I attended the AMA Kickoff Party last night where we had a most engaging speaker, Dorothy Gilbert, speak about the social media networking site LinkedIn. She profiled her experience as a user of this social networking phenomenon and provided tips to help the audience get the most benefit out of using LinkedIn. Here are a few tips that I learned from Dorothy:
Tip No. 1: Keep your profile updated. Dorothy mentioned that the most important part of your profile is the Summary and the Headline. Most of the people attending the session are marketers, so they should know something about writing copy. However, when we’re talking about ourselves, it seems to be difficult to think of persuasive copy and our unique selling proposition. We just don’t want to be a braggart. But, when networking and marketing your small business, especially if you are a consultant, you need to discover and communicate what you do differently from any other person in your same line of business. In other words, use the same good old marketing techniques to market yourself as you would use when marketing one of your client’s products.
Tip No. 2: What is the optimum number of connections you should make? That was a big question in last night’s session. Dorothy says it will be a different number for each person depending upon your goals. And speaking of goals, you should have some goals as to what you want to get out of your LinkedIn experience. How many connections do you think is enough? How long will it take you to obtain that many connections? Do you want to receive speaking opportunities? Do you want to gain a new client? All of these goals will take time so don’t expect to do one thing and expect a flood of business to come your way immediately.
Tip No. 3: Set some rules for yourself regarding how you use LinkedIn. For example, one audience participant says that he has a rule to never accept a connection unless they show their connections. Some LinkedIn users control their privacy so much that no one can see much information on their profile, their connections, their work history, etc. This gentleman will send an InMail to the person and explain his rule. Sometimes it works and the new connection will change his privacy preferences. Other times people are bound by an agreement with their employer so they cannot show their connections. In any event, a dialogue is created and connections can then be accepted or not. Another rule may be that you only accept invitations from people you know or have met. This is a good rule because some people think that the more connections you have the better. They think they are having a contest to see who gets the most connections. I’m of the thought that you want good, solid, trustworthy connections. If you are sharing any information with your network, you want to make sure that they aren’t abusing the information you share.
Dorothy added many more tips at last night’s meeting. But, I hope these few tips that I shared here will help you get more out of your social networking experience.
