From the frontline

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful business marketing tools available to small companies. This is just a very brief  guide to how you can get real benefits from virtual networking.

• When you have significant news in your business – for instance, a big product launch or a joint venture – use LinkedIn to notify your contacts by way of a profile update.
• Use LinkedIn to understand the relationships between people you know and people you want to know. For me, this is the heart of LinkedIn’s value – the ability to see at a glance how people you don’t know, but would like to, are connected to people who are closer to you.
• Connect with your former colleagues from every company that has ever employed you. People move around to new companies and new positions of responsibility, so keep in touch and you have a great opportunity for making new contacts through personal recommends.
• Connect beyond the obvious. Let’s say that you would dearly like to work with Toyota, but you can’t find anyone at Toyota who seems especially suitable for contact as you search the LinkedIn database. No problem. Find a current Toyota dealer, and reach out to him or her. Their contacts will suddenly open up to you and who knows what will happen.
• Use the LI database to understand more about your prospects. This is the beauty of LI – what other source will tell you where many or all of the senior execs of your prospect organisations used to work (given that only half a dozen of them have profiles on the company’s website)?
• Your contacts may be even more valuable to others than they are to you.
• LinkedIn in combination with Google News Alerts makes a great business tool. Let’s say you are looking to talk to people at Toyota who work in one product area. Use LI to find a name (or two or three names) of people at Toyota who seem relevant to your situation, and whom you’d like to reach. Set up a Google News Alert on Toyota, and set one up with the target person’s name (or a few names) so that you can learn when he or she has been quoted, is speaking on a panel, etc. This kind of intelligence will tell you what’s currently on the plate of this person, the issues he or she cares about.

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