Join LinkedIn! As opposed to other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is a professional network where you work on increasing your business contacts and your visibility online.
LinkedIn helps you connect with old business contacts you may have had in your previous job or career, and can help you rekindle these networks as well as build new ones.
- Complete your profile including photo, job title, contact information and company you work for. Remember to keep it professional, LinkedIn is not the place for photos of your children or you and your partner.
- Complete your profile as you as a person. There is a place to create your business page down the track.
- Make your profile public. The point of LinkedIn is to grow your business networks, this is not going to happen if people cannot see your surname, or company you work for when searching for you.
- After meeting a new business contact and being given their business card, check if they are on LinkedIn and connect with them the same day. This saves you losing their card or ‘filing’ it away never to be seen again, and cements your relationship with this newfound contact.
- Join groups and associations relative to your business and line of work, and engage with them. This means communicating in forums (when you have something valuable to say) and asking industry specific questions for feedback from your peers.
- Provide recommendations for connections in your network you have genuinely done business with and would be happy recommending their services. When they receive your review they are automatically prompted to write a review for you, adding credibility to your profile without you even having to ask.
- Create a business page on LinkedIn. Once your personal profile is set up you can create and manage a page for your business which tells the world about your products and services, any promotions you may have, or what your business has been up to lately. This will help the online exposure for your business and improve your sites visibility in search engines such as Google.
