Using LinkedIn Effectively to Grow Your Business

There are several switched on business owners in the UK whose entire customer acquisition and marketing is based on LinkedIn. They’re all growing rapidly in difficult times – because they adapted and made the change. It’s easier to convince the social media hold-outs to leverage LinkedIn than it is to get them to use Facebook. That’s because LinkedIn is all about business. Facebook blurs the lines between business and pleasure. (Incidentally, that’s part of its value.)

Which one should you use? That’s easy. You need to be using both Facebook and LinkedIn. With over 100 million members, LinkedIn has power. And it is the most widely used social media among small business—83% said they’re using LinkedIn. A free platform someone out there is looking for what you’re doing and what you’re selling. Hopefully lots of someone’s! And LinkedIn, with its tremendous traffic and visibility, represents a free platform for you (there’s a paid service as well). Every day, people are using LinkedIn to connect via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn groups. They’re seeing status updates of their colleagues and group members. If that doesn’t sound like much to you, let us set the record straight. It’s a big deal. When your potential customers, business partners and referrers are reminded of your achievements and see your updates, news and events, it makes an impression.

LinkedIn is a powerful way for you to get your messages out to your audiences. Today more than ever, with so many businesses vying for the attention of a finite number of customers, consistency is essential to making sales. Never forget, LinkedIn is excellent Google juice, too. You’ve probably seen this when you look for a business or executive. Their LinkedIn profile is near the top of the search engine results. Sometimes it’s even above the businesses’ domain name! This means it’s important to have a great LinkedIn page and compelling profile page. Does yours say what you do and the difference you make for your customers and others? I mean, does it really say it? It should! Also, automate your blog posts to populate your LinkedIn profile page. And of course your professional recommendations are front and centre. These are invaluable!

Time, contrary to the opinions of those who don’t actually use social media, tools like LinkedIn don’t require much of a time commitment. It takes just seconds to connect with someone. Status updates can be made quickly and are even are automated with your other social media activities. It’s easy! Of course, some people spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, answering questions and making posts. Just remember that your time is at a premium and make the best use of it. We’ve seen some savvy salespeople use LinkedIn with great success. They use it to mine data for leads, or to find their next influential introduction based on the connections of people in their network. These people are actually making a great deal of money off of LinkedIn.

There’s real potential with LinkedIn. Are you tapping into it?