30 Ways To Use LinkedIn and Get Business

LinkedIn truly is a social media tool that when harnessed correctly will help individuals, brands and businesses succeed. The site isn't a personal favorite of mine - It is however, a tool I strongly suggest using to everyone because I have seen it work time and time again. Once you understand the key principals you can make the network work for you with a minimal time investment.

If you're like many people I speak with that has a LinkedIn account that mostly sits idle (signing in to accept connection requests or review endorsements) you should know that there is much more that you can do and should be doing. LinkedIn is the social tool that will promote you as an individual, grow your business and brand, maximize your relevancy and reel in new leads, clients and testimonials. In short, used LinkedIn for ROI. Here are 30 ways to effectively harness the social network successfully:

1. Start with your profile. It needs to be filled out completely and honestly. (Great SEO opportunity here!)
2. Use widgets to integrate other tools, such as importing your blog entries or Twitter stream into your profile. (Great SEO & branding opportunity here!)
3. Do market research and gain knowledge with Polls.
4. Share survey and poll results with your contacts. This goes into your contacts activity feed and builds your credibility.
5. Answer questions in Questions and Answers: show expertise without a hint of self-promotion.
6. Ask questions in Questions and Answers to get a feel for what customers and prospects want or think.
7. Publish your LinkedIn URL on all your marketing collateral, including business cards, email signature, email newsletters, web sites and brochures, so prospects learn more about you.
8. Grow your network by joining industry and alumni groups related to your business.
9. Update your status examples of recent work.
10. Link your status updates with your other social media accounts.
11. Combine your social media approach: when someone asks a question in Twitter, respond in detail on LinkedIn and link to it from Twitter.
12. Use the search feature to find people by company, industry and city.
13. Start and manage a group or fan page for your product, brand or business.
14. Research your prospects before meeting or contacting them.
15. Share useful articles and resources that will be of interest to customers and prospects.
16. Don’t turn off your contacts: avoid hard-sell tactics.
17. Write honest and valuable recommendations for your contacts.
18. Request LinkedIn recommendation from happy customers willing to provide testimonials.
19. Post your presentations on your profile using a presentation application.
20. Check connections’ locations before traveling so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.
21. Ask your first-level contacts for introductions to their first-level contacts.
22. Interact with LinkedIn on a regular basis to reach those who may not see you on other social media sites.
23. Set up to receive LinkedIn messages in your inbox so you can respond right away.
24. Link to articles and content posted elsewhere, with a summary of why it’s valuable to add to your credibility.
25. List your newsletter subscription information and archives.
26. Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
27. Post discounts and package deals.
28. Import vCards and contacts from other applications to find more connections.
29. Export your contacts into other applications.
30. Find vendors and contractors through connections.

Self Discipline Equals Success

There's one special quality that you can develop that will guarantee you greater success, accomplishment and happiness in life. Of a thousand principles for success developed over the ages, this one quality or practice will do more to assure that you accomplish wonderful things with your life than anything else.  This quality is so important that, if you don’t develop it to a high degree, it is impossible for you to ever achieve what you are truly capable of achieving.

Personal Management and Self Discipline
The quality that I am talking about is the quality of self discipline.  It is a habit, a practice, a philosophy and a way of living.  All successful men and women are highly disciplined in the important work that they do.  All unsuccessful men and women are undisciplined and unable to control their behaviors and their appetites.  And when you develop the same levels of high, personal discipline possessed by the most successful people in our society, you will very soon begin to achieve the same results that they do.

All great success in life is preceded by long, sustained periods of focused effort on a single goal, the most important goal, with the determination to stay with it until it is complete.

The Qualities of Successful People
Unsuccessful men and women are those who waste their time by wasting the minutes and hours of each day on low value activities.

The key to this attitude toward time and personal management is always self discipline.

There are several disciplines that you need to develop if you want to achieve your full potential.  The first of these is the discipline of goals.  This means that you sit down with a pad of paper, a pen and ample time.  You think through and then make a written list of all the things you want to accomplish in the next one, two, three, four and five years.  You organize the list into the various areas of your life; your career, your money, your family, your health and the other parts that are important to you.  You set priorities among your goals and re-write your lists so that your most important goals are at the top.  You then take a separate sheet of paper and you make a list of all the things that you can think of doing, right now, to move you toward the attainment of your most important goals.

Fully 97% of adult Americans are trying to live their lives without clear, specific, written goals.  This is the same as setting off across an unknown country without a roadmap.  You may get somewhere eventually, but it will take you much longer, and it is far more likely that you will get lost, and waste an enormous amount of time, than if you planned your trip carefully, with a roadmap, and full information about the future terrain, before you started out.

Successful People Complete High Value Tasks First
The second discipline you need to develop for success is the discipline of planning.  Ten minutes in execution for every minute that you invest in planning will get a 1000% return on your time investment by taking the time to think through, in advance, what you are going to do in the hours and days ahead.

