Marketing Tips from LinkedIn
I’ve been in LinkedIn for several years and have even raced people I know to see who could amass more contacts there. But I really hadn’t given it much thought as a marketing tool until today.
Patrick Crane, vice president of marketing and advertising at LinkedIn, spoke at a luncheon of the Business Marketing Association’s Chicago chapter about the idea of using the business networking site as a marketing tool.
His advice, to small businesses especially, is that the first step in marketing through LinkedIn is to build your network of first level connections, people who truly know your company, service or products, and trust your company. They become the links to new customers. Get them to write recommendations for your company, he added.
LinkedIn also has been rolling out other ways to help business use it as a marketing tool. It has a new research group that can assemble what are essentially focus groups for you or do wider research.
It’s also added applications in partnership with the likes of Google and others to enable more online collaboration among Linkedin members. One application lets you see who in your network will be in a city you may be traveling to, for example. Another lets you post business presentations, while a third can link to your blog.
Crane drew clear distinctions between a professional network like LinkedIn and social networks like Facebook and insisted LinkedIn would never become social like Facebook. Unspoken in those comments is that Facebook seems to be trying to become more business oriented, a strategy that may put the two networking companies on a colison course at some point.
Comments
You can also accelerate your progress in linkedin.com by joining your offline association's presence (group) in linked in. This exponentially expands your linkedin reach.
Posted by: Stacey Mathis | November 12, 2008 10:03 PM
I agree that there is more and more opportunity to use LinkedIn as a marketing tool. When I have answered some questions in the Q&A area, I have been contacted for a longer discussion by the person posting the question. I am convinced that most LinkedIn users are underutilizing its features, and am happy to see this article!
Posted by: Sue Ginsburg | December 9, 2008 4:15 PM