For the past two months, I have been utilizing and studying my profile on LinkedIn. I have been a fan of LinkedIn for years now. When I was jobless for about six weeks, instead of draining our government for unemployment checks they can’t afford, I took matters into my own hands. I got involved on forums, answered questions, and took freelance work for cheap. In six weeks, I secured nearly two thousand dollars in free-lance work, grew my network, and watched LinkedIn benefit me the most of all the social media sites. So how can LinkedIn help you? Over the course of the last few weeks, I have grown my network with over 250 new people. This takes work. When it would ask for an email address, I went to their website and found it. I guessed based on common business email addresses. When they accepted my invitation, I sent them a personal email saying thank you. I took that extra step. In three short weeks, I am now negotiating almost 100K in possible work. If I only close 10% of that, I would have made my company 10K in 3 weeks.
I believe face-to-face interaction is still the #1 way for marketing, sales, and underwriters to partner with businesses. However, how do we get there? Using a tool like LinkedIn allows the initial connections and it’s easier than cold calling and less intrusive to both parties. If they accept my invitation, my email simply said “Thank you for the LinkedIn connection. I look forward to learning more about your company in the coming months.” This opened the line of communication that resulted in emails discussing our businesses as well as many that said we should get together to discuss. There is much more involved into how to fully utilize LinkedIn, but this is just one way of adding a revenue stream to our partnerships.
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