By now you have heard of Linked In, but how can you effectively use LinkedIn as a business-to-business marketing tool? The obvious benefit is for connecting with your colleagues and business contacts,but that is just the beginning.
For those not familiar with LinkedIn, it is a professional profile and social networking site. LinkedIn claims to have over 40 million members in over 200 countries, that represent 170 different industries, including every Fortune 500 company. According to LinkedIn, 46% of their members are business decision makers, with an average age of 41, and an average income of $109,000. From a marketing and sales perspective, LinkedIn provides a unique opportunity to:
· Connect with your business colleagues
· Identify new prospects
· Build your company and personal brand
· Improve your search engine optimization (SEO)
· Establish yourself as a thought leader
· Follow companies
· Share content, resources and information
Marketing is about connecting, communicating and building relationships. LinkedIn can be an effective tool for connecting with specific people with whom you are trying to communicate.
Building your profile. The goal of being on LinkedIn is connecting with people. With that in mind, take the time to fully develop your profile. Your goal is to maximize your visibility and connectability on LinkedIn. You can achieve this by including detailed information about your professional history, educational history and affiliations. Providing specifics, including company names, titles, professional designations, school names, activities and organization names helps people find you.
Building your network. Once you get started, building your network is relatively easy. To get started on LinkedIn, search for a few business associates and colleagues, invite them into your network. Before you invite them, be sure to review their profile and see how they prefer to be contacted. Some people may only want to be contacted for specific reasons. LinkedIn has an interesting feature that allows you to see people in your network, your friends network and your friend’s friends network. So in reality, you are only 3 degrees away from millions of people. For example, I currently have 118 contacts in my network (1st degree), my friends have 24,000 contacts (2nd degree), those contacts have 2.1 million contacts (3rd degree). Checkout who your friends know and expand your network. Then search groups. Then look at your customers and target customers. The term LION, refers to LinkedIn Open Networks. These are “power” networkers” that basically accept all LinkedIn invitations. You can also visit TopLinked.com to find more LIONs. The top LIONs on TopLinked.com currently have over 45,000 connections. An advantage of being linked with a LION is that you become a degree closer to many more people.
Getting into groups. Joining a LinkedIn group is extremely easy. There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn ranging from trade groups, professional associations, charities, alumni groups, and special interest groups. Joining these groups will expose you to a whole range of people who share a common interest. Once you join the group, review the members, check their profiles, and connect with those people where you have a business relationship. Once you join a group, you can display the group’s logo on your profile page.
Beyond the basic membership. While basic membership in LinkedIn is free, there are Premium Memberships available for a nominal monthly fee that offers enhanced features, such as the ability to connect directly with other members that are not in your network. With the free Basic membership there are monthly limits to the number of Invitations, InMails, and OpenLink Messages you can use. The Premium Memberships, which still has limits, range for $24.95 to $49.95 per month.
Take advantage of the tools and applications. There are a number of tools on LinkedIn that can be very useful. The “Search” tool allows you to search people, jobs, answers, companies, and groups. It can be a very powerful tool for finding and connecting with people. The “Jobs” tool allows you to post open positions on LinkedIn. “Answers” is a forum to ask and answer questions. The benefit of the Answers tool is that is goes beyond your network. This can be a useful tool to find answers to questions, but more importantly an opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise. The “Services” page is a great way to find links to people offering services in a specific specialty or geographic area. There are also a number of applications that you can use through your LinkedIn profile such as SlideShare, Word Press, Tripit, Box.net, and others.
Following Companies- LinkedIn recently introduced a "Follow Company" tool. This is a great way to follow companies with whom you have a relationship. You can also use LinkedIn to track prospects, customers, vendors and others.
Sharing with LinkedIn- There are a number of tools and plugins available, such as SlideShare, Box.net, Company Buzz, Amazon Reading List and others that facilitate sharing. Start simple by posting a few PowerPoints by utilizing SlideShare.
