Linkedin Your Personal Profile AUTHOR: Susan Schauer John Susan is the media marketing creator of Spider Web Connections. Her focus is to simplify social media marketing and involvement businesses and non-profits linkedin.com/in/susanschauerjohn Why LinkedIN? Reasons: Intelipad.co.uk 1. LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool/ 2. LinkedIn delivers a ready-made professional audience to tap into. 3. LinkedIn has over 175 million users - 50% of whom are business owners, managers and senior management. Facts and Figures: Trainingtoyou.com • 2 new members every second • USA membership more than 57 million (Europe 34 million) • In 2011 there were 4.2 billion professionally-oriented searches on Linkedin • Linkedin has over 2,116 employees (in 2010 it was only 500) • Revenues for 2011 reached $522 million • Linkedin is the 36th most visited website in the world. • Avg user has household income above $109,000 • It is 4 x better for B2B leads than Facebook or Twitter prserviceuk.com inqbation.com SET UP: First you will need a personal profile page. STOCK : Profile: Develop a strong personal profile page. 1. Use a good photo. 2. Complete the profile. A completed profile gets us to seven times more views than a skimpy one. The site will prompt you periodically to fill in more information. It does not all need to be done in one sitting. Click the button: “Improve your profile” Follow the prompts STOCK: Collect recommendations. Don’t be afraid to ask. And don’t forget to give. Both your personal and company pages have places for people to make recommendations about doing business with you and share their experiences. Encourage your customers to tout your company in this way. Theundercoverrecruiter.com Join and Participate in LinkedIn Groups After completing your personal and company profile pages, start looking for LinkedIn Groups where prospective clients might be. Join them. // Page 12 MAINTAIN: Optimizing LinkedIn for Lead Generation & Promotion topnews.in Update Your Status Once a Week Personal and Company pages have update functions. (Similar to status updates on Facebook.) Us them to post brief company-news updates, musings about your field, recommendations, etc. Each time you post an update, you appear on the home page of all of your LinkedIn contacts! Therefore – keep these updates relevant to your business and your company’s focus. Keep it professional and informative. allthingsd.com Work Your Contacts. As you build your personal profile network and attract new followers to your company page, I strongly suggest using LinkedIn’s Advanced People Search to find prospective customers. technorati.com Here you can find prospective customers and others who would be valuable to add to your network. Invite them to become contacts. • Finally - Correspond Remember what LinkedIn is about: blog.bcmpublicrelations.com onedegree.ca References: • David Gowel, is one of the leading experts on LinkedIn and it’s place in social media today. He has written: The Power in a Link: Open Doors, Close Deals, and Change the Way You Do Business Using LinkedIn. A terrific book about the new form of marketing for business. • Jay Baer and Amber Naslund have written a terrific book called: The Now Revolution. It captures completely the new face of marketing for businesses. http://www.convinceandconvert.com/ • Gwen Moran is the author of the article: 6 Ways Small Business Owners Should Use LinkedIn. Available on: http://www.nextavenue.org/blog/ • There are a number of great social media newsletters available for free that I read regularly and highly recommend. Each has contributed to my education and writings. They include: – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/ – http://maximizesocialmedia.com/ – http://www.toprankblog.com/ – http://www.bizsugar.com/ – https://www.facebook.com/business/build You can also create a stand-alone company page: Anonymous.com www.linkedin.com/in/susanschauerjohn