Are You Leveraging The Power Of LinkedIn?
I thought I’d write this article entitled, are you leveraging the power of LinkedIn? I have to say that at the present time I am not leveraging the power of LinkedIn, however, I have just started to use LinkedIn a lot more.
I think all of us know the power of social media and how it can promote our brand and business, however, the most important thing we can do is to populate our own website with content. I tend to use social media to share website content rather than spending lots of time commenting on social media. I’m not that interested in where someone is having a cuppa coffee or what they had for dinner last night!
Why Is Everything Facebook?
Why does everything social media wise seem to be all about Facebook, to me it seems like almost everything is Facebook this and Facebook that, whereas maybe if it was LinkedIn this and LinkedIn that it may be far more beneficial for our business? I personally find LinkedIn far more professional than Facebook and I do believe that if many of us spent the hours on LinkedIn rather than on Facebook it could be far more beneficial.
LinkedIn is certainly a place for professionals to share their expertise and knowledge, whereas to me, Facebook is potentially much more of a fun social network to share with family and friends and to keep in contact with friends far away and to find lost friends and aquaintances.
In the UK we say that Tesco’s football and Waitrose rugby, maybe we could say Waitrose LinkedIn and Facebook Tesco’s, possibly!
How old is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn was first born in 2002, Facebook was born in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. From the very first time I discovered LinkedIn I really like the professional approach that LinkedIn carried, I could see that it had huge potential. I’ve just looked up how long I have been a member and apparently I’ve only been a member since 2009 which means I must have had a previous account as I started a long time before this, I believe it was in 2004.
If you want to find out how old your LinkedIn account is, click on your photograph on the right-hand side of the screen which will take you to your account, then go to settings and privacy and you will see that nearly at the top of the page it tells you how long you’ve been a member at LinkedIn.
Making The Most Of LinkedIn
I have a lot of learning to do regarding LinkedIn, but one of the most important things that I do know is that it is to create a good profile and use the right keywords that represent your business, if we do this we stand a great chance of being matched with the right people and making the right connections. It’s important that we write a very clear profile and share with others what we stand for and how we can help them.
It’s Not about the Number of Connections You Have
With Facebook and Twitter, it often seems like it’s about how many connections do we have, but my question is are they really friends are actually people you want to connect with or are we just playing the numbers game? With LinkedIn, I believe that we can find connections that can benefit our business and we can also benefit other people’s businesses by sharing quality information and having a clear profile about ourselves.
Personally, I do not connect with everyone on LinkedIn, I like to connect with people who have similar interests and that could be genuinely useful to collaborate with. I also think it’s good to send a short connection notice, rather than just clicking the connect button, I believe that people take us much more seriously if we send a small note telling them why we want to connect.
Linkedin Groups
It’s good to participate in LinkedIn groups, this is something that I’m not actively doing, but I should be and it is something that I’m going to start doing. Recently, I discovered that I was in 121 Facebook groups, most of these groups I had absolutely no idea what they were about and why I was in them. I believe that the problem is with Facebook groups people can add you and over the months these groups mount up, I need a massive cull of these groups. I probably only want to be in six of these groups and even then I really have the time to participate in these groups.
I believe that we have to be very careful about how we utilise our time and I know that groups can be very powerful, they can also be time consuming, so be careful. It’s far better to spend time adding content to a website sometimes than it is to be replying to lots of messages.
Unsocial media
I often used to refer to social media as unsocial media as I have often found people to be on social media being all about themselves, this is not how social media should be, it needs to be a two-way thing. I believe it is very important to be friendly on social media, do not write negative things on LinkedIn, it won’t help you! It’s a good idea to actually have a LinkedIn badge on your website so that people can connect with you through your website.
Another important aspect of LinkedIn is to only share professional content, I would not share about friends and family or what I had for dinner or where I was drinking coffee! Just share your knowledge about your professional experience and reach out to try and help others, it will pay off in the long run.
Thank you for reading, please feel free to share and comment below.
The Christian Internet Marketer