Perfecting Your Sales Emailing Strategy - A How-To Guide

Best Career Advice: Learn how to sell. Yes, you! You're selling. No matter what career you're planning, there's no smarter move than learning how to sell because each of us are selling every second of every day.

I recently sat down with a friend who's a website programmer and explained the selling concept. It was difficult for her to grasp how she's selling herself even while listening to Spotify/Pandora and coding websites. But in truth and in theory, she's selling while building websites - We're all selling ourselves, services, beliefs and etc. daily.

Take the example of the web programmer again, once her websites or updates are ready for the customers review, she has to email the customer that update and information. In fact, most people are emailing constantly on a regular basis. But do you know how to write a sales email properly and effectively?

Take these great suggestions from us and apply them to each of your emails moving forward:

TIP: First time e-mails: to potential customers must be short and make it easy to move to the next step.
TIP: Sales e-mails: these are the type you send to prospects to gauge if they're interested in conversing. Without a relationship with the recipients, you don't have the right to put much demand on their attention.
Common Error: Sales e-mails are way too complicated.

What Doesn't Work and Why (example courtesy of: inc.com): 

Almost every sales e-mail reads as follows: (Note: I've numbered each section to make it easier to critique; the numbers wouldn't be in the actually e-mail, of course.)

1. Subject: Acme
2. Hi [prospect name]! Hope you are well.
3. Acme is the industry leader...[a paragraph about how wonderful Acme is.]
4. Acme has the following products and services... [a bulleted "spray and pray" list.]
5. Acme has served the following customers... [some big companies.]
6. I would like to set up a 20 minute phone call to discuss how we can help you.
7. If you need any further information, don't hesitate to call me at [number] or browse our website [website.]
8. Sincerely, [sender's name and contact info]

To understand why this type of letter doesn't get a response, let's look at it from the perspective of the potential customer:

1. The subject line means nothing to me, so I probably won't open it.
2. I don't know you, so the greeting rings false and the concern for my health is bogus.
3. Why should I care about your company?
4. What does any of this have to do with me?
5. I'm an SMB; if you work with large enterprises then you're probably going to treat me like small potatoes.
6. Are you kidding me? Like I have 20 minutes in my crazy schedule to hear some silly sales pitch.
7. Apparently, you think I'm so stupid that I can't find your phone number and website under your signature. Also, you apparently live in some cuckoo land where I'm desperate to have a conversation with somebody who has already wasted three minutes of my time with this confusing e-mail.
8. A final lie, since there's nothing sincere about anything in this e-mail.

Did you really expect a response from that? It's okay, we've all been there. Now let's cover a method that actually works and can be applied easily for success!

Your New Method:

1. Subject: [something relevant to the prospect]
2. Dear [Mr.|Ms. prospect's last name]:
3. I'm contacting you because I may be able to [potential benefit to the prospect.]
4. Companies like yours ([list]) hire us to do [something quantifiable that leads to that potential benefit.]
5. Reply to this e-mail and I'll e-mail you some details so that you can quickly evaluate whether it's worth your time to pursue this.
6. [sender's name and contact info]

Do you know why this structure works? It's because:

1. The subject line engages the recipient to open the e-mail. Examples of "something relevant" would be a mutual contact, a recent change in the prospect's business, a factoid about a prospect's competitor, etc.
2. While many industries and companies are informal, when you're contacting somebody for the first time, it's best to err on the side of formality. Nobody is ever insulted by formality.
3. Get to the point quickly. The "point" is "what's in it for me." So tell the prospect.
4. This is your sales message, but stated from the customer's perspective. The customers in the list should be of similar size and shape to the prospect. If you don't have this list, just use "Our customers hire us to."
5. It's unrealistic to expect an initial e-mail to convince a prospect to commit time to meeting to you. Instead, you make the "next step" something trivial that indicates the prospect's receptiveness.
6. The prospect is smart enough to figure out how to call you or access your website if required.

Example
Subject: Inventory Cost Overruns
Dear Mrs. York:
I'm contacting you because I might be able to help you reduce your inventory costs.
Our customers hire us to restructure their supply chain to ensure just-in-time component delivery. This typically reduces their inventory storage expense by 40 to 50 percent.
Reply to this e-mail and I'll e-mail you some details so you can quickly evaluate whether it would be worth your time to look into this.
Michael Johsen, Triton
1-xxx-xxx-xxxx
www.tritonemail.com

What Happens Then
If you get an interest, then research that prospect in detail - Utilize LinkedIn or other social sites to help prepare and educate yourself on the company, person and their products.. Craft a follow-up e-mail that describes what you're offering in a way that's likely to match what that individual prospect may need."Like" Us On Facebook