PACKED WITH TIPS AND TOOLS TO BENEFIT YOUR BUSINESS
LINKEDIN LESSONS: CONNECT ONLINE
WAYS TO MAKE THE PLATFORM WORK FOR BUSINESS
The use of social media continues to be an important piece of businesses’ marketing and communications plans. And since it’s tailored to business, LinkedIn is one of the major players. We asked Angela Woodruff-Swarts, a former Montgomery business owner who found real success using LinkedIn, to share some of her wisdom.
· WHAT ARE SOME OF THE WAYS THAT A BUSINESS CAN USE LINKEDIN TO GROW AND BE SUCCESSFUL? What I love about LinkedIn is it’s a business-focused platform and offers a means?of connecting with business professionals across the globe, thereby allowing you to build relationships regardless of geography as well as provide a hyper-focus on?the service or product verticals?you operate in. As you build?your network, you can work to?promote your brand through?good old-fashioned relationship?building, content marketing, ?participation in LinkedIn affinity groups and networking for?referrals. The possibilities are?endless.
· IS LINKEDIN A GOOD WAY TO FIND AND HIRE EMPLOYEES? LinkedIn provides you access to millions of talented professionals and their profiles, and when done well, will provide great insight into their experiences, accomplishments and may even have recommendations from peers, managers and customers. It’s also a great resource to connect with specialty skill sets and the passive job seeker—those individuals who may not be actively looking to make a change but given the right opportunity, would do so. If you have the time to mine profiles and initiate conversations, this can be a great means of finding your next hire.
· WHAT ARE A FEW BIG LINKEDIN “DO’S” WHEN USING IT TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS? Build your brand! Post updates that speak to your target audience and demonstrate your capabilities. Share meaningful articles and information that?can help your target buyer and demonstrates your expertise. Seek to build a relationship with your connections; start a conversation to learn about them and ask how you can help them.
Be consistent in posting and sharing, at least a few times a day, so that you stay in your connections’ news feed. This goes a long way in building your brand.
Statistics show that posting three to five times per day is plenty, and you can even use tools like Hootsuite to help you schedule and man- age your posts so you don’t have to remember to do it at various times across the day. Last but not least, mix up the content as you post across a day. A combination of the above examples is best so that you’re not spoon-feeding the same information day in, day out.
BAD HABITS: STEAR CLEAR
DON’T JUST SELL. Remember you’re here to build relationships, network, share expertise and ultimately, earn trust.
DON’T OVER POST. Yes, you can post too much or worse, you end up with posts that look like they are better served up on Facebook. Always remember this is a business-focused platform.
HELLO WORLD
LinkedIn is the world’s largest online professional network with more than 500 million members in over 200 countries and territories.
Members are joining LinkedIn at a rate of more than two new members per second.
There are more than 40 million students and recent college graduates on LinkedIn. They are the network’s fastest-growing demographic.
