Leveraging LinkedIn for your business is a social media necessity. If you do nothing else in the vast social media continuum, LinkedIn is a solid place where you are likely to engage with industry peers, colleagues and – yes, it’s true – your target audience(s).
Leveraging LinkedIn for Business
I was recently invited to present at Burlington’s Social Media Day event about best tips for you and your engagement on LinkedIn for business. The event has been held the end of June for the past five years and is directed and choreographed by a handful of volunteers made up of savvy social media experts and business people. (The day kicked off with a business breakfast event hosted by the Free Press Media Group at its new offices overlooking Lake Champlain and the city of Burlington – see photo above.) It was an honor to receive an invitation from this group – through a direct message on Twitter – to present a workshop on new changes happening with LinkedIn. Someone heard from a friend who heard from another friend about past LinkedIn presentations I’ve done. The focus would be on the most recent changes to LinkedIn algorithms, status updates and a balance of best practices for your professional LinkedIn profile and for your company page.
This is the 4th time in less than a year that I’ve been invited to speak about LinkedIn. Not only do I use it in my professional life, but since so much of what I do in my career involves some aspect of networking, it seems that I’m talking more and more about LinkedIn lately. It’s a social media platform with which I’m comfortable because it IS a professional network. No cute puppy and kitten pictures on LinkedIn nor posts about what someone ate for dinner or political gobbledygook. LinkedIn is interesting to me because the best practices of this social media platform are parallel to how one would network in the real world. You know, face-to-face. Remember that?
Use Your Manners
Best practices are simply that. A common sense list of tactics to incorporate into your LinkedIn profile (whether as a professional or a business) similar to those interesting nuggets of information you might provide to someone when chatting at a cocktail party, a conference or even a job interview.
One of the primary things I emphasize during the first part of my presentation is around sending out an invitation to connect via LinkedIn’s invitation tool. I will resist the urge to write in all capital letters here to emphasize my point but trust me when I say that when asking someone to connect with you, you must add a personal note to the default LinkedIn invitation . (The one that says: “Hi, I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn.”)
Think about it this way, if you were at a cocktail party at a business conference, would you walk up to someone and say “Hi, I’d like to connect with you even though I don’t know you, have never heard you speak or read anything you’ve written. But you are connected to someone I know and we should just make it happen.” Frankly, if you came up to me and said that, I’d find a reason to excuse myself and avoid you for the rest of the evening.
But if you walked up to me and said, “Hey, I heard you present about widgets today and the insight you provided about how that widget helps solve a certain problem was really interesting to me. Could we chat a little more?” And I’d happily say “yes” and chat with you further. Now THAT’s a connection.
So why not do the same with a LinkedIn invitation? It doesn’t need to be lengthy but it should in some way be personal. Perhaps you have a friend of a friend who recommended that you connect. If so, then say that. If you heard that person present, or they’ve posted about topics you find of special interest in the news feed, then say so. Bottom line: don’t just ask for something; be sure to give something, too. It’s just plain ole’ good manners.
LinkedIn Uses Search Terms, Too
LinkedIn has recognized the importance and power of keyword search terms and has incorporated that level of optimization into its more recent algorithms. As you’ll see in my slide presentation, I discuss the importance of utilizing the headline of your profile as powerfully as you can. This is where LinkedIn for business can really make an impact.
As a reminder, the headline is just below your name on your profile page. Typically, you will see people post their job title as their headline. For example, “Director of Communications at XYZ Company.” The folks at LinkedIn listened to a large part of their audience who happen to be recruiters and job headhunters who pointed out that when they do searches for professionals, they don’t search by job title. They actually search with keywords relative to the specific profession they’re seeking. What a concept, right?!
So, check out your headline. Find four or five keywords or keyword phrases separated by the | (that’s called a pike) symbol between those words or terms. The examples in the presentation might be helpful. Spend some time with this – it could be the way that you’re found by just the right person.
Make it Happen
If you’re new (or not) to LinkedIn, it’s a great networking tool to get everything out there about who you are and what you do for a living. It allows you a place to show the current projects you’re working on and the team members with whom you’re collaborating. You can opt to show your volunteer activities or causes that have meaning for you. Courses you take to continue your professional development or certifications you receive all add to a robust profile. Take advantage of LinkedIn and let it start opening some new doors for you and your business.
