logo courtesy of LinkedInToday I am part of a group of speakers on the Social Media Mastery Tour here in New England. I'll be speaking about how LinkedIn - one of my favorite tools - can support your business building efforts to grow sales. This is something that I have witnessed first hand in our business and helped clients with for the last several years.
LinkedIn is often misunderstood by busy sales leaders and B2B sales professionals. If you are a seller or sales leader, you need to know 3 things right now:
Whatever you think about LinkedIn's potential to help grow your visibility, go ahead (on faith, now, please) and beef up your professional profile. There are many guides on how to do this - I'm simply suggesting that you get it done. Be sure to convey what it is that you do, and use keywords to do it, because you can become more searchable that way.
Here are 25 Tips from Liz Ryan on Businessweek.
Make sure your business has a well written profile on LinkedIn as well. First look up your business on LinkedIn and see what is there. If nothing, create a profile. If there is something but it is poorly written, get it re-written as soon as possible.
Start thinking about Inbound Marketing and how you can pull people toward you who are interested in your products and services from what you have published on LinkedIn. Right from this community of 175 million+ members you can attract people your way by what you put on your profile page. We will talk more in depth about this in the next post.
Finally, if you have a free account, consider upgrading your account so that you can see who has viewed your profile. I'll give you more background on this when we next talk about inbound marketing. [LinkedIn is not a sponsor - this is just a no-brainer must do that pays for itself as soon your first visitor converts to a customer.
Lori Richardson is recognized as one of the "Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2012" and one of "20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management". Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside and outbound sellers in technology and services companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for tips and strategies in selling.