1. LI requires a certain mindset in order to be
successful on it. Just as there are some who go to business networking
events who come back thinking it was a waste of time, there are others who come
back with leads or relationships that when cultivated will lead to business.
As one of those who I interviewed for the book suggested, “LinkedIn is
only valuable if you decide to be an active member.”
2. Still don’t think your business needs to be on
LinkedIn? Many companies are missing out on potential business by paying
too much attention to other social media platforms and not taking advantage of
the tools that LinkedIn allows companies, and professionals, to utilize to
promote themselves and their businesses. If you’re a B2B company, make no
doubt about the fact that most decision makers you want to target are already
on LinkedIn, and they can potentially be far more approachable than on a personal
networking platform such as Facebook. Even B2C companies, like the Irish Dog
Bloody Mary Mix case study in the
book, show that B2C companies have B2B relationships (distributors, marketing
partners, et. al.) that can be cultivated on LinkedIn to develop new business.
In the case of the bloody mary mix company, they are now generating 25%
of their business from LinkedIn!
3. Just as you need a website to promote your
company on the Internet, your employees need an optimized LI profile to best
represent their company and products and services. LinkedIn is a database
of professionals that is often used to find other professionals and businesses.
If Facebook were the White Pages, LinkedIn is the Yellow Pages. Because of
this, professionals and companies need to be found just like they need to be
sure they are classified correctly and displayed prominently in the phone book.
Creating a sales-oriented profile starts by understanding where your
customer is and what they might be looking for and adjusting your profile
appropriately. In other words, your profile is not about you – it is a
sales tool to help your potential customers find you.
4. Because it’s 2011 and LinkedIn has grown by
60% in the last year alone, it’s time to re-establish your online network.
Every connection added gives you that much additional reach to find and
be found. It’s also time to rethink your connections policy and begin to
strategically target new connections who might be able to help you and your
sales and marketing objectives.
5. Every business needs to understand the
importance of establishing and optimizing their presence on LinkedIn Companies.
Having a presence on Companies is not just about putting your company in
the LI database just as professionals do with their profiles. It is about
recognizing that recommendations from your products and services within your
Companies page can play a vital role in generating business similar to how
personal recommendations give instant credibility to professional profiles.
6. Why do so many companies have Facebook Pages
but never think about creating their own LinkedIn Group? Not only do
Groups have far more moderating features than Facebook Pages have, but they
allow you to create a community of potential customers or present users in the
most lucrative demographic of any social media website.
7. Many professionals create their profiles and
then wait for something to happen. Similar to the business networking
event analogy, just showing up will get you nowhere. It’s about engaging
on LinkedIn, and there are many public forums and applications which, with a
little out-of-the-box thinking, give you the opportunity to engage with other
professionals in a business atmosphere for business objectives.
8. With new applications such as LinkedIn Signal and LinkedIn Today, the
professional networking website is quickly becoming a source of business
intelligence for the sales and marketing professional. Since social media
monitoring tools do not cover LI yet, you will have to manually look through
various public forums and applications for information, but there is a great
deal of intelligence to be gleaned that can lead to new business for the
effort.
9. Social media optimization is about using
social media activity to bring more visitors to your website. For many
websites like TechCrunch or even this Windmill Networking site,
LinkedIn provides the 2nd largest source of website traffic from social media
websites. From my experience, traffic from LI also provides the lowest
bounce rate as well as highest number of page views per visit. There are
many ways to use LI to drive traffic back to your website, but if you’re not
getting enough traffic from LinkedIn to your website, you’re missing out on
potentially high quality and lucrative visitors.
10. Which is the only social advertising platform
which lets you target by company and title? LinkedIn Ads aren’t cheap, but LI
is a quality over quantity platform that is appropriate for targeting decision
makers for your B2B or expensive B2C product.
