How Do I Use Linkedin?

In the last post we discussed how you can use social media more than just providing updates and answering people on your profiles. It’s time to get out there and talk to more people, you could have conversations all day long, and now we are going to show you how to do that on LinkedIn.

How Do I Use Linkedin? – Fair Question

LinkedIn is a great place to spend time meeting other business people, and if you have a B2B service, you can even do well with your sales on there. But how do you find conversations, where do you look?

  • Updates
  • Groups
  • Answers
  • Messages

Updates
That list is pretty short, but those are the basic places. Let’s look at each of them. Updates are relatively easy to see, just on your home page when you login. To make sure you respond to as many as possible, it’s best to use a tool to stay on top of it. I really like Yoono, but lately it has been messy in Firefox. Yoono desktop works good though, and there are several others, like the popular Hootsuite you can use as well.

Many updates don’t give you much to respond to, you probably get many updates about your connections’ new connections. I normally respond to other updates, by responding to the content. If you have time read their post or comment on it. Let them know you appreciate their content, and give feedback. Additionally when you post, ask questions, to get more engagement.

Groups
On LinkedIn you can find groups of many types of professions, they are set up to allow people to share discussions. You are able to join 50 groups, though they can be quite time consuming, so I would start with 3 and add them as you can handle it. To start with, look for keywords specific to your expertise and market, join these and start dialogue.

I admit many groups are posting grounds for others to share their links, but you can still stir up some discussion. Begin by responding to the most recent posts, giving feedback, asking to connect, etc. There are daily or weekly discussion feeds you can download to stay on top of each group.

Answers
If you’ve ever had a question you wanted to ask other professionals, you will love using Answers. Go to the Answers section and look at all of the people who need help, this is a great opportunity to make more connections and even drum up business. There are Rss feeds for this as well, so you can get notifications perhaps with IFttt. You can search the Answers section or browse by subject to find people that need your help.

Messages
How many connections do you have on LI? Now, how often do you connect with each of them? I’ve noticed I have connections from years ago that I don’t talk to at all. In fact, I think for many people, you connect with someone and then never talk with them much at all.

What I like to do is send an introduction message each time I add a new person, just to say Hi, tell them about myself and forge a relationship, or at least attempt to. Each time you logon try to send a message to one of your connections, stay on top of this and these connections can become partnerships, friends, and colleagues.

I can not say enough about how valuable LinkedIn has been. If you are in business this is the must use social media platform. Visit often, and if you have any questions or need help, feel free to ask in the comments below, or connect with me personally on LI and I can help you there.

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