Is Your business on LinkedIn?

Is Your business on LinkedIn?

Is your business on LinkedIn?

In this blog I want to talk a little bit about LinkedIn and I want to preface this conversation by saying if you’re still wondering if LinkedIn is a channel for you, or another platform that you should be using, then the easiest way to answer this question is, you’re mad if you’re not using it.

I still hear of people that are fearful or concerned about putting themselves on LinkedIn. I know people who tried it in the early days and they didn’t like the fact that they’ve were befriended or ‘linked’ by people requesting to connect with them who they didn’t know. If you don’t know them, don’t connect with them. It’s that simple. People are becoming more and more savvy when it comes to the use of LinkedIn and I think that we can all appreciate the benefits LinkedIn presents as a networking platform for businesses.

The beauty about LinkedIn is that it’s just starting to take off. It’s starting to become more powerful and a lot more user-friendly. And the advertising platform within LinkedIn is also improving and becoming a solid platform to use. Thus, it is becoming a really great business tool for business growth and development.

LinkedIn is used for connecting and networking with professionals in your field from all over the world. It’s about engagement. It is also about creating meaningful connections with your target audience or potential clients and engaging with them in a valuable way. It is a great tool that can be used to do your due diligence on an organisation and its staff members before having a business meeting or job interview. As marketers, my colleagues and I connect with other marketers so that we are in contact with our fellow marketing peers, which is a great way of keeping up to date with the latest marketing trends and strategies.

Start Meaningful Conversations

Start connecting with fellow peers, colleagues, people in the same field of work as you, related businesses, competitors, potential clients etc. Connect with them, and start a conversation with a soft-touch approach.

When reaching out to these people, tell them who you are and why you want to connect with them. Tell them why the connection is of value to you, and how you could be of value to them by being in their network. Share some content with them, perhaps send them an explainer video that shows what your product or service does. When doing so, make sure that this is going to be of relevance to them. This is what I do on my profile. When I connect with potential clients, I approach them by telling them a story about me and my business, then I offer a free chapter of my book in order to provide value to them. And if they don’t respond or want to connect with you, that is also fine. At least you approached them by first providing value in the exchange. Which is why I offer a chapter of my book. This approach is far better than bombarding them with a sales pitch which will automatically turn them off. No one wants to be caught off guard with a sales pitch whereby they feel that you want something out of them and in return you are going to provide little to no value to them.

So, if you’re one of the culprits out there that are cold-spamming people on LinkedIn, stop it, because you’re stopping a lot of people getting on LinkedIn that don’t want to be spammed. And if you’re one of those people that are thinking about being on LinkedIn and you’re not using it, start giving it a go. Start building your personal profile or leveraging your personal profile for the good of your business, and do that by engaging with your potential customers in a meaningful way. By giving them a bit of value, seeding them a bit of content, by way of a video or article, whatever it might be, this just helps to facilitate a better conversation and allow you to tell your story about your business.

 

I hope that helps and I look forward to seeing what you come up with for Linked In in 2018.

 

If you’d like to understand more about being on LinkedIn, feel free to listen to my videos and podcasts that give away tips and tricks to marketing on LinkedIn and other social media platforms that your business should be on in 2018. 

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