Business development and growth-oriented site that’s of equal use to jobseekers, business owners, service providers, and academics, LinkedIn which came about in the year 2003 is today the world’s premier site for professional networking and growth.
Its USP is the vast information that it carries about its members, be it of their professional accomplishments, educational qualifications, interests, and hobbies, or their views and idea.
So extensive is the information that today LinkedIn uses the same to generate income and is the go-to platform when it’s about searching for jobs or opportunities to meet up with people with similar thoughts, needs, and interests, besides, of course, initiating business. The year 2016 saw LinkedIn become part of the Microsoft stable. At present, the site with its dedicated app for smartphones has over 750 million active users worldwide.
Members and users of LinkedIn are expected to give extensive information about their qualifications, experiences and credentials basis which other users ‘connect’ with them to form meaningful connections for business and professional growth. The service has gone from strength to strength in the nearly two decades of its existence and is today the default standard when it comes to business or employment-related networking. That said, and given the way technology keeps upgrading itself, there are things that people can do with Linkedin in order to get the best out of it. We mention a few tips to grow your business below.
- Mention information about yourself in full; about everything which your prospective client, business associate or employer would want to know. In doing so, you give your prospective leads the chance to evaluate your worth and get back to you at the earliest.
- Keep updating your profile and portfolio! You are as important as your last impressive assignment. If it’s dated, it means you are behind time. Buck up and put all relevant details on LinkedIn so that your prospective leads get to see your latest work and get back to you pronto.
- Prepare a detailed profile. If you run a company, it’s important to have a detailed profile of yourself, your company and all your associates and employees who matter. Link all of them with each other. It adds to everyone’s worth and credibility. Credibility on LinkedIn isn’t very different from other platforms when it comes to numbers. There’s a caveat here though. Who constitute those numbers, matter. Also pertinent is their individual profiles. All these add to credibility on LinkedIn. It’s thus important to get the backing of folks in numbers, and especially of those with the right profiles and credentials.
- Post original content and/or content that is topical. In the latter case, try and give credit to the original creator(s) both as a way to avoid legal tangles and as a way of increasing your own credibility. There’s nothing quite like original, sensible content to get the attention of the right quarters. LinkedIn is no different in this respect.
- Run paid campaigns which the site itself helps commence and monitor. In doing so, you get to attract a large audience. Paid campaigns set LinkedIn’s crabs crawling all over the place trying to locate the right leads who match criteria that have been put in place.
- Define your preferences clearly in terms of organizations, types of organizations, positions within the organization, job profile within the organization, and location-related information to get the maximum number of confirming leads. Be it jobs or business associations, LinkedIn has a surprisingly high clarity to get the right leads and probable fit for any search – that has clearly established preferences.
- Engage with leads on multiple forums. LinkedIn’s facilities are awesome without a doubt. That said, people use a variety of means and modes to communicate including emails, apps like Whatsapp, and phone calls. To create stronger bonds with your clients, it’s important to use other means of communication just as much to create and send valuable and authentic information. Also remember that not everyone is equally well-versed with LinkedIn. A prospect found on LinkedIn may be more comfortable with Whatsapp in which case it makes sense to bond on the latter. Once a link has been established with your leads, send them personalized content including success stories, white papers, special offers, important information and the kinds on other mediums to strengthen the bonds.
- Grow your email marketing list and to the extent possible, use personalized emails (could be difficult when shooting generic emails but worth a try all the same). If LinkedIn is akin to a busy meeting forum, an email is its quite 121 meeting room equivalents. For the perfect 121 with a lead, there’s as yet nothing close to an email. That being the case, use LinkedIn to extract your lead’s email, and send the latter personalized content.
- Join relevant groups for active interaction. And with time, try and create your own group with minimum competition so that your hold on the group remains. LinkedIn gives its users the perfect opportunity to join groups that interact among themselves on the forum and send and receive information that may be interesting to the group.
Besides the information, the participants themselves may be of interest to a LinkedIn user who can pick out those of interest and create a separate, personalized group like a small kingdom where the latter could be the king with no competition close by! Howzat for networking?
That for you is LinkedIn. If you are on for the right reasons with the right details, it’s just a question of time before things happen. Till then, keep prospective with your eyes wide open. To give up on LinkedIn is like going to heaven and not meeting God!
For More Information: Click Here
