How to Market Yourself & Your Company on LinkedIn

1.  Stay connected with people you've met or worked with

As people change emails, change jobs, change positions, change names, move, they (generally) update their LinkedIn profile, so you'll have up-to-date information on how to contact them and they'll know how to contact you.

LinkedIn makes it easy to stay up-to-date with your connections:

• You can export your email connections to LinkedIn so you can invite them to connect on LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn's tool will also show you people who you may know.
• They make it easy to send people emails through LinkedIn (you check off who you want to send a message to). 
• There's also a way to export your LinkedIn connections and their contact information to create your own email list in Microsoft Outlook and other popular email services. At the bottom of the page of your connections, click "Export Connections".

TIP:  use the tab for Updates on the top nav search bar to see status updates made by people within your network. 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also use filters so you can see what people in your extended circle (2nd and 3rd connections) are posting. 

2.  Ask your connections for help, advice, introductions, connections...

You can send all your LinkedIn connections, or specific people who are connections of yours on LinkedIn, an email to tell them about something you're doing or to ask them for help or for a referral. 

LinkedIn is especially helpful when you are hiring someone.  Instead of contacting the three people they list as references (who will all say very nice things about them), you can instead do a little "detective work" to figure out what shared connections you have and then contact your connections (first or second degree) to ask them about the person you are considering hiring. 

Best to phone people vs. email them to get for the most honest feedback. 

3.  Use LinkedIn as a tool for new business development and sales research

• How to Get Sales Leads Using LinkedIn - this 4 page how-to guide has specific and practical advice on how to generate new business and attract new clients and customers through using LinkedIn.  This takes time but it's free.

TIP:  If you're sending an email to someone you don't know, you may want to do it through LinkedIn.  Why?  Emails you send through LinkedIn (they call them inMails) won't go into someone's spam folder.  You'll have to upgrade to a premium membership to send InMails, but it may be worth it to make sure your emails actually get to who you want them to in a timely manner. 

4.  Promote yourself as a personal brand and expert

Through endorsements and recommendations people make about you and showcasing your personal and work experience

Keep your contacts up-to-date with your accomplishments and activities  through your status updates.

5.  Generate website traffic and support your SEO efforts

Through links from LinkedIn to your website or blog.  We'll explain how this works later in this article.

6.  Increase the visibility of your business and brand

• LinkedIn Advertising How-to Guide
  

From our experience:  you want to learn all about what you can do for free on LinkedIn to market yourself and your business and then once you have all that set up, investigate and experiment with buying ads. 

 

7.  Create a Company Page on LinkedIn (it's free)

LinkedIn announced on October 6, 2011 that company's can add status updates to their Company Page.  It's now working a lot like Facebook!

8.  Get job offers and find people to hire

If your profile is up-to-date, you can be found by recruiters who use LinkedIn extensively. You can use it yourself this way too for hiring.  Post and distribute job listings to find the best people to hire as employees and freelancers.

9.  Get Found!  Get new business leads! 

LinkedIn is now offering something called "Services".  It's under development and in beta testing so not everything works perfectly yet but it's something to try (it's free!). 

10.  Accelerate your business networking

TIP:  "I have found the best way to network is to target 'exactly' who you want to meet. I find my best contacts through trade journal articles and magazines along with studies conducted by research groups. I see an article. It quotes people I believe I should meet and get to know. I find them on the web. I read about them first and then I send along an introductory email either through legitimate online connection sites (LinkedIn for example) or using other methods. If a person has done their homework and knows what they want out of the connection, it works - almost every time. And when it doesn't I always ask/say, 'Please give me the names/numbers of a few people who think my services/products could benefit." And I move on from there. What's the absolute worst thing someone can say: "No, sorry can't help you.' And to me that's not so bad." 

 

Know this about LinkedIn

 

• LinkedIn is NOT a mass-market platform. It is intended to make it easy for members to identify key business contacts and establish one-to-one relationships with them. Instead of reaching a few million people, the vast majority of whom may not be interested in your service, LinkedIn allows members to target and reach individuals.
• It's primarily used by F500 companies and companies that sell to them.  Many small business owners and partners don't find it as indispensable a tool as people from larger companies do. That could change if more small businesses start using it the way the large companies do.
• You can tell how valuable LinkedIn's tool is to someone by how many connections they have. If they have less than 50 connections, it's probably not used much or very valuable to them. If they have 200, it's a valuable tool to connect with their extended network. If they have thousands of connections, it's like their blog and they're not very "exclusive."