LinkedIn is widely considered the largest business-to-business site in cyberspace ”“ an assessment with which I fully agree. It enables business people to reach other business people across industries and positions. Paradoxically, however, it has also created great difficulties for both corporations and individuals to be able to use it cost effectively.
While Facebook has now surpassed 800 million subscribers and billions of tweets are issued monthly, LinkedIn has remained somewhat of an enigma to business; the people and connections are present but to create those relationships can be difficult and time-consuming.
One Northwest insurance representative I know explained to me that he uses a simple formula of sending a simple, direct message to people who fit the profile he seeks. While this vetting requires some significant up-front work, his results far exceed his initial expenditure. This very simple model may be all that your business requires.
In contrast, most of the business people on LinkedIn seek a larger mass audience and the rapid building of attention and buzz. If they read many of the articles on how to use LinkedIn, they invariably sign up for many groups and possibly attempt to answer some of the global questions. Unfortunately for them, this by itself is rarely a sufficient solution.
We recently compiled an analysis involving the use of discussions on LinkedIn and discovered that most of them were mere postings. Over 85 percent of all discussion entries had two or less comments with over 50 percent receiving no comments at all. This implies that people are regularly joining a large number of groups (LinkedIn permits every user to join a maximum of 50 groups) and simply posting discussions in them, often unrelated to the subject matter of the group. In many cases, they are simply using the group structure as a blatant (and poor) form of advertising. I have also seen this behavior in my webevents group where people post totally unrelated discussions and aren”™t even aware when, as the administrator, I delete their discussions.
LinkedIn works best when you make a conscious effort to post and continuously respond to comments. You should also join at least two types of groups ”“ those in your area of expertise and those outside your area. Let”™s say I”™m a Human Resources expert (which I”™m not). I would want to join several of the large HR groups to participate in high-level discussions with my peers ”“ but it probably won”™t help me generate sales. To do this, I should target those groups who contain many of the individuals in my target market. In this example, it might be companies dealing with Business Intelligence, for example.
What is the link between BI and HR? Not much except that most companies that employ BI usually have more than 15 employees. This might be a prime group for me to discuss some aspect of HR that might facilitate interest such as social media policy or confidentiality issues and what can be reported to clients and published. By making intelligent posts and responding to questions, I can start to develop relationships with various group members. While some people might argue that this is time consuming, remember: you”™re increasing the size of your network before potentially thousands of people ”“ several of whom will probably bite and initiate a conversation. Best of all, it can enhance your reputation and help brand you as an expert, which will attract more attention.
To generate a major following, some people resort to building groups, only to belatedly discover that there already are more than 40,000 groups and that the time and effort required to build and maintain a group is extensive and usually not worth the effort. So, unless you become an administrator of an already existing group, this often suggested action is probably unrealistic.
To effectively use LinkedIn, you must first develop a strategy that is aligned with your goals. Whether you seek only a limited number of individuals or to brand yourself as an expert before a large number of people, it is essential that you provide good content and maintain a consistent presence that closely adheres to your strategy.
Bruce Newman is the vice president at The Productivity Institute L.L.C. in Carmel. He is also a social media strategist and the designer of a new service, wwWebevents.com. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. Bruce can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.