For those not familiar with LinkedIn, it is a professional profile and social networking site. LinkedIn claims to have over 40 million members in over 200 countries, that represent 170 different industries, including every Fortune 500 company. According to LinkedIn, 46% of their members are business decision makers, with an average age of 41, and an average income of $109,000. From a marketing and sales perspective, LinkedIn provides a unique opportunity to:
· Connect with your business colleagues
· Identify new prospects
· Build your company and personal brand
· Improve your search engine optimization (SEO)
· Establish yourself as a thought leader
· Follow companies
· Share content, resources and information
Marketing is about connecting, communicating and building relationships. LinkedIn can be an effective tool for connecting with specific people with whom you are trying to communicate.
Building your profile. The goal of being on LinkedIn is connecting with people. With that in mind, take the time to fully develop your profile. Your goal is to maximize your visibility and connectability on LinkedIn. You can achieve this by including detailed information about your professional history, educational history and affiliations. Providing specifics, including company names, titles, professional designations, school names, activities and organization names helps people find you.
Building your network. Once you get started, building your network is relatively easy. To get started on LinkedIn, search for a few business associates and colleagues, invite them into your network. Before you invite them, be sure to review their profile and see how they prefer to be contacted. Some people may only want to be contacted for specific reasons. LinkedIn has an interesting feature that allows you to see people in your network, your friends network and your friend’s friends network. So in reality, you are only 3 degrees away from millions of people. For example, I currently have 118 contacts in my network (1st degree), my friends have 24,000 contacts (2nd degree), those contacts have 2.1 million contacts (3rd degree). Checkout who your friends know and expand your network. Then search groups. Then look at your customers and target customers. The term LION, refers to LinkedIn Open Networks. These are “power” networkers” that basically accept all LinkedIn invitations. You can also visit TopLinked.com to find more LIONs. The top LIONs on TopLinked.com currently have over 45,000 connections. An advantage of being linked with a LION is that you become a degree closer to many more people.
Getting into groups. Joining a LinkedIn group is extremely easy. There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn ranging from trade groups, professional associations, charities, alumni groups, and special interest groups. Joining these groups will expose you to a whole range of people who share a common interest. Once you join the group, review the members, check their profiles, and connect with those people where you have a business relationship. Once you join a group, you can display the group’s logo on your profile page.
Beyond the basic membership. While basic membership in LinkedIn is free, there are Premium Memberships available for a nominal monthly fee that offers enhanced features, such as the ability to connect directly with other members that are not in your network. With the free Basic membership there are monthly limits to the number of Invitations, InMails, and OpenLink Messages you can use. The Premium Memberships, which still has limits, range for $24.95 to $49.95 per month.
Take advantage of the tools and applications. There are a number of tools on LinkedIn that can be very useful. The “Search” tool allows you to search people, jobs, answers, companies, and groups. It can be a very powerful tool for finding and connecting with people. The “Jobs” tool allows you to post open positions on LinkedIn. “Answers” is a forum to ask and answer questions. The benefit of the Answers tool is that is goes beyond your network. This can be a useful tool to find answers to questions, but more importantly an opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise. The “Services” page is a great way to find links to people offering services in a specific specialty or geographic area. There are also a number of applications that you can use through your LinkedIn profile such as SlideShare, Word Press, Tripit, Box.net, and others.
Following Companies- LinkedIn recently introduced a "Follow Company" tool. This is a great way to follow companies with whom you have a relationship. You can also use LinkedIn to track prospects, customers, vendors and others.
Sharing with LinkedIn- There are a number of tools and plugins available, such as SlideShare, Box.net, Company Buzz, Amazon Reading List and others that facilitate sharing. Start simple by posting a few PowerPoints by utilizing SlideShare.
Communicating thru LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great tool for communicating with business associates. Updates can be easy sent out. You can also help build your personal brand by participating in discussions and responding to posts.
Marketing with LinkedIn. Social networks have helped changed the way companies market. LinkedIn offers a number of opportunities to market your business and promote your personal brand. You can use LinkedIn to announce new products or services, provide links to news articles about your company, or start discussions about specific topics relevant to your business. You can also use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your blog. Many of my colleagues use Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs to cross promote. You can also list your self in the Services section. LinkedIn profiles also have been appearing higher and high in search engine results pages (SERPs). In fact LinkedIn has a high page rank in Google. Also consider including your LinkedIn public profile address on your e-mail signature and blog posts.
