With Neil Godin
What? LinkedIn is considered the star business site in the social media galaxy. It’s designed specifically to facilitate business networking. It’s used for everything from job hunting and recruiting to marketing and sales. And. It’s too big a topic for one day’s treatment. So. Today gets us started – but there will be much more to come.
Why? It is easier to see and understand the business value of LinkedIn than any other social media site. More than 65 million business people are LinkedIn members. You can participate in a small way (with a personal profile). Or a big way (with a company page; and/or by forming a group; and/or by paying a monthly fee for a Business Account – with a list of benefits too long to be described here).
How? Here is a step by step approach to Step One – setting up your personal profile:
- Click here to go the LinkedIn sign up page.
- Follow the straightforward instructions and you’re there (basically).
- Take special care in writing your summary.
- Don’t be too self serving. Imagine that you are describing yourself (and what you do) to a favorite aunt that you haven’t seen for years. You want her to be aware of your accomplishments, but you don’t want to sell her a used car.
- In the ‘Specialties’ section, be sure to use ‘key words’ that describe your business. Many LinkedIn members search for product and service providers by using key words. Be sure to include all your specialties here. For example, an architect could say: “Specializing in green design. Particularly, green home architecture. Solar power expertise. Creative, unusual design. Southwest influence,” and so on.
- Want to know what ‘key words’ to include? Just imagine that you are one of your own prospective customers – sitting at a computer – and typing the key words they would use – in trying to find someone who does what you do.
- By the way, you can use this same visualizing technique to come up with key words for everything – your Google AdWords ads; your ten second introduction at Chamber of Commerce meetings; the first words of text that people see on your website, and so on.
- Be sure to include a photo.
- I suggest using the same personal photo on all your social media sites, so you build up personal recognition (this is part of your ‘personal branding’ program, which we will talk more about in the days and weeks ahead).
Tipzntrix: When you sign up at LinkedIn you receive a generic URL. But you can personalize your URL (this is important, once again, because it’s part of the ‘personal branding’ you want to do on all the social media sites you join). To personalize your URL click here and follow the instructions. And that’s it – at least for step one. Tomorrow, we’ll explore ways to maximize the effect (on sales) of your participation in the LinkedIn program.
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A special request: We need your story. If you use social media in any way to build your business, send an email to ndgodin@shaw.ca, or jonathan@neilgodin.com with the details – or provide your telephone number, and we will call you for details.
A special thank you: We will say ‘thank you’ with a copy of Neil’s ebook, ‘How to Start Your Economic Recovery – Right Now!’ for every idea submitted – whether we publish the idea or not. If you already have a copy of this ebook, let us know and we will send you a valuable alternate product.
Thanks very much! Neil Godin and Jonathan Christian.
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