With a user base of over 100 million people, LinkedIn is now the world’s largest online professional networking site. Years ago, LinkedIn was thought to be just an online resume site but today LinkedIn is a valuable resource and opportunity to market yourself, your business, products and services. Also with the social nature of LinkedIn you can network, connect with, and befriend other individuals who may help lead you to new customers.
LinkedIn is one of the best online communities and social media platforms for networking, in fact for business; we believe it may even surpass Facebook and Twitter. It is a great way to network, get introduced to and connect with others within your same industry, as well as those people outside your industry.
So with that being said, here are some tips to maximise your LinkedIn Influence:
- Complete your LinkedIn Profile to 100%, including an image, description, summery, employment and position, links to relevant websites, qualifications, and awards, etc.
- Join Groups that are in the same industry as yours, and join some groups that interest you, and become part of the conversations.
- Create your own LinkedIn group and interact with people that join your group. Also add your company website or blog to the group to drive traffic to your website.
- Once you share a common group with other people, you can invite them to connect with you, and therefore have the ability to message those people. Also helps in growing your connections.
- Beef up your expertise by listing all your previous employment and experience.
- Build your credibility and show you are an authority by actively interacting and providing valuable content within forums, blogs and through your own LinkedIn status updates and website. This can be done by asking and answering questions and helping people by sharing your expertise.
- Link up with everyone, let LinkedIn send a message on your behalf to all your email contacts and let them know you have LinkedIn. You might gain some instant connections and some possible testimonials from Friends or Colleges etc.
- Send personal messages to people you want to network and connect with them.
- Link your profile with your Twitter account, this will cross-promote content across platforms.
- As LinkedIn shows up high for search engine results, be sure to use “Keywords” in your description, and company sections. Also, within your LinkedIn pages incorporate links such as your website and/or your blog within the profile. This will help in search engine optimisation (SEO).
- Find people you have done business with and add positive testimonials on their profiles, this will encourage the other person to reciprocate the positive testimonial, therefore building up your credibility.
So there’s just a few of the many tips when it comes to building up your LinkedIn Influence and gaining the maximum exposure and benefits from LinkedIn. So now that you know the size, importance and potential opportunities LinkedIn has to offer, let me ask you this…
Do you and your business have a LinkedIn account?
If not, contact us today!