LinkedIn is great for small businesses

It may not be immediately obvious because LinkedIn was designed as a site for on-line CVs for professionals and high flyers but these days its also great for the owners of small businesses to show their expertise, make connections and build a reputation.

It’s all in the way you use it!

Here are a few tips that will help you to grow your business through LinkedIn

(there’s a podcast at the end that talks in more detail about using groups)

Build your profile

LinkedIn terms and conditions only allow profiles to be in the name of a real person – not a business. If you use a business name you’ll get away with it for a while but eventually the account will be removed.

You’ll get lots of prompts to complete your profile 100% but remember the site was designed for people looking for their next career move, not for owners of small businesses so don’t worry if you don’t fill in all the boxes – this is not the most important area for you.

Add a good photo

There’s a ton of research that shows that people are more likely to connect with you on line if you have a photo of you smiling and that clearly shows your eyes.  More importantly, what you’re doing here is networking and its hard to do that with a faceless person. Don’t use a logo – you’ll just make people think you’re going to sell to them and they won’t connect or interact with you.

Ask to connect with people you know

Whatever LinkedIn suggests DON’T add your whole contact list. It’s likely to get your account suspended for two reasons: the first is that LinkedIn sets a limit for how many people you can invite to connect in one go, the second reason you’ll get suspended is when five people respond to your request by saying they don’t know you. Better to build your contacts slowly from people you know well.

Get some recommendations

One of the most useful areas of LinkedIn is where people can read testimonials from people who recommend you. Update this regularly  but make sure the recommendations are relevant to your business and not for a job you used to do. Again, despite what LinkedIn suggests, resist the temptation do swap recommendations with friends, its easy to spot and makes you both look a bit desperate.

Join some groups

This is where you, as a business owner, can make a real impression. There are  over a million affinity groups on LinkedIn and you can join up to 50. Its better to be active in a few than passive in 50! You can see how many members each group has and how many new discussions they have each week. You may want to join some groups to get information and others to add your voice to the discussions.

The nature of groups varies dramatically. Some are full of sales pitches – everyone talking and no-one listening and these are best avoided. Others are well moderated and have some genuine opportunities for you to add your opinions and expertise to the discussions, make some interesting connections and build your reputation. Resist any urge to make a sales pitch in a discussion, you’ll just piss people off, your comment will be flagged and a good moderator will remove it, making you look like a pillock. Instead, share ideas, ask questions, be helpful and supportive.

Things to avoid

Don’t link your Twitter account to LinkedIn. If your contacts want to follow you on Twitter they will (you can add your Twitter name to your profile). If you fill LinkedIn with tweets your contacts will stop following your activity on LinkedIn so you’ll defeat the point of being there. Twitter is social, LinkedIn is professional.

If you have a blog, don’t spam multiple groups with blog links. This is the equivalent of fly posting and one of the main reasons why people leave groups so again, you’re defeating the object of being there and its just rude and annoying.

Don’t spam your contacts.

Starting your own group

This can be real gold but takes a lot of work. As the owner you’ll need to prompt discussions, moderate discussions, invite people to join, monitor people who want to join, reject  discussions, comments and people if they’re unsuitable or don’t fit the purpose of the group and generally devote a fair chunk of time to making it work.

Listen to the podcast

This is the recording of an interview with Jon Buscall of Jontus Media that explains in more detail how to build your reputation and contacts without selling and how to mesh face to face networking with on-line networking.

Click the speaker to listen