Digital White Papers

20 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER MARKETING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Are You Making the Most of LinkedIn? Are You Making the Most of LinkedIn? by Vicki LaBrosse of Edge Legal Marketing LinkedIn is the perfect destination for marketers, researchers, sales representatives, human resources and more. The buoned-down social network has approximately 467 million users, almost twice as many as there were in 2013. A lot of people leverage LinkedIn effectively. If you haven't yet, you should be eager to join in. Getting Started Think of LinkedIn as a social media platform as well as a lead-generating machine. Just as on other social media platforms, you need to be careful of what you post as what you say will be tied to your identity. The goal is to demonstrate that you are part of the community and you are there to add value rather than to sell your product or services. The key to having success on LinkedIn is to use it on a daily basis to provide valuable support to your connections and groups. While this might sound intimidating in terms of time commitment, it only requires 10 to 15 minutes of your day and, as you get beer at it, the time could drop to only five to 10 minutes. Although deals won't get closed via LinkedIn, it is the perfect place to gather intelligence about your industry, colleagues, prospects, clients and companies. Use this checklist to make sure you have the basics covered: • Complete your LinkedIn profile and include a professional headshot photo. • Grow your network and increase the number of connections. • Post useful and interesting status updates with links to helpful third-party websites, blogs and commentaries. • Provide recommendations for connections where you have firsthand knowledge of a person's services or skills. • Request recommendations from other executives, colleagues and clients. • Provide endorsements of skills you believe other users have. • Join and participate in appropriate business groups or niche groups. • Engage your team and encourage them to post on their pages as well as the company page. Advanced Features There are more advanced features and plans available for robust paying users. Search and Connect: Use the advanced search function to search for businesspeople in your local area, in your niche or both. You can go further and search for key people within companies or within companies of a certain size and find the name and job title of the decision maker you wish to engage. InMail: This is a LinkedIn tool for sending direct messages to people you are not already connected with. Some professionals use InMail similar to how they use their email campaign system. You can send InMail to individuals, and you can send messages to fellow group members, even if you are not connected to them. The unwrien rule of thumb is to not send sales promotion InMails; this is an immediate turnoff and most likely will do more damage than good. Advertising: LinkedIn recently hopped on the sponsored content train. Sponsored content advertising allows marketers to hone in on a target audience, demonstrate thought leadership and create a true lead-generating machine. LinkedIn also has sponsored email and text advertising, which is similar to banner advertising on a website or Google AdWords. Out of all these three options, LinkedIn sponsored content is the most desirable and most effective toward a successful return on investment. If there is money in the budget for digital advertising, consider LinkedIn as part of an online strategy. It is time for all professionals to realize that LinkedIn is worth its weight in gold. Start with the basics and make sure you make the most of LinkedIn. ILTA

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