10 Tips To Generate Business Leads With LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the business professionals platform is not always the first choice when we think about growing a business. Growing a business in social media we immediately think of Twitter and Facebook as they have the power of engagement. People interact more on Twitter and Facebook as we can send a @tweet or post on a wall whereas with LinkedIn the direct contact is still via email. The immediacy and also the deeper relationships that exist with Twitter and Facebook do not always lead to business opportunities.
LinkedIn is structured to be a comprehensive professional background platform where users leave behind the husband, kids and pets and concentrate on themselves and their career. This career focus is why creating a profile that is a true representative of your work history and present accomplishments is so crucial. Recently I covered how to give your LinkedIn profile a facelift and also how to pack a powerful punch with your summary. Now that you have updated your profile and summary, what do you do with it? You generate business!
10 Tips to Generate Business with LinkedIn
1. Build your Network. As a permission based platform, we are still able to accept or reject connections. As you start to build your network, there are the obvious places to start.
a. People you know. Your friends, colleagues, people you have worked with, people you have done business with. The key here is to connect with people you trust and will treat LinkedIn as a professional platform and not a personal let’s have a play date with the kids.
b. Outlook Contacts. Do your contacts in Outlook have profiles on LinkedIn? Do you even remember who is in your Outlook contact list? To cross check to see who in your contacts could be a connection on LinkedIn, you can either install the or integrate LinkedIn with Outlook via the social connector.
c. People you want to get to know. Are your friends connected to someone that you want to get to know? Is there a 2nd or 3rd connection to you that is connected to someone at a company you want to start connecting with? Ask them for a introduction or see if the person you want to connect with is part of a group that makes sense for you to join and be a part of.
Once you are connected, you remain connected if the person changes jobs. This shows the importance of having more than one connection in a company that you have been eye-balling for a while and also opens the door to connect with some new people when your connection is at the new job. Recently LinkedIn has added a new feature via email where they alert you to how many of your connections have changed jobs. In 2010, 290 of my connections changed jobs. That is a whole lot of new connections that I can take advantage of and grow my network.
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