LinkedIn Essential Skills Tips to get LinkedIn working

If you’ve never paid any attention to LinkedIn and its potential benefits, you wouldn’t be alone. The fact of the matter is that both Facebook and Twitter have become woven into the fabric of modern culture while LinkedIn has flown under the radar.

“Tweets” and Facebook status updates have become essential in the sharing of information as well as networking as a whole.

But what if there was an even more direct way of networking and promoting your business with other professionals?

And what if you had been missing out on it this whole time?

Well, don’t feel too bad. The truth is, LinkedIn has a reputation for being overlooked, which is exactly why now is the perfect time for you and your company to get to grips with LinkedIn.

If you have been overlooking LinkedIn all this time you had better hope your

competition has too

LinkedIn is a social network with over 240 million users that enables you to network professionally, build thought leadership, generate leads using degrees of separation.

LinkedIn is different from other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter in that it focuses specifically on the world of work. The tone is serious, and the social media marketing potential is vast because people join to network.

If you sell to a business audience of any kind LinkedIn can offer you a great focus group of interested members

What is LinkedIn?

If you don’t have an objective for using LinkedIn you could be wasting a lot of your time.

Too many people who join LinkedIn end up as ‘connection collectors’.

When asked why they signed up they say, ‘I don’t know. Somebody suggested I do, but I don’t get the point’.

Suggested objectives:

• Find new customers

• Professional networking

• Personal branding

• Generate leads

• Promote my company

• Build website traffic

• Find a new job

What is your LinkedIn Strategy

It is easy to join LinkedIn. All you need to sign up is an email address. Once signed up the most important thing to do is fully complete your personal profile.

Make sure you complete ALL the questions asked by LinkedIn. It is important for you to be found.

• Use a professional photo

• Use the name people know you by

• Find your key words

• Weave the key words into your heading, summary, experience

• Demonstrate your strengths in what you do

• How do you add value for people?

• Complete the profile

Build Your Profile

Once you profile is set up, you now want to start building your connections. The more connections you have the more people you will be able to contact with using their connections.

Make sure you only send an invitation to connect to people you know or people in the same Group as you or you may find yourself with a restricted account.

Send invites to:

• Colleagues (past & present)

• Clients

• Networkers (Old Business Cards)

• Trade association members

• Your Linked Groups

Build Your Connections

LinkedIn recommendations are very powerful social proof.

They demonstrate through real people your professional experience and value

This is where people who are interested in using your professional skills will get their comfort.

They will be able to refer directly to the individual who recommended you.

• Givers get: why not send out recommendations to people you have worked with reports and reports-to. They may reciprocate.

• Ask current/previous clients to recommend for a service provided

• LinkedIn suggests 3 will complete your profile but keep getting as many as you can

Get Recommendations

Groups are one of the most powerful elements of LinkedIn.

There are over 1 million groups on LinkedIn. They allow you to share space and ideas with likeminded professionals and are akin to online Industry Associations.

Most importantly they allow you to invite fellow group members to connect even if you do not know them.

An ideal networking environment

• You are allowed to join 50 groups. Do it!!

• Join a mix of like interest groups and target market groups

• Stick to getting weekly updates or you can be overwhelmed

• Make sure you contribute to conversations regularly

Join Groups

If you want to benefit from LinkedIn in your business, it is important that you understand how to search for people, companies and groups.

Searching works by filtering. The more specific you are the better.

The trick is knowing how to find people and the a way to connect with them.

• Search by keywords and phrases

• Search by job titles

• Search by geography

• Search by referral partners. People who sell to the same market but are not in competition

• Search by company page.

• Search by groups

• All searches are governed by ‘Boolean Strings’, get to know them

Use Advanced Search

The new version of LinkedIn Contacts makes it easy to ‘tag; your contacts or connections.

Each person you know on LinkedIn as a 1st

connection can be tagged, which means you can put an identifier against each connection to put them in a particular category.

Once tagged into a category you can communicate with these groups depending on the message you wish to convey.

You can tag by:

• Job title

• Clients

• Partners

• Leads

• Prospects

• Frequency of contact required

Categorise your Contacts by Tagging them

Linked has updated it Company Pages in the last year. Why create another profile?

1. Company Reach

Without putting any efforts into building your company on LinkedIn the chances are you employees are updating their profile to show where they work. Take advantage of this in the hope that people connecting with them will seek out your company page thus promoting your company

2. Product Awareness

LinkedIn allows you to add multiple products to your page so that each stands out. Not only are potential clients learning about your products or services they are able to see recommendations for them and who recommended them.

Create a Company Page

1. Include basic information by going to Admintools-Edit. LinkedIn will prompt you to fill out relevant information

2. Include products and services. As we have already discussed LinkedIn can showcase these very effectively Include them by going to the page and then edit.

3. Promote you company page. A LinkedIn ad campaign could help spread the word about your company as you build and integrate you marketing campaign.

4. Post Jobs on the Careers tab. This allows you to post openings at your company. Let people know your looking for fresh talent to help you build your company

5. Measure. The final tab on company pages is an analytics tab which will allow you to track page views and unique visitors.

Completing your Company Page

There are a lot of new tools being added to the LinkedIn toolbox all the time. Keep following its progress, through personal use or follow me on Linked in at: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/paulasampson/

For a free review of your LinkedIn strategy and a critique of your profile or if you do not use LinkedIn and would like to see its potential for your business click on this address and register:

www.seaforthmarketing.com

or call 07763 942290 and talk to Paul

Final Word On LinkedIn