Twitter and Facebook may be “what’s hot” for social networking, but with LinkedIn’s network of over 100 million professionals it’s quickly becoming a hotspot to help grow your B2B business. Most people are familiar with how to use LinkedIn on a personal level, but there are several features available to raise awareness and generate revenue for your business as a whole. The top ones are below:

• Make your profile complete and add keywords.
Your profile is the first thing other LinkedIn users see so it’s very important to list all relevant information about yourself. Also, LinkedIn profiles have a high PageRank on Google, so by completing your profile, adding keywords and making your profile available for search engines to index the easier it will be for people to find you.

• Make connections.
LinkedIn is a social network, but for building relationships with other professionals. You need to remember that this isn’t Facebook, Twitter or Myspace (heaven forbid) – we aren’t trying to be friends with everybody. Make valuable connections with other professionals that can help you promote your business and your own personal brand. You can search by industry, keywords, company and title to name a few. Take a look at business descriptions and connections to determine who would be the best contacts for you and don’t connect with anyone you don’t actually know – LinkedIn is not a popularity contest.

• Get recommendations.
Recommendations are the most looked for feature on your profile and can enhance your professional credibility, which will help make connections. Most importantly, don’t ask everybody for recommendations – only people that you know well. Always be sure to return the favor when appropriate!

• Use LinkedIn Answers.
The most powerful tool LinkedIn has to offer is LinkedIn Answers, which allows professionals to ask and answer questions about every possible business topic. The more answers that are chosen as the “best answer” can earn you the title “expert” in a certain field. Now that you demonstrated your knowledge or “expertise,” you have the opportunity to connect with the question-asker and anyone else that read the question and your subsequent answer.

• Join groups – or start your own.
LinkedIn’s Groups feature is a great way to stay informed and make new connections with other professionals that share your interests. There are hundreds of thousands of groups on LinkedIn and chances are you will find a few that will work for promoting and discussing your business. The more you interact with your groups the more exposure you will receive. Select groups that are appropriate for a business professional of your kind, but also be sure to get involved in groups where your PROSPECTS are – this way you will be on hand to sniff our opportunities.

LinkedIn allows professionals to connect with people they already know and to search for people they want to know. Spending some quality time on LinkedIn and using its features will help grow your business and generate revenue, especially for those of us who are too busy to do the amount of face to face networking we should be doing. LinkedIn is proving to be a very credible substitute for such in any B2B focused social media strategy.

Share on Facebook

If you’ve ever heard about social media, you’ve probably heard people say it has revolutionized the way people interact, live and do business. A movie has just been made about it, people are writing books about it and it is becoming a part of our lives whether we accept it or not.

For many, it is more convenient to get online and see what your friends are up to instead of calling each person individually. Wait…there’s more to a cell phone than just texting, games, and music? Can you imagine keeping up with the hundreds of people on your “friends list” with a phone call every week? What about even once a month? Your social life would eat you alive. It already does that for some people as it is. Farmville – yeah, I said it.

Let’s take it to another level – what if you were a business trying to directly reach out to your thousands of customers on a continuous basis?

(more…)

Share on Facebook

Three weeks ago I was awakened out of my sleep by my phone alarm, telling me that I had an email message. Half-awake, I opened the message to find a flight confirmation email from Southwest Airlines. This must have been a mistake because I certainly did not book a round-trip flight to Florida. After sitting up, turning on the lamp on my bedside table, I noticed there is a message attached from my boss:

“Pack your bags, you are going to Florida. Hope you can find a babysitter. – Gene”

Was this a new employee appreciation program where people are randomly awarded with a vacation package? Nope. It was one better! I was getting the opportunity to attend the @IncEvents conference #GrowCo, in Orlando, Florida!

Perfect! Except, I have never networked for my company before, and certainly not at an Inc Magazine event. Before departing, my boss gave me a few pointers to lead me in the right direction. Below are the 5 things to know when being a beginner networker. (more…)

Share on Facebook