Courtesy of Greendot Interactive
Linkedin is a monster of a site with over 45 million users and even though it may not seem like a relevant venue for your business, I guarantee there is something there for you!
For business owners in the B2B world (businesses that service other business) there is a wealth of opportunity to connect and build community and show off all your knowledge on a particular topic. Take a look at the number of Groups (www.Linkedin.com/groups) in Linkedin and see where your target market might be hanging out. Once you find them, take the time to engage in meaningful discussion. This is a great place to ask questions about your markets needs, pains and what they are looking for. One thing you never want to do is blast your product offerings to a group of strangers. This is the fastest route to unpopularity (yet still the odd person thinks they’ll make a random sale from posting a cheesy discussion topic about their services).
The Answers section (www.Linkedin.com/answers) of Linkedin is invaluable for communicating expertise in an area. This is a forum for people to ask questions (much like Yahoo Answers) and you, the subject matter expert, can answer the question for all to see, make a genuine connection with a person who has a specific concern that you can help them with, and your response can also be graded. Why would you want someone to grade your response? Because Linkedin will consider you an expert if you receive positive grades and reward your status by elevating your profile in the search ranks when someone is looking for your skill set.
One of the best things about Linkedin Answers is that you can subscribe to an RSS feed for questions that come up containing keywords related to your expertise. That way, you don’t have to spend your days trolling the site for random questions that relate to your products and services.
Regardless of your industry, you MUST have a Linkedin profile. Whether you’re a plumber, a hairstylist or a fashion designer, you should absolutely have a Linkedin profile to show off your professional history, specific training and any awards or accomplishments you might have. This is also a great place to collect recommendations (www.Linkedin.com/recommendations), which is an instant credibility builder.
You might be wondering why a plumber would need a Linkedin profile as its unlikely that anyone would look for a plumber on this site. This is true, but if you’re a Plummer in Solana Beach, CA and someone does a Google search for a Plummer in that neighborhood, guess who’s Linkedin profile with all those glowing recommendations is going to pop up on the first page of search results? Personally, if my toilet is overflowing and I need a plumber ASAP, I might be inclined to use the guy with the Linkedin profile because I could quickly glace at a few recommendations that came from “real” people and I can see that he has a license.
If you’re not on Linkedin yet, you can get started right here.
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