LinkedIn is one of the cornerstone Social Networks for raising your personal profile, building credibility and a contact network and for generating leads if you are in sales.
If you run your own business, or work in marketing in a larger organisation in a business to business (B2B) market, there are some powerful additional tools in LinkedIn to help you promote your business and generate inquiries and leads.
Read through this page and view the videos for hints and tips to help you make the most of LinkedIn as an individual and as a business. The structure of the page is:
Sign-up on the left for more Hints and Tips about LinkedIn to help you promote yourself and your business, to generate leads and to grow your business.
Using LinkedIn to create and develop your personal professional profile is something that everyone in business should be doing. It takes some thought and time but it is an ideal way to extend your reach beyond the people you meet day-to-day.
It's a two way thing; it helps people find, know, like and trust you, and it helps you find, know like and trust other people. You never know when it might be really useful to reach out to someone for help. And you never know when people might be looking for someone just like you. This entry phase is about starting and 'listening'.
1. Complete your profile: As a minimum it's worth completing a reasonable amount of information on your profile page, include your picture, summary, employment, qualifications, and so-on. This gives people an outline of who you are. LinkedIn will prompt you with steps to get your profile to 100% complete.
2. Connect with your contacts: As a networking tool it's essential to create a network to prime the process. Aim to connect to 100 of your contacts; current and past colleagues, people from your education, business partners and so on. These should be people you know and who know you and who are happy to connect online.
3. Join LinkedIn groups: there are thousands of groups within the LinkedIn community, based on companies, colleges, industries, regions, special interests and more. With some you need to apply to become a member, which maintains a degree of quality for the group, and membership is generally approved within 24 hours. Choose groups which are active and with large memberships. Group membership allows people to connect more easily; you to them, them to you. Aim to join 5-10 groups initially, see who else is a member, see what discussions are taking place and so-on. Treat this as a 'listening' phase.
By doing this you build your credentials and show that you are committed to LinkedIn. It also means that people have more chance of finding you, through your profile and the groups and then making connections with you.
The benefits at this stage may be that you reconnect with someone you have lost touch with, you may find useful information about customers and prospects that help you strike up a conversation and tap into hot topics in your sector.
The LinkedIn New User Guide is a good place for more information.
Now you're getting the hang of LinkedIn you may feel ready and eager to step up a gear. This intermediate phase is about 'contributing and communicating'.
1. Update your profile: there are many steps that can be taken to improve your profile, such as:
Change your personal heading - next to your picture - to something that is distinctive, benefits lead, with a call-to-action.
Creating a Personal URL for your name and remove the numerics
Add personalised anchor text to links to your website or blog,
Add apps to your profile such as your twitter feed, blog, slideshare etc.
Increase the endorsements you have received by asking people.
2. Engage with your contacts:
Sending Email through LinkedIn can be extremely powerful. People will most likely be alerted in their in-box and also the message will be in their LinkedIn in-box.
Use with care to add value and enhance your reputation, rather than to SPAM people with blatant sales promotions, and you could start to see real value from LinkedIn. So:
Check-out the Standard TAGS that LinkedIn provide, including 'How people know you', plus Industry, Location, Company etc.
Create new TAGS that apply to your chosen method of segmentation and Tag your contacts appropriately.
Select one of these sub-divisions then go to 'create email' and you can write a simple email and send it to that sub-section of your contacts. For example:
Send a link to a High Quality content piece by someone in your industry
Highlight an event that you think might be relevant to that sub-group
If you plan to visit another town for a primary meeting take the opportunity to send an email inviting people based there to meet you for a coffee, based on some value that you can provide while you're there.
Continue to grow your contacts and maybe aim for 250 contacts.
Add the ''Link to my LinkedIn profile' graphic to your email footer, and use your Personal URL above to encourage email contacts to follow you on LinkedIn.
3. Engage with the community: start updating the wider LinkedIn community about your expertise.
Post Status updates - start with 2-3 a week about your specialisation
This really depends on what you want to achieve; like gaining access to senior level people, actively promoting yourself to your connections or to people you aren't yet connected with. However, avoid Spamming people or you risk having your account closed.
For example:
1. Gain introductions to senior contacts via some of your direct contacts by drafting an email that you would like them to forward on to their contact through LinkedIn.
2. Create a Group of your own, on a topic that you are an expert in and are passionate about, and that will help you get through to potential buyers. You'll have to put some time in to promote it and generate and moderate content.
ACTION: Why not schedule an hour to review the facilities and support in LinkedIn, update your profile and then try 3-5 new topics above on LinkedIn this month. And sign-up on the left for the weekly tips to help you on your way.
LinkedIn provides a powerful 'Paid for' promotion tool with their advertising service on a 'Pay per Click' basis. You set up an advert and a campaign by defining your target audience, based on criteria, and the budget you want to allocate. LinkedIn then executes the campaign.
If you've set this up well then it should generate leads and inquiries for you.
ACTION: If this is right for your business then why not schedule time to set up your company and some of your products or services in LinkedIn and start gaining recommendations and sharing them with your contacts.
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If you would benefit from some 1:1 advice then I offer consultancy packages such as Lead Generation Review and Action Plan or Social Media Review and Action Plan outlined in the Services section of this website, and on LinkedIn.
