Marketing using LinkedIn: How to market your business on linkedin

LinkedIn is a favorite among employers to scout for potential candidates to fill important positions in their organization. Here’s your guide to how to make the most of LinkedIn:
Table of Contents
Why LinkedIn?
A professional networking account or profile serves a completely different focus as compared to a Social Networking Profile. LinkedIn offers an avalanche of marketing opportunities for its users apart from the rewards of getting in touch with co-professionals, the veterans of your field and establishing strong professional networks with like-minded people, and getting in touch with your potential clientèle. Here are easy tools that will get bridge the gap to reach your prospective employers and get you connected with other link-minded professionals.

If you are not looking for a businessman but are looking at making it big in the corporate sector, there are a few lines you must never cross when it comes to not crossing the lines and understanding the difference between a social networking profile and a professional networking one. A prospective employee must understand clearly in his mind that professional and personal networkings are as different as chalk and cheese. In fact, research shows that LinkedIn helps to give you a launchpad to higher-paying jobs.
Get there!!
If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, go get one, now! When it comes to LinkedIn, you are your biggest advocate and the best brand ambassador. Your network of connections is instrumental in establishing connections further up and taking your business to places. All this without you actually having to get up from your chair, without actually going out to meet clients and marketing your product or service from door to door.
Identify yourself
But this journey of 1000 steps will only begin with you actually having a beginning. First, you need to have a profile, optimize it as it is going to be a focal point of your identity in the virtual professional world. Hiring Managers have admitted in various researches that the most common mistake people make is not putting up a profile picture. You’re seven times more likely to have your profile viewed if you have one.

Be careful about committing photo blunders like putting up pictures of pets, spouses, or kids. This is not social networking and let us remind you of that. You may be invariably giving a signal to your hiring manager that you are not committed to a serious job if he sees pictures of you in a crazy frenzy over alcohol with friends or posing arm-in-arm with your boyfriend or husband or other candid pictures of you with your kids.
Don’t assert your status
Leave cheesy status updates and drama for Facebook and Twitter. That’s where they belong. Let your LinkedIn status become a tool to update your network about your professional accomplishments and progress. You could share an article you wrote or highlight a project being completed and add points to your kitty. Put something in your status to keep it fresh, and show you’re actively engaged.
Added Assets
Use the additional fields in your profile to your advantage to include any other relevant information that would further reinforce your marketing message. For example, if you wish to market a particular service use appropriate keywords that highlight the product or create a visual image in the mind of your potential client. You could include some client testimonials that have something nice to say about your product. Success stories go a long way and leave an impact.
Or if you want to be seen as an expert in any given field, writing, for instance, includes references to any articles, blogs, or books you’ve written. You could also mention articles you’ve been quoted in, or if you are a part of any advisory groups you belong to. Make sure your profile links to your Web sites, blogs, and every other thing that is a part of your online identity.
Be part of the larger world
Although it will be a great idea to be a part of and participate in groups of your interests. But hold back your reigns when it comes to bombarding the folders of your network with LinkedIn messages loaded with strong and aggrieve marketing messages. Remember, when you join a group, you’re clearly indicating your interest in that group, and also keep in mind that your profile now carries the group logo. Membership in such groups gives you easy access to like-minded people with whom you can communicate and add to your network in the future. It will pay you in multi-folds if you wisely spend some time every week or every month checking out LinkedIn Groups, their activities as well as networking with group members to grow and learn.
Nothing sells like hot-cakes
Remember no one will buy cold snacks from the market. What is piping hot and smells good attracts most customers. One can make use of useful sites such as wordtracker.com or goodkeywords.com to list out the hottest keyword phrases in your field. ‘Hot’ keywords play the right notes in the mind of the client and mentally hook him to your service. Also, make sure that your keyword or phrases are mentioned in your company or personal profile.
A default will make you falter

Don’t use the standard connection request! LinkedIn is about building valuable professional relationships to leverage into career opportunities and not keeping on adding the number of friends or followers to your list.
Even if you’re reaching out to a prospect you’ve never met, it will be a wise step to do a little research on that person, and customize your message before making a connection request.
Final Thought
Remember, employees in an organization are at the end of the day nothing but humans at work. They are psychologically complicated individuals who often get entangled in a complex web of emotions arising from their personal and professional lives. Ironically this very web can do amazing things for an individual who is battling each day out at the professional front.
Aanchal Madan
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