LinkedIn is “the” professionals social network. Recent reports reveal that there are over 332 million users and one in three professionals are members.
The question isn’t whether you should be on it but “how” you should use it.
When I first started learning about social media I spent the first 12 months investing a lot of my time and money to really discover which platform would work best for our business and give me the return on investment I was looking for.
Here are 3 big reasons why I use LinkedIn as my key platform.
#1. Media
Gaining media exposure on a consistent basis is a powerful way to boost your credibility in the marketplace, get your message in front of thousands of people and position you as an authority figure within the industry. This will ultimately drive the bottom line if effectively used.
But for far too long the traditional methods of getting media coverage have either been too expensive or time consuming. But thanks to LinkedIn you can now start connecting and building relationships with hundreds of journalists and editors from around the world.
According to the Arketi Media Group over 94.2% journalist and editors are now on LinkedIn. Now if that’s not exciting enough in its self, let me share with you two reasons why journalist are absolutely dying to get in touch with you.
Having dealt with hundreds of journalist over the past few years I’ve come to realize that they constantly face two main challenges:
- Sick and tired of going through press releases
- And they don’t having access to key experts at their fingertips
I remember when I first read the report from Arteki media group; I got really excited. At the time I was really looking to build my personal brand as a business mentor.
That week I made a list of the publications I wanted to get featured in and shortly after I started connecting with journalist and editors. What started off as a connection here and there quickly escalated to a network of 250 contacts in the space of a few months.
Over the past few years this network has helped me and the companies I’ve been involved in get free media exposure across 50+ media publications including: Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur, NBC News, Huffington Post and many others.
#2. Lead Generation
With over 332 million members across 110 different industries and 200 countries it’s never been easier to search, find and connect with thousands of potential clients without burning a hole in your marketing budget.
Here are some interesting stats you may not know about LinkedIn:
- More then 61% of people use it as their primary professional network
- It generates more leads for B2B companies than any other social network
- It is the biggest professional networking site growing by 2 new members per secondIn my opinion this makes LinkedIn the most powerful marketing tool of the 21st century. And here’s why? I believe that regardless of industry, size or location we are all in the business of marketing.
And when marketing our business I believe its 10% what we say and 90% how we say it that makes all the difference.
So if you’re out there marketing your business like everyone else is, its vey hard to standout from the crowd. Plus traditional forms of marketing is somewhat outdated and expensive if you don’t have a huge marketing spend.
And if you really think about it, what’s the real reason why we all market our business in the first place? It’s to get our message in front of decision makers right?
This is why LinkedIn makes so much sense, why spend all this time and money on traditional forms of advertising when you can connect with thousands of potential clients through LinkedIn.
#3. Joint Venture Partnerships
If you study the corporate strategy of some of the biggest brands in the world over the past few decades, you will see one thing they all have in common: the implementation of joint venture partnerships with key industry players.
This is the process of finding complimentary businesses that your clients are currently using before, during and after your service/product and partnering with those businesses to get your message in front of their clients, database or community.
Rather than getting your message in front of 1 potential client, using this strategy you can broadcast your message in front of hundreds if not thousands of targeted contacts that have already built trust with the business or person you are partnering with.
Given that 49% of LinkedIn members are key decision makers, you will never have to cold call or run telemarketing campaigns again in order to reach out and connect with key potential partners!
Let me share with you a personal example of how powerful this strategy can be when executed properly.
I remember a few years back sitting down with my mentor brainstorming new ways to grow my business, which at the time was the business advisory firm.
He threw a lot of great ideas out but none were as profound as his suggestion to partner with Accountants. An obvious choice given they deal with a lot of businesses throughout the year.
Over the course of the next month or so I connected with over 500 accounting firms, I then proceeded to build a relationship with them over time which in turn helped me secure partnerships in 16 accounting firms nationwide, helping us increase the revenue of our business by over 328% not to mention the money we saved on marketing and advertising.
Author: Alex is a Sydney based entrepreneur and founder of Linkfluencer, the world’s leading online community for LinkedIn training. He loves playing basketball, travelling and covering the latest stories on entrepreneurship. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Facebook
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Do you have some questions on how to leverage LinkedIn for business success?
A few months back I held a webinar with Alex where he shared the 3-steps to LinkedIn mastery and how he’s used this system to achieve the results mentioned above. The feedback pouring in ever since has been nothing less than incredible.
Unfortunately a lot of people were not able to make it to the webinar due to time zone differences. So we’ve decided to hold another session.
If you want to learn more about how to leverage LinkedIn effectively, Alex and I are running another FREE webinar next week.
