Leopard LinkedInsider July 19th

Editor's Notes

• #6: Key decision makers –30% of fortune 500 companies CEOs are on it compared with 3.8% who use twitter and 7.6% who use Facebook. Users have an average household income of over $100kAnd 39% of users are in the top bracket of company hierarchy
• #7: According to Hubspot
• #9: (listening tool)
• #17: – this uses your email contact information through different email servers. A few people get funny about giving their contacts away to LinkedIn but with 225 million users remember that this isn’t just a fly by night way of selling email addresses, they really don’t need to do that! Email information is used to allow you to find your real life connections on this platform too. You’ll be surprised how many of them are on here trust me! If your email connections are yielding less results than you imagined, try just searching by name for your contacts or clients. Sometimes they’ll use an email address for LinkedIn that’s different to the one you have for example.
• #18: People You May Know function – click on the connect button on any of these people and you can instantly send a request without specifying how you know them. This is a very quick way of upping your numbers without much effort but I’d recommend you make contact with each of those who accept your connection invite. If you just collect connections with no interaction the number will be there without any rapport though and so these are a good deal less meaningful.
• #19: How to back this up – write a brief message to introduce yourself.
• #22: Adding people you don’t know – Have you found someone on LinkedIn or been referred on to someone that you’ve never actually met before? It is generally perfectly acceptable to send them an invitation to connect. You’d have to pick a category, perhaps friend is best? Whatever you prefer. I’d recommend sending a personal message with the connection request. For example, make sure you mention if a connection of yours has recommended them to you. You could also mention something interesting about their job that you’d like to be kept up-to-date with or if you work in similar industries just touch base and say that you’d like to find out more about what they do with a view to perhaps working together in future. It is most certainly a bad idea to try and sell them something right away!
• #23: An introduction lets you contact members who are in your 2nd degree network or 3rd degree network. If a member is within your extended network, you can contact them through connections you have in common.
• #26: The latest updates on LinkedIn mean that your ‘Contacts’ section (formerly ‘Connections) now has a lot more functionality. The main feature of these is the ‘Relationship’ section
• #28: Note: here you can add information to someone’s profile that only YOU can see. For example say you meet someone very briefly at a networking event, but then a workshop starts and you don’t manage to speak to them about everything you’d like to. To follow up, you can add them as a connection and then add a note as to what you’ve talked about or what they do in your own words. This way you can keep track of your leads more specifically.Next up you can also leave yourself a reminder. Say you need to send them some follow-up information after an initial conversation, just set a reminder with ‘send over report to jenny’ by a certain date.
• #30: This establishes you as ENGAGED with the business community and keeps your work infront of your connections as much as possible. You can also ask for recommendations if you’re looking for new suppliers, staff or agencies.
• #32: Groups are a great way of getting involved in your industry or finding and sharing information. From job searching groups where recruiters regularly post up vacancies to financial groups posting the latest news or discussing share prices. Discussions are where people can share ideas and post external links up. To interact with discussions you can post up comments giving you opinion on whatever the topic is. This is a good way of establishing yourself as a knowledgeable person in your field without directly being too salesy. It is against most group guidelines to post up a direct sell on discussions so instead use it as a listening tool or start your own discussion to hear ideas from other people. It will also increase the amount of incoming connection requests you’ll have.
• #33: Promotions: Here is where you can sell yourself! Get creative, don’t be boring and make sure you present your value proposition well. You need to make sure your title is dynamic enough for people to click on the thread below (and then hopefully go on to buy from you or connect). Depending on your settings you’ll also receive daily or weekly digests via email. Simple maths will tell you that if you’re a member of 50 groups (or more with sub-groups) and you’re getting all daily and weekly emails that isn’t a manageable amount to actually go through and read. When you’ve joined a new group, have a look at the content of the first emails and if it’s useful to you, great! If not, just unsubscribe from the emails. You can do this perfectly easily without leaving the group
• #34: Joe will go into this a little later as it’s an integral part of our lead generation
• #35: When you create your profile on LinkedIn people are getting to know YOU and your specific role in your company. Whilst this is great to sell your specific service, it’s essential that you also back it up with a credible page for your company. This way you can list out all your different products, show which staff is the point of contact for each, and keep people up-to-date with news using company updates.
• #36: Following a company – is there a particular client you’d like to know more about? Have a search for their company page so you can keep up to date with their news. Click the yellow ‘Follow button to receive these updates on your home feed.