Business 380 ? Marketing: Nuture your professional network

By Nick Westergaard, Westergaard Advertising, Coralville

I had one of those ah-ha moments recently when insight forever changes the way you look at something.

In this case, it was how I view the professional social network LinkedIn.

Nick Westergaard

LinkedIn was the first social network I joined but it had also grown to become the one I engaged with least. Sure, I accepted connections and wandered around once a month or so, but it was always an afterthought.

Then I had my moment. When speaking at a conference I got a batch of new connection requests that I accepted.

This prompted me to check in on my profile where my total number of connections startled me. It caught me off guard because it was exactly equal with my total Facebook friends.

Then I started thinking ?

While nowhere near Facebook?s status of having a community so large it would be the world?s third most populous country, LinkedIn?s 100 million-strong network is nothing to dismiss.

Personally speaking, my network is made up of other professionals that I?ve met or worked with or for.

Qualified, working relationships versus a collection of causal acquaintances. To be clear, I?m not hating on Facebook, but if you stop and think there is a big difference between a professional ?connection? and personal ?friend.?

And yet I was on Facebook almost constantly and LinkedIn just barely. I was ignoring a valuable networking opportunity.

That?s when I decided I would take the following actions to make LinkedIn work for me.

AGGRESSIVELY CONNECT

Accept any and all requests, then take it a step further by mining their connections for potential contacts.

Your crops only grow when you nurture them. The same is true of your LinkedIn connections.

CONNECT ONLINE AND OFFLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING

One great idea that I encountered during my LinkedIn experiment came from the book ?The Referral Engine.? In it, author John Jantsch talks about adding LinkedIn connections for each physical business card you receive.

I?m guilty of collecting a mountain of cards from new contacts without a system for managing them. Let LinkedIn do this for you, and you?ve found a valuable contact management tool while growing your network.

USE IT AS A PERSONAL TESTIMONIAL SYSTEM

It can be hard to ask for testimonials. Let LinkedIn do it for you.

By requesting recommendations from your network, you aren?t as much asking a colleague for something as you are asking them to play the LinkedIn game. Maybe you can refer them back.
Once you have the recommendations, you can ask permission to use these on other marketing materials as well.

MARKET YOUR PROFILE WITH A CUSTOM URL

Be sure to click the ?Public Profile? button on your page to set your name as your custom URL to make it even easier to share and connect. (For extra points, try to make it consistent with your Facebook URL and Twitter handle.)

LEVERAGE PLUGINS FOR ADDITIONAL PROMOTION

Trick out your profile by adding plugins that pull in your blog posts, SlideShare presentations and more. If you have content on the web, make sure you find a way to make it live on LinkedIn as well.

FOLLOW ORGANIZATIONS, TOO

You can also follow organizations on LinkedIn. Provided they have a good social media manager, this is a great way to keep tabs on clients, prospects and others in your industry.

(Remember to update your company?s profile, too.)

Remember to contribute to the conversation.

JOIN GROUPS

Just like going to college, a great way to get social quick is by joining groups. Look for industry groups or associations and join up.

COMMUNICATE WITHIN LINKEDIN

If I want to follow up with someone that I am connected with on LinkedIn but have yet to establish an email or phone rapport, I try starting the conversation within the network?s direct messaging system. This is a great way to reach out and to build more value into LinkedIn.

EMBRACE THE DIFFERENCES

LinkedIn isn?t Facebook. You have to make it engaging by sharing content.

It?s not Twitter, either, with rapid-fire conversations to ride like a tidal wave. You have to make the communication happen here.

Why all the work? This is your professional network and it holds incredible value.

Human business is hard. You have to jump in with both feet and make it happen.

Are we connected? Find me on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/nickwestergaard.

Source: http://business380.com/2011/06/05/marketing-nuture-your-professional-network/

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