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How To Leverage LinkedIn For Your Small Business
This document provides tips for small businesses on how to leverage LinkedIn. It outlines that LinkedIn is ideal for small businesses, recruiters, marketing firms, and other B2B and B2C companies. The key reasons to use LinkedIn include building your reputation and network in the social media platform for business. It recommends developing an optimized profile, building targeted connections, participating in groups relevant to your industry, posting events, sharing relevant content, and leveraging questions and answers to establish yourself as an expert in your field. The document provides specific best practices for each of these strategies to help small businesses leave a lasting impression on LinkedIn.
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How To Leverage LinkedIn For Your Small Business
- 1. How to Leverage For Your Small Business
- 2. Who is LinkedInideal for? • Small Businesses • Recruiters • Marketing Firms • B2B & B2C companies • Job hunters • Internet Start-ups
- 4. LinkedIn - Why? • Social network for business • Build your reputation • Build your network • Great learning platform • Target market
- 5. What’s your LinkedInBusiness Strategy? • Knowing how LinkedIn works, and what type of people you want to connect with is the basis for choosing your strategy:
- 6. Is it yourintent to: • Joint-ventures partnerships • Connect with their target audience • Thought leadership • Industry-related conversations • Distribute relevant content
- 7. Best practices • Leveragethe power of tapping into other people’s LinkedIn networks – Utilize to locate prospective clients • Don’t sell your services – Drive people to relevant content on your site that adds value
- 8. How to LeaveA Lasting Impression on LinkedIn Develop/ Build Targeted Participate In Optimize Connections Groups Profile Base Share Leverage Post Events Relevant “Questions & Content Answers”
- 9. 1. Develop/Optimize YourProfile • Clarify what you do and why you are good at it • Make sure your profile is completely filled out • Include a professional photo
- 10. 1. Develop YourProfile •Always fine-tuning •Choice of keywords •Location of keywords
- 11. 2. Build TargetedConnection Base • Accept Invitations • Take Your Offline Connections Online • Connect with them on other networks
- 12. 3. Participate inGroups • Join target specific groups • Search the group’s directory • Stay in front of your target market
- 13. 4. Post Events •Get found • Invite your connections • Find industry events
- 14. 5. Leverage Questions& Answers • Powerful ways to attract new clients is by being considered the expert in your field
- 15. 6. Share RelevantContent • Status updates • News links • Blog posts
- 17. Search – People Search –Company Search – Jobs Search –Group – News Search –Answers Search – Discussion Search
- 18. Summary: • Fill out profile completely • Keywords are important • Think like your target market • Always build your network
- 19. Thank You .. . Questions? • Gennia Holder – gholder@timetogovirtual.com – Facebook.com/socialmediacoffeetalk – Linkedin.com/in/genniaholder 407-243-8560 – Twitter: @timetogovirtual
Editor's Notes
- #5 LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories.100m+ professionals around the world as of March 2011Known as the social network for businessBuild your reputation and your brand’s reputationBuild your networkGreat learning platform (via Groups, Answers, etc.)Create Google Juice for SEOYour target market is there (have you defined it yet?)
- #6 Groups you choose joinHow you interact within groupsWhat information you shareWhat questions you ask or answerHow you optimize your profile
- #7 Develop new joint-ventures partnerships?Connect with their target audience?Develop their thought leadership in their market segment?Stay in tune with industry-related conversations?Distribute relevant content to a target audience?
- #10 Clarify what you do and why you are good at itBe conversational Communicate successes from current/past jobsMake sure your profile is completely filled outFill out all current and past positionsDon’t copy & paste your resumeInclude URLs linking to your blogand company websitesInclude a professional photoKeyword strategy important:Search will be done in all profile text including summaries, job descriptions, school names, job titles, Fill in all fieldsConsider carefully job titles, descriptions, etc.Links into your page / links externallyPhotosKeywordsLocaiton,
- #11 Important: Choice & location of keywords Search will be done in all profile text including summaries, job descriptions, school names, job titles, specialties.
- #12 Make it a habit to send a LinkedIn connection to customers and prospects after every meetingConnect with people with similar interestsFind connections already on LinkedInInvite those not on LinkedIn to joinJoin the networks where they have site: Fan Pages, comment on blog posts, follow on twitter (retweet, include in #FF, reply)Facebook PageTwitterBlog YouTube Follow up with people you meet networking—and stay in touch. Sometimes I’m super organized. But mostly I’m not. I often forget to add people to my CRM. They may forget to add me, too. LinkedIn is an easy way for us slackers to stay in touch. If someone asks me if I know a good elephant trainer, I can flip through my LinkedIn network and find a match. You can stay in touch with clients and prospects this way, too. And get their testimonials to display on your profile, so you can…Get business. I’ve gotten several clients by sending a quick note to prospects I find through a simple search on LinkedIn. I’ve literally gotten clients by typing “clean tech marketing director” and sending notes to whomever comes up. That’s how clients find me, as well. It’s surprisingly, almost mind-blowingly, effective. Sign up for one of LinkedIn’s monthly accounts. Your emails are guaranteed to get a response or you get that email credited back. What do you have to lose?Demonstrate subject matter expertise through Q&A. Too busy to blog or to publish a monthly newsletter? Mine the Q&A fields for tantalizing questions. You don’t need to log into LinkedIn every day to do this. Simply subscribe to the topics’ RSS feeds and answer the questions you like. I do this whenever I’m feeling lonely. Your answers appear on your profile, and you get a star if the questioner selects your answer as the best. Your responses also appear on your contacts’ pages when they log in—a virtual e-newsletter, without the trouble of writing an entire article.Boost your search engine rankings. Outbound links to your website boost your website’s ranking, and they also help boost your personal ranking, a major plus if, like me, you share a name with a convicted felonot of groups directory
- #13 Join target specific groups, started around a particular theme. Search the group’s directory and find targeted groups by putting in specific keywords Get you and your brand in front of your target market Commenton discussionsIntroduce yourselfSend connection requests to targeted members
- #14 Found by people not connected to youInvite your connectionsFind industry events to attend in your areaEvents can go viral - other people see that a LinkedIn connection is attending your event when they RSVP invite your connections to your event. But your event can also be found by new people that you may not be connected to. Creating an event only takes a moment, you can browse to see what other events are happening in your area, and your event will show up there also.
- #15 Demonstrate subject matter expertiseMine the Q&A fields for questionsExpert statusTerm: thought leadershipSparking interest and conversation: Thought leadership means literally leading thoughts. Your content should entertain, excite, and generate curiosity among your audience.2. Promoting active engagement: Social media is not about preaching or broadcasting. They’ll listen if you listen: take an interest in what your followers say and they’ll be sure to take an interest in you. Voice your opinions, but be receptive to theirs as well.Demonstrate subject matter expertise through Q&A. Too busy to blog or to publish a monthly newsletter? Mine the Q&A fields for tantalizing questions. You don’t need to log into LinkedIn every day to do this. Simply subscribe to the topics’ RSS feeds and answer the questions you like. I do this whenever I’m feeling lonely. Your answers appear on your profile, and you get a star if the questioner selects your answer as the best. Your responses also appear on your contacts’ pages when they log in—a virtual e-newsletter, without the trouble of writing an entire article.Answer Questions Posted on LinkedInShare your expertise & add value to the conversation