Alex has used LinkedIn to…
- Get featured in over 50 media publications without sending out a single press release
- Grow his business advisory firms by over 328% by securing joint venture partnerships through LinkedIn
- And generate thousands of leads whilst spending $0 on advertising or marketing
Here are two tips that Alex recommends that you follow when using LinkedIn as a marketing tool for your business.
Tip 1: Create a ‘Value Bank’
Connecting and effectively communicating with people through LinkedIn is no different than dealing with people outside of the network.
Whether they are a supplier, potential partner or customer you need to build enough value for them to trust you in order for them to grow an interest in your company and therefore your product/service.
Alex calls this establishing a ‘Value Bank.’
Alex can’t recall how many times he has accepted a LinkedIn connection invite from someone to then receive an email marketing spiel about who they are, what they can do for him and how much it is going to cost him.
(This is not the way to use LinkedIn!)
To be successful on LinkedIn and in business overall you have to add value first.
Before you start emailing marketing to your contacts, think of a few ways you could add value to them.
For example it may be that within your connections there are about 100 accountants that you have recently connected and would like to potentially partner with.
Your first email could be a sending a link to a recent article you read/noticed that you thought would be useful. (This shows you were thinking of him/her.)
Your second email could be a FREE Ebook you have found that helps accountants generate more business etc.
Doing this type of thing on a regular basis will help develop trust and rapport between you and your LinkedIn connections.
The idea here is that when you do a lot of small things that add value to people you are building a ‘Value Bank’ with these people.
And if you have a positive credit balance in this Value Bank it is easier to request help from these people in the future.
The main key here is that you ‘give before you get.’
Tip 2: Connect with a purpose
Building your connections for the sake of having a large following is not really a sound strategy if you want to effectively grow your business using LinkedIn.
Every connection needs to be linked to your goals and objectives in business both now and in the future.
Before growing your network on LinkedIn take a step back and think about some of the goals you would like to achieve within your business over the next year or so.
With these goals in mind now think about who you need to connect with in order to help you achieve those goals.
For example when Alex first started using LinkedIn he had just launched his business advisory service and he wanted to build his business using PR.
With this goal in mind Alex then connected with over 500 journalists, editors and bloggers online and in a space of a couple of months he managed to get featured in over 40 media publications.
Alex recommends that you think carefully about the type of businesses and people that you want to build positive connections with on LinkedIn.
After seeing what Alex has done with LinkedIn it’s made me realise that there are a lot of things I could be doing to make LinkedIn work better for my own business.
And that’s something I’m doing right now.
