Finding Customers Via LinkedIn
Are you using LinkedIn proactively as a tool to seek out potential customers? Many users are not. They merely have their profile loaded, and that is it! Yet, if you are serious about growing your business, then in my opinion, LinkedIn must be considered as a key marketing tool in your armour.
Let’s look at some statistics.
LinkedIn’s ambition is to have 3 billion users on the site; it currently has 277 million users… it has a long way to go, but that is already a lot of professional users to engage with. Two hundred countries are currently represented on LinkedIn.
As of the date of this blog, there are some 3 million business pages, and 2 million groups on LinkedIn. Eight thousand new groups are started each week, and there are approximately 187 million monthly unique visitors to LinkedIn.
Forty percent of users check their LinkedIn account each day, so there must be some benefit to them in checking their accounts that often.
Finally and phenomenally, in 2013, 5.7 billion searches were done on LinkedIn. That is a lot of people seeking out and building relationships with others.
So how about considering your level of engagement with LinkedIn? Are you an active or passive user of it? If you are active, how active? Can you improve your visibility and credibility within LinkedIn in order to attract the people to you that you are seeking?
If you are a passive user, and you are keen to grow your business, how about learning more about how LinkedIn can support the growth of your business?
Back to Basics – Your Personal Profile
Remember that before someone does business with you, they are now very likely to check you out on LinkedIn. So what is your profile saying about you at present? Is it complete? Is it professional? Based on what you see on your own profile, would you do business with you?
Your name and headline are really important. Please ensure you put your full name into your profile – first and last names… many people do not. Then consider the ‘keywords’ you want to be found by as your professional headline is searchable. For example, I want to be found as a business coach or consultant, so I have those words in the headline of my profile, along with other words and phrases. Your keywords should also be repeated throughout your profile.
The rest of your profile must be an accurate reflection of you, including all the roles you have had and companies you have worked for; your uniqueness; your interests; other organisations you are involved with; awards and achievements. Also, remember to list your areas of speciality as they are searchable too.
Using LinkedIn to Build Business
While I am not a teacher of LinkedIn, I am a reasonably advanced user of the tool, and I believe in continuing to use it to build my visibility and credibility so that when I am ready, I can make approaches to people I would like to ‘link in’ with, in the hope they will be impressed with my professionalism and background, such that they connect with me, and we can begin to build a business relationship.
LinkedIn has an excellent advanced search function for seeking out people. Let us assume you are an architect in London, and you want to build relationships with landscape architects in central London. By using the advanced search function you can narrow down using keywords and location parameters to locate all the landscape architects in the local area that you want to build relationships in. You can then communicate with those people, by joining the same groups as them, or asking for introductions to those people if people in your network are connected to them in LinkedIn. Once you are connected to them, you can begin building a business relationship, that may well result in business opportunities.
If you are interested in knowing more about how to become a proficient user of LinkedIn for business, then how about seek out an expert who can support you in getting your profile right on LinkedIn so that you can maximise the business opportunities.
The key for your business is to use LinkedIn as another marketing tool to grow your business. As both the Forbes and Fortune Magazines have said, LinkedIn is the ‘Number one social media tool on the planet.’ So go, to it. Embrace LinkedIn and watch your small business grow!
Could some guidance from me be helpful to you? If so, please arrange a free 30 mins Skype strategy meeting with me. Here’s my calendar to book a meeting. I’d love to support you in some way to gain ‘seductive clarity’ in any aspect of your business or life.
Other articles on Branding, Marketing and Pricing:
Increase Your Prices and Make More Profit
Do You Compete on Price? Bad Business Decision!!
Is Customer Service YOUR Key to Business Success?
Creating Superior Customer Value – do you do that in your business?
Using YouTube for Finding Customers
Which are Your Most Profitable Customers?
Who Wants High Customer Retention?
What is a Customer?
What is Business Marketing?
What’s your Personal Brand?
