FITbiz

Business development is a vital and continuous process, which determines the level of success and a business’ lifespan. Particularly, service or client oriented business has greater need of development programs and marketing strategy to help it exhibit a robust and sustainable growth. In this regard, social media has become a leading source of clientele development for such organizations. Particularly, LinkedIn – the leading professional networking site leads the market with regards to B2B relationships. The primary reason behind this is the vibrant niche market of the targeted audience of over 135 million active professional users. 

However, despite this greater utility, very few people actually have an idea of effectively using LinkedIn for the purpose of business and clientele development. The following practical 5 methods can be quite helpful in effective social networking for the sake of business development.

Profile Development and Impression Management

A vibrant LinkedIn marketing campaign starts with strong profile building. A comprehensive but concise introduction about ‘what you do and offer’ can be the first milestone. No matter how qualified you are, incomplete information can not develop a professional image of you as a service provider. Your profile page needs a little investment of your time and dedicated efforts. Learning from the market and active players can help a lot in professional image building campaign that ultimately rewards the business.

Recommendations

As you know, clients turn towards a reliable option in terms of service provision. Hence, the profiles and services that get higher recommendations are quite more successful in getting new clients. In this regard, never underestimate the magic that recommendations can play. Ask your existing clients, professional partners and other stakeholders with a valid business relationship with you, to recommend you on LinkedIn. Social media marketing strategy is all about taking care of little and small steps that could click and provide quality results. 

Networking Approach

Once you have a good profile page, you need to reach out the market and potential clients on LinkedIn. Here, your approach towards networking plays a very important role in determining the level of success your marketing strategy may have. In this regard, the following 2 steps have been quite rewarding and have been extensively utilized by businesses and successful social media managers.

*) Reach out people in your own industry, who need the services that you offer. Additionally, take a deep look on your professional network and then look into their network. This simple network connection chain can prove out to be a service value chain resultantly. 

*) Look at the groups and find people from related industries, who could either give you the business or refer your services to somebody else.

LinkedIn has a paid private messaging service called InMail. Each InMail credit costs $10 or comes at a cheaper cost when you subscribe for premium accounts, and thus the chances to receive intrusive direct marketing mails or spams have been eliminated. Because of premium value each InMail carries, LinkedIn members take it seriously when they receive an InMail, and response rates are very high. LinkedIn even guarantees that if you don’t receive a reply within a week, they will refund the InMail credit.

Groups

Groups are also one of the powerful tools in the LinkedIn marketing strategy. Develop your own group and invite people to join it for sharing valuable information and seek solutions for their problems. Additionally, join effective highly active LinkedIn groups and participate in activities. The life is all about give and take, because you will have to give some feedback to others if you want to receive it for you.

Q&A

LinkedIn question and answer feature enables you to connect with active audience at the social network, who could be impressed with valid and to the point answers to their questions, and this is the most important factor that can make your marketing strategy more effective and successful.

In short, comprehensive understanding of LinkedIn network and then effective utilization of available features can help you a lot in building your business with LinkedIn.

For more free marketing strategy articles, please visit the marketing strategy blog at http://blog.geisheker.com. 

I went to a business mixer last night. I was in a pretty good mood and I ran into a few folks I hadn’t seen in awhile. As is the norm – many asked, “How’s Business?” What used to be an ice breaker now carries a notable edge to it. Times are tough.

One long time acquaintance launched into a doom and gloom discourse. I excused myself. I am not typically a head in the sand kinda guy, but I can’t spend a lot of energy on how bad can might possible get. Especially, since I have little or no power to affect the state of the economy over the next few months. But for my own personal sanity, I just can’t wallow in it.

So I weather on . . .

When business is slow, I work on stuff I don’t have time for during busier times – I network, I update our marketing collateral, I pitch new projects. Am I being naive? Maybe. Or maybe (this is my more positive spin) I am preparing for a time when business returns. Some of our competitors have fallen away and we have an opportunity to competitively position ourselves for the recovery.

It’s your choice . . .

A long, long time ago – at least in Internet years – the way to drive traffic to your site was write a blog. Check. Then we sent you a newsletter – opt in of course. You read it once or twice and you stopped reading. Don’t you love us? We linked to our business contacts on LinkedIn. Seems you already knew us. Then we were supposed to join MySpace. Check – met lot of twenty somethings, but not a lot of marketing bang for the buck. Then it was Facebook. Check – now we spend unthinkable amount of time trying to make what we are doing now sound interesting – do you really care that I am staring at my computer? Now, the rage is to Tweet on Twitter, really?

What works and what doesn’t? I guess it depends on your audience. Our blogs and newsletter are content we create, which tend to get read and drive traffic. The other sites tend be popular until the next shiny object come along. Right now, we get a fair am amount of visibility from Facebook and Twitter – but that will likely change in six months.

A very long time ago – especially in Internet years – I belonged to a business exchange group. We met twice a month and actually at down face to face. I still get business from that group. Call it doing business the old fashion way, but it works. Sure, online social networking can drive traffic to your site, but in the long run it’s the people that you do business with. So, back away from the laptop and go out and talk to a real live body – you may be surprised – you might even get some business!

When I launched my business, I had a “office” in a walk-in closet off my living room. The view wasn’t so great. Back then my “enterprise” consisted of me and the cat. I would often venture out to Starbucks for a little human interaction. I knew all the baristas on a first name basis.

Studies have shown that we are more likely to stick with exercise program if we have a workout partner. Someone to be accountable to, to encourage you, someone to share goals with, or simply someone to laugh with over the misfortune of the day.

And yet many of us go it alone when we launch our businesses? Why not find another business owner to be your workout buddy – you don’t have to walk into networking events alone – you can tag team the room. Someone to share with – what technology worked, what was the work around to that Internet gliche or simply share a cup of coffee occasionally. The baristas tend to get busy!!

And matching tracksuits is completely up to you . . .