10 Tips for LinkedIn Networking

Is your company on LinkedIn?  If your business does not have a LinkedIn page you may be missing out on opportunities to network and market your business online.  LinkedIn has millions of users worldwide and is growing rapidly as the only “professional network”.  On a personal level, LinkedIn profiles can be used as resumes, but on a business level they are much more. Here are our top 10 tips for your companies LinkedIn:

• Use optimised content such as keywords in your heading and title – many people forget the relevance of their title on LinkedIn and just choose a job title that sounds closest to what they do without considering the keyword aspect of this.  This is a great way to make your profile searchable by adding in skills and expertise that you can offer while also using keywords.
•  Add all your contacts on LinkedIn – LinkedIn is all about connections, so don’t leave any major players out of your contact list.  This means that your profile will have more reach as well as the more contacts you have, the more people you are connected to on a secondary level and so on.
•  Use tags to highlight your skills – while it doesn’t seem to be a relevant search any right now, that is not to say it won’t be in the future, so make sure you use the tag options available to highlight important keywords about yourself.
• Link to your websites – LinkedIn allows you to add your own personal website links to your page, you can have up to three of these websites or profiles, so why not add your company website, blog or personal site?  When doing this, you can link these links to keywords for further SEO boosting.  If you use the “other ” category you can do this.
• Always acknowledge new connections – simply writing a personal reply to a new connection does wonders for networking, it’s a great way to build relationships and stand out to your connections.
• Add a video to your profile – this adds another personal touch to your profile which others will not have, so again it makes you stand out.  There are two features to add videos, Google Presentations and Slideshare.
• Make a note of important details and opportunities – the purpose of this is to mirror the act of making a note on a business card that may have been given to you in the past in person.   It is great for helping you to remember a unique feature about a person or opportunity.  If you go to any profile on LinkedIn you can find an option to insert a note, these are great for the same purpose as above.
• Tag and filter you connections – you can classify your connections on LinkedIn, which is great because it helps you to filter people into different areas without them being aware of it.  This is great as part of your networking strategy.
• Use what is available you to gain information – LinkedIn allows you to see who is connected to who, from this you can build further connections.  This helps you to decipher potential opportunities and networking possibilities.  You can also do this through the groups feature, here you can find like-minded people all following a group because of a similar interest.  These are both great ways to find and make trusted connections that are good for networking.
•  Update you CRM with LinkedIn information regularly – CRM’s are difficult because you have to constantly update information to keep them fresh, but how do get the information to update them?  Through LinkedIn of course, it is a great medium to find out if the data on your CRM is correct and up to date or if there is new information that can be added like a career move by one of your contacts etc.  You can download connection information to an excel file from your LinkedIn, this can be then be entered into your CRM.