Unlike other social networks, LinkedIn is targeted at professionals. For those with businesses, LinkedIn is a useful tool that you can use to reach out to other professionals for help or advice, to find new projects, to generate new leads, and to find qualified candidates during a recruitment phase. There are over 500 million users to date which points to a huge mass of skills and knowledge that could become available to you if you know how to use it.
As entrepreneurs, we face complex issues that are new to us almost on a daily basis. Kenneth Odwar is a Founder and Business Developer of Quartal – an accounting and business development agency, and he uses LinkedIn every day to learn and grow both personally and professionally. We asked Kenneth to share his tips to help you make the most of your LinkedIn network.
BOOST YOUR PROFILE
LinkedIn is about first impressions. Your profile gives people a picture of who you are in real life. Everything should be very clear. Your picture matters. Have a friend take a profile picture of you in natural lighting. Make it clear who you are, what you do, and what your values are. You have to see yourself as a product and think about who is my desired viewer? Is it a recruiter, employer, business partner, or client?
Be sure to include a short summary that focuses on your work and achievements or the value that you added to your past organisations.
GROW YOUR NETWORK
I don’t have a killer network but I’m quite satisfied. I’ve created a network of people who I consider to be tier one – people who can help lead me somewhere. Having a large network is very important. Careers can take a shift very quickly and your current network can become irrelevant or not very useful for what you need in the future.
Make sure you have many similar connections to the person you want to connect with. Create mutual connections to increase your chance of connecting with your dream person. In some situations, it’s better to use your smartphone to connect with someone. You’ll see a connect button instead of a follow button (you’ll see this if a person is considered to be influential). You can also download your entire contact list from LinkedIn to see names and phone numbers in Excel. This is possible for all users. As a user, you own your information so if you connect with someone on LinkedIn, you can connect in real life as well. By clicking on SEE ALL in your network, you can download and export all of your network information.
GENERATE LEADS
Your profile is based on sales and should generate leads. Your profile should provide a selling point for what it is that you want to achieve. Write content in a way that appeals to your desired audience. Ask for recommendations and endorsements from people you know. You can send mail directly to connections and sort contacts by keywords, as well as create groups to contact them all directly and simultaneously. Try to meet people in real life to create closer relationships. LinkedIn enables you to do business on a personal level rather than cold-calling and hard selling.
BE ACTIVE
Create updates, like, comment and share, give endorsements, engage in groups. Stay active even if you don’t have a specific goal. Be active so connections know who you are and you stay in their minds so when you have a goal and you reach out to your network for help or advice or connections, they feel like they know you and will be more likely to help.
My mentor was the CEO of Swedbank – Michael Wolf. He’s now the chairman of CAPIO. He has a burning desire for diversity and inclusion issues. I read some of his articles while I was working as a diversity consultant so I wrote to him to say hi, thanks for accepting my contact request. A little bit of flattery goes a long way. I asked for a small chat and said a phone call would be fine if he didn’t have time for a meeting. We met up and now we’re personal friends.
AUTHOR
Cathy Xiao Chen is the Community Manager at Impact Hub Stockholm. With a background in food sustainability, she advises and connects startups with collaborators to maximise impact.