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We’re in the middle of our article series on social media and how you can utilize it for your business. In previous articles we’ve reviewed the history of the development of social media, and discussed ways that your business can utilize Facebook and Twitter. In this article our focus will be a social media tool called LinkedIn.
In contrast to Facebook, which started primarily as a means of personal communication between friends, classmates and family, LinkedIn has always specifically focused on business networking. In fact, LinkedIn’s original functionality was primarily that of an online resume service. This leads into one of the predominant ways that LinkedIn is used for business today: as a recruiting tool. Recruiters and human resources managers use LinkedIn extensively. Recruiters use it to find and connect with potential job candidates. Human resources managers use it to research those job candidates.
Conversely, just as LinkedIn is used for internal recruiting, it’s also an effective tool to use in the business-to-business selling process. When meeting with the representatives of potential client companies, it’s prudent to take a minute to look up their profile on LinkedIn, to see how long they’ve been with their company, what their background is, and so on. Look around for other people working in that company, to see if the person you’re meeting with is the main decision-maker for the deal you’re pursuing, or if it would be better to try to meet with someone else in the company instead. In business meetings like this, a little research can go a long way.
In addition to LinkedIn’s usefulness as a recruiting and research tool, it has another set of tools that is useful for business: Groups and Answers. Groups on LinkedIn are exactly what they sound like: networks of people within LinkedIn, based around a common profession or interest. There are groups for everything from marketing practices to software development topics to college alumni groups. LinkedIn Answers (also called Discussions) exist inside these groups and are similar to website message boards: someone posts a question or a statement of news or opinion, and other people can respond and discuss it. These discussions can either be public and visible to the world, or private and only visible to group members, depending on the groups administrator’s privacy settings for that group.
Groups and Answers on LinkedIn are valuable tools in many ways. One of their biggest benefits is that they allow you to stay current in your industry – industry news and trends, hot topics within your industry or your clients’ industries, and so on. By reading through the various discussions, you can see which topics are generating the most interest, which topics and subject matter recur most frequently, and see peoples’ opinions on the latest industry happenings. This can then inform the topics of your own marketing content such as your own company’s white papers and blog articles – if your own marketing content focuses on those issues which are generating the most interest, it will attract more people.
In addition to using LinkedIn Answers to inform the content of your own marketing materials, you can also take an active part in the answers yourself. Join in the conversation by posting your own comments in the discussions. You can give your own opinion on the discussion topic or respond to other peoples’ comments. Oftentimes other people will then comment on your comments, and soon you are an integral part of the conversation. This has two benefits: it increases your name recognition in your industry or your clients’ industries, and (if your contributions to the discussions are well-informed and compelling) it will demonstrate your subject matter expertise and establish you as a thought leader.
We hope we’ve been able to give you some good starting ideas into how to effectively use LinkedIn in your business. Next month, we’ll be writing about how to effectively use a social media tool called Meetup.com. In the meantime, if you have additional questions or comments about anything in this article, please feel free to contact us.
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