Posts Tagged ‘Networking’

Why LinkedIn is the Most Important Site for your Business

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

Posted in Social Media |

Tags: Boxes, Business Name, Business Profile, Career Move, Contact List, Contacts, Cvs, Dross, Groups, High Flyers, How Many People, Job, Linkedin, Networking, Next Career, Podcast, Profile, Profiles, Real Gold, Real Person, Reason, Reputation, Small Businesses, Temptation, Testimonials From People |

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The Philosophy of Success

What does success mean to you?

We live in a culture that is pretty much obsessed with success, and there’s a lot of advice on how to be successful – how to set the parameters of success and how to model the behaviours of successful people.

John Turner, philosopher and visiting Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire Business School led a discussion on The Philosophy of Success

Phil Begnett | Web Video Producer filmed and produced two short videos taken from the nights excellent seminar.

As the evening was very “Interactive” with the audience, the video had to be shot from the “side” of the stage ….

Funky Philosophy – Activity based Philosophy

Deep Networking – The antidote for speed networking!

This post is related to a previous post “What does Success Mean to You?” and to a lively discussion on LinkedIn with 71 comments! http://lnkd.in/Htuywx If you’d like to join in, leave your comments here or on the LinkedIn discussion!

Posted in 12 Steps to Success |

Tags: Advice, Antidote, Audience, Behaviours, Business School, Fellow, Interactive Video, John Turner, Linkedin, Lot, Networking, Parameters, Philo, Philosopher, Philosophy, Sophy, Success, Successful People, University Of Hertfordshire, Video Producer, Videos |

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Influencing the subconscious

Iceberg3 Influencing the subconscious

Look below the surface – you’ll be amazed at what you find!

Napoleon Hill suggested that one of the things that successful people do is to create a belief in themselves that they can achieve their goals. This can sometimes mean that we need to be aware of the messages coming from our subconscious mind that can interfere with this belief and stop us from taking action.

The subconscious mind is protected

– which is usually a good thing as it contains all the things we have ever learned and we wouldn’t want to have to re-learn most of them. However, it also contains less useful things that may stop us from achieving all that we might otherwise be capable of.

Fear of failure, of taking risks, of criticism, of losing, of being thought pushy or arrogant or proud are all stored there along with beliefs about whether we are entitled to expect, or deserve, more than we already have.

Anything that comes to us through our five senses is unlikely to affect the subconscious so how do we reach and change those things that are not useful to us?

Hill suggests (long before NLP was invented) that in order to create the belief that we can have something we must imbue it with emotion, imagine that we already have it and create the experience of already having it and then – and this is the really important part – go and DO the things that are necessary to make it happen.

Vividly imagine having whatever it is you desire and experience how that will feel and what you will see, hear, taste and smell. The emotions and physical reactions caused by these thoughts are generated internally rather than coming to us externally through our senses (and could be described as non-sense) and so are more likely to escape the gatekeeper of the subconscious mind.

The subconscious has no critical faculty. It doesn’t decide whether a thought is good or bad, useful or destructive and so once the thought is lodged there it can be useful as a new belief enabling us to do things we previously thought impossible.

There has been vigorous research into how emotions cause physical reactions, how physical sensations trigger emotions and how both emotions and physical reactions can be produced by thought alone. Belief may not move mountains but it can remove limitations and control physical experiences.

One of the most popular sayings arising from these theories is that “Thoughts Become Things” and while it is undoubtedly true that this can be the case, it is also much too simplistic as simply thinking or wishing will not make anything happen and this does not take into account the completely random things that happen to people. I have seen already distressed people puzzled and hurt at the implication that they have brought misfortune on themselves because their thoughts are not positive enough. Moreover, if we all got what we focused on most of the time, teenage boys would live in a constant state of bliss!

However, that doesn’t change the fact that by creating useful thoughts and stopping less useful ones, especially around the area of what we are capable of achieving, there is no doubt that we can make life easier and more satisfying.