you could help them with.
A more useful example would be:
“Brand photographer helping independent businesses create images for their websites, LinkedIn profiles and marketing.”
Explain your offer in your About section
Introduce who you help, the needs you support and how working with you looks. Include relevant experience or evidence, then tell readers how to enquire.
You can sound like yourself. You don’t need to adopt a formal corporate voice.
Make the next step easy to find
Give people a clear route to a relevant service page, enquiry form or conversation.
LinkedIn also offers Service Pages, which can showcase services and let potential clients request them. The basic Service Page is available at no cost; some additional features require a paid subscription. It is an option to consider where your service fits the available categories.
Your profile should help someone understand your offer even when you haven’t posted that day.
6. Create content that helps someone make a buying decision
“What should I post?” becomes easier when you start with your buyer’s questions.
A prospective client might be wondering:
- Is this relevant to my business?
- What does it involve?
- How much preparation will we need?
- Can this person deliver what we need?
- What happens if I enquire?
Your content can answer those questions.
For example, a photographer exploring business headshot sessions could create:
“How do we organise this?”
Useful post: How to prepare your team for a headshot session
“What images do we need?”
Useful post: A checklist of photographs to plan for a business website
“Will this disrupt the working day?”
Useful post: What a team photography session involves
“Can you help people who hate cameras?”
Useful post: How you support people who feel uncomfortable being photographed
“How do we book?”
Useful post: An explanation of your packages and enquiry process
This gives people practical help while showing how you work.
Include evidence where you have it: a real project, client feedback shared with permission, or an example of your process. If you are introducing a new service, be clear when something is a demonstration rather than previous client work.
Try this: List five questions people ask before buying from you. Turn each answer into a post.
7. Use conversations to test your assumptions
The netwalk reminded me how much can come from talking about someone’s business.
Bring that curiosity to LinkedIn.
When you find a relevant discussion, contribute something useful. Ask a thoughtful question, share an experience or explain a point that helps the conversation.
When connecting with someone you’ve met, mention the context.
Then, where appropriate, use conversations to learn:
- Have they bought a service like yours before?
- What prompted the purchase?
- Who was involved in choosing a provider?
- What made the process difficult?
- What information did they need before deciding?
Avoid treating every connection as an invitation to send a sales pitch. A person accepting your request hasn’t necessarily expressed interest in your offer.
The aim is to understand where your expertise fits and build relationships with people for whom it is relevant.
8. Give interested people a clear route to enquire
Useful content can create interest, but people still need to know how to work with you.
Make sure your offer answers the practical questions:
- Who is it suitable for?
- What is included?
- How is it delivered?
- What information do you need to provide a quote?
- What happens after someone gets in touch?
A clear invitation could be:
“Planning updated photographs for your team? Send me your location and approximate team size, and I can explain the options.”
That gives someone a reason to contact you and tells them what to send.
Check that your website matches the offer you discuss on LinkedIn. If you promote corporate workshops but your website only mentions individual classes, a potential buyer may struggle to work out whether you can help.
9. Measure whether LinkedIn is creating useful opportunities
Likes can tell you that people responded to a post. They don’t tell you whether your offer is commercially viable.
Keep a simple record of:
- Relevant conversations.
- Enquiries and what people asked for.
- Calls or meetings booked.
- Proposals requested.
- Work won and its value.
- Referrals or introductions.
- Time spent on the activity.
Ask new enquiries how they found you and what prompted them to get in touch.
Someone may read several posts before enquiring, or hear about you through a contact and use LinkedIn to check your experience.
Look at the whole journey where you can. And if interest isn’t turning into enquiries, investigate whether the issue is the audience, the offer, the evidence or the next step.
A manageable plan for your first month
Treat your first month as a learning period.
Week one: Choose an opportunity.
Identify one potential buyer, one useful offer and ten relevant people or businesses to research.
Week two: Clarify your profile.
Update your headline, explain the offer and make your enquiry route clear.
Week three: Start contributing.
Publish two useful posts answering buyer questions. Join relevant conversations and reconnect with people you already know.
Week four: Review what you learned.
Look at the conversations and responses. What did people understand? What needed explaining? Did anyone describe a need you could help with?
You may need more than a month to generate paid work. The purpose of this first stage is to gather evidence and establish an approach you can sustain.
Start with the expertise you already have
You don’t need to have your entire LinkedIn strategy figured out before exploring the possibilities.
Start by asking who could benefit from your expertise, what they might buy and whether LinkedIn gives you a useful way to reach them.
That was the opportunity I saw during the Freelance Mum Netwalk: business owners with valuable skills who hadn’t yet considered every audience those skills could serve.
If you want help identifying your LinkedIn opportunity and turning it into a clear strategy, explore how to work with me.