LinkedIn is a social media website. Unlike other social sites, LinkedIn caters to the professional crowd. It is designed to help you build a professional network to benefit you and your growing business.
Here’s how to use LinkedIn to your Advantage.
Register with LinkedIn and connect with past and present colleagues. As a professional and a business owner, you likely have a rolodex full of people you know or have known. Perhaps they were customers, perhaps they were colleagues or associates or perhaps they were providers, LinkedIn enables you to connect with all of them.
Why is this helpful? Having an online resource directory helps you build awareness of your business. Once you link up with say Joe the Plumber, Joe the Plumber now shows you as a professional on his list. Now your business is exposed to all of the people who have or will work with Joe and who are on his list. So right off, LinkedIn helps you boost exposure.
LinkedIn also helps you build powerful, and profitable, business opportunities. Linking up with people broadens your awareness of what other people in and out of your industry are doing. Those same people are on the lookout for opportunities and now you become part of their network, which means you’re exposed to new possibilities. Using Joe the plumber, maybe he has a brother who works in a complimentary industry. Joe’s brother sees your business on his brother’s links and realizes the two of you could boost each other’s business with a partnership. LinkedIn broadens the possibilities.
LinkedIn also makes it possible for you to provide value. They offer a question and answer section where you can pose a question or offer an answer to an existing question. This feature enables you to learn and to demonstrate your skills and knowledge in your industry. And you know that demonstrating your knowledge gives you and your business more credibility and authority, making you someone people will turn to when they need your product or service.
Finally, LinkedIn enables you to refer other professionals and to have them refer you. This boosts credibility and authority in your industry. People are much more inclined to do business with someone they know and someone who has been referred than a total stranger.
According to the people at LinkedIn, they have:
*Â Over 43 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world.
*Â A new member join them approximately every second, and about half of their members are outside the U.S.
* Executives from all Fortune 500 companies
That’s no small potatoes! When building your professional network, LinkedIn is the premier social media site available. Use it to grow your business and your connections around the world.