Advertising on LinkedIn. The people at LinkedIn has started to harness the power of the network for advertising. LinkedIn currently offers two levels of advertising, general ads for larger campaigns, and DirectAds for smaller, focused campaigns. LinkedIn offer advertisers to use their Precision Targeting Tool to reach: “Run of Professionals,” which is all members, “inCrowds,” which could be Executives, Sales Professionals, Finance Professionals, etc, or very specific audiences. Using LinkedIn for advertising can be very powerful since you can specifically target people based on industry, job function, geography, seniority and any number of criteria. LinkedIn current ad rates range from $12 to $76 per thousand.
Consider the risks. Using LinkedIn is not void of risks. Employers and supervisors that have a large number of people on LinkedIn run the risk of too much company information being revealed. For example, projects your people are working on, titles and roles of people in your company, and financial information. Companies need to be proactive about developing guidelines for how your people should use LinkedIn. Also remember that what you post on LinkedIn or and social networking site, can live on the Internet for an indefinite period of time. Since it was founded in 2003, LinkedIn is a head hunters dream. Recruiters regularly use LinkedIn to identify and connect with potential candidates for positions.
Other professional networks. LinkedIn is not the only professional networking site. There are a number of other sites that offer a variety of features, such as: Plaxo, Jigsaw and Spoke. Recently, Google has started offering individual profiles that are appearing in search results. You may want to consider joining these networks in addition to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is not a replacement of other marketing activity, but should be an extension of your marketing and sales efforts. As a business-to-business tool, LinkedIn offers you the ability to highly target select segments and individuals. If you would like assistance getting started with LinkedIn, email me at BGallagher@LeadingWithMarketing.com
Marketing with LinkedIn. Social networks have helped changed the way companies market. LinkedIn offers a number of opportunities to market your business and promote your personal brand. You can use LinkedIn to announce new products or services, provide links to news articles about your company, or start discussions about specific topics relevant to your business. You can also use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your blog. Many of my colleagues use Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs to cross promote. You can also list your self in the Services section. LinkedIn profiles also have been appearing higher and high in search engine results pages (SERPs). In fact LinkedIn has a high page rank in Google. Also consider including your LinkedIn public profile address on your e-mail signature and blog posts.
Advertising on LinkedIn. The people at LinkedIn has started to harness the power of the network for advertising. LinkedIn currently offers two levels of advertising, general ads for larger campaigns, and DirectAds for smaller, focused campaigns. LinkedIn offer advertisers to use their Precision Targeting Tool to reach: “Run of Professionals,” which is all members, “inCrowds,” which could be Executives, Sales Professionals, Finance Professionals, etc, or very specific audiences. Using LinkedIn for advertising can be very powerful since you can specifically target people based on industry, job function, geography, seniority and any number of criteria. LinkedIn current ad rates range from $12 to $76 per thousand.
Consider the risks. Using LinkedIn is not void of risks. Employers and supervisors that have a large number of people on LinkedIn run the risk of too much company information being revealed. For example, projects your people are working on, titles and roles of people in your company, and financial information. Companies need to be proactive about developing guidelines for how your people should use LinkedIn. Also remember that what you post on LinkedIn or and social networking site, can live on the Internet for an indefinite period of time. Since it was founded in 2003, LinkedIn is a head hunters dream. Recruiters regularly use LinkedIn to identify and connect with potential candidates for positions.
Other professional networks. LinkedIn is not the only professional networking site. There are a number of other sites that offer a variety of features, such as: Plaxo, Jigsaw and Spoke. Recently, Google has started offering individual profiles that are appearing in search results. You may want to consider joining these networks in addition to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is not a replacement of other marketing activity, but should be an extension of your marketing and sales efforts. As a business-to-business tool, LinkedIn offers you the ability to highly target select segments and individuals. If you would like assistance getting started with LinkedIn, email me at BGallagher@LeadingWithMarketing.com
