Silver Square

Many of us have been on LinkedIn for years, starting with opening an account and adding your online resume. You placed all of your pertinent information and were proud of yourself for tackling a project to completion. Next, you took some time to invite individuals to make connections with you and over time maybe added a few features.

But now you’re aware of something new:  people are talking about how they are building their business with LinkedIn connections. You visit LinkedIn only to further learn you’re somewhat behind the ball in keeping up with all this online tool can do for you. Although these steps do not examine all the wonder you can work up, they will get you walking in the right direction, set groundwork for making updates, and make future additions less time consuming and more manageable.

LinkedIn is pretty amazing when you take the time to think about the potential. Did you know all 500 of the Fortune 500 companies are represented on LinkedIn? Guess what, 499 of them have director-level and above employees listed. This means you can possibly make connections and get introduced to some of the top companies and minds of our time. Learning how to tap in to this community and others can be done with tackling the seven tips.

1.     Join groups and add to the conversation. By far the quickest way to network within LinkedIn is joining groups, monitoring the discussions within the groups, and adding your value when it’s possible. Some basics here still apply – you should have your key message down, you should stick with your sales process, and you should focus your time and effort to a specific goal or conversion. Select groups that make the most sense for your business, or among topics you can contribute the most value. You’ll build your credibility and open doors for offline conversations that flow right in to your sales process.

2.     Use the status updates frequently. This could mean that you tell me when you’re visiting your grandma in upper state New York, or, you could more judiciously use it to talk about a project you’re completing, a real-world networking event you are attending or any other business-related activity that would connect you to a potential sale for your business. These updates are searchable and help other people find you through those key words. Use them wisely.

3.     Add in your book reading list and updates via the Amazon application. You can build your credibility by sharing your knowledge of what you’ve learned from your latest reading. Follow others in your network to see what they are reading. Maybe someone is reading the same book you are, or have, and you haven’t connected with them in over a year. This would make for a great reconnection opportunity.

4.     Write recommendations. This one may not be as out of the box for you, but have you done one? Typically we tend to receive once we give. Set aside 20 minutes to write a really great recommendation for two of your top clients, vendors or business-related contacts. They will welcome and enjoy your time and attention. Don’t go for a ‘you write one for me, I’ll write one for you mentality.’ No one likes keeping score or feeling like they have to do you a favor.

5.     Are you hosting seminars, webinars or other events? If not, you should be and announcing those events via LinkedIn is valuable. Share your occasion and invite connections or those from your groups.

6.     Send specific offers or articles to your groups or networks. Let’s say you found a how-to guide that really hit the mark for business and would be a valuable tool for most of the people in your network. Send it to them! This easy feature allows you to share that guide, article, link, news, announcement, etc. to your entire network with one click. I wouldn’t make a habit of hitting your network with multiple, daily announcements, but used well and with pertinent information you’re sure to find a win-win.

7.     Enhance your search engine results. Make sure your blog (please tell me you have one) is feeding in to your profile. Likewise, have all three links in your profile utilized to drive traffic to your website. These links are found toward the top of your profile. Typically you see My Website and My Company but if you select Other you can add in one more, so link to your blog or something relative to your business.

Now that you have built a better foundation than when we began, make 20 minutes as day possible for you to continue to build on this start. Test it out for a few months, tweak when necessary, and determine if more or less time is required to make an impact on your business by using LinkedIn.