Make Friends & Influence People – LinkedIn Tips

LinkedIn is one of the `big three’ social media networks in the UK, with a more business orientated feel than Twitter or Facebook.

The great thing about LinkedIn is its usefulness as a recruitment tool of course, as the site started as a glorified CV bulletin board. But there have been many changes over the last few months which make LinkedIn even better as a business network. For example, the LinkedIn phone app is arguably easier than the main site to navigate and so makes interaction that bit quicker too.

MANAGE YOUR COMPANY PROFILE ON LINKEDIN

Many businesses are on Facebook and there’s nothing wrong with that, but if say your company offers B2B type services or products, such as outsourcing, call-handling, solar panels for social housing projects or maybe rainwater harvesting systems, then having a profile on LinkedIn is more useful.

The big advantages with LinkedIn are; trade show networking, product launches and targeted recruitment.

Now you can update you company’s status, much as you would on Facebook and everyone who follows your company on LinkedIn will be able to see that status. This is ideal for posting things like; “Scorchio Solar Will Be At PV World Expo, Stand XX etc’ or maybe “MegaCorp Media is Hiring Web Developers.” Deliver more news value and you’ll get more followers – especially those within your industry sector.

JOIN IN DISCUSSIONS, BE A REAL PERSON

There are thousands of UK discussion groups on LinkedIn, some open groups, whilst others offer approved membership. You send a request, and the administrator either says yes or no. It can be time-consuming being in LinkedIn discussion groups and the pace of debate can be agonisingly slow compared to say Twitter. Still worth doing however.

Sometimes a measured approach before posting online is a good thing, so pick your groups carefully and look at the administrator’s profile. Are they in your industry, or are they recruitment consultants simply seeking to round up 200 followers whose CVs they can copy and paste, then email to clients? That can happen, so be wary.

Start a topic based around your sector, don’t make it too sales pitch orientated. LinkedIn is full of discussion topics which say “Can anyone recommend a good web designer who can build an e-commerce retail site for a client?” These tend to get filled with spam marketing messages and who really reads or engages with that kind of thing?

Instead, ask a sensible question about a new development, or piece of legislation which affects your industry?

There’s a default tab on LinkedIn which means you get an email notification of each day’s posts within that group– if you feel too busy, you can reset that notification to weekly digest instead. Just click `More’ on the Discussion groups menu, then `settings,’ then scroll down to where it says `daily digest and change it to `weekly digest.’

BE YOUR OWN RECRUITMENT AGENCY

You get more from LinkedIn with a paid for account, but even a free account lets you do your own headhunting quite effectively.

For example, let’s say you want to expand your in-house marketing team in future. You could hire an agency, who may ask for a 10% commission of salary of whoever you hire, or perhaps a more reasonable consultant might find someone for a mere £300. But how about doing it for free?

OK, start by searching LinkedIn using the box top right. The `people’ tab will probably bring up marketing directors/managers with the most followers and mainly based in the USA. Refine your search by country and enter a postcode on the left hand sidebar menu.

The search boxes will let you refine it further by company if you like, so go and see who is doing what at various companies. Let’s assume you find someone who looks to have the right skills, scroll down and check the `Viewers of this profile also viewed’ box. Do the same again maybe three or four times and note the groups that they belong too, as well as the professional qualifications they have listed in their profile.

Now you can also click the `Answers’ tab in the search box and ask LinkedIn if say anyone can `recommend best marketing campaign for UK retailers/pharma/legal’ sector or something similar. Search Groups using the same criteria – soon you are narrowing down a shortlist of candidates.

See, you don’t have to post a job vacancy, and deal with the hundreds of spam emails, recruiters phoning you up, emailing etc. You can search, link up to your preferred three or four candidates and then email them suggesting an informal chat to gauge interest.

DETAIL IS EVERYTHING

LinkedIn has an Insights page, so you can see how many followers your company pages have, plus what pages they are viewing. Handy.

Use the `More’ tab at the top of your LinkedIn dashboard to check the latest apps too – LinkedIn is expanding this part of its site, it really wants you to share data via the network, so consider starting a WordPress blog that you post on regularly and maybe autopost an update to that blog via LinkedIn and Twitter. The Apps section will probably get much bigger on LinkedIn in future, so keep an eye on it.

For me, WordPress and Slideshare are perhaps the two most useful bolt-ons from a business point of view, as they give you the chance to set up your own business media channel. Once you amplify yourself, and your company on LinkedIn, you really are getting so much more from it than simply being `on there.’ Being on a social network isn’t enough, you need to actually network and that takes time and planning.

Once you work at your LinkedIn activity you are truly on the social media marketing bus, not just waiting at the bus stop.