LinkedIn allows you to make connections and find new business at a faster pace and reach new areas at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. In fact, the only cost is your time. In today’s business climate, being a little web savvy goes a long way. It is important to remember that LinkedIn is a good tool to reach specific people; it is not as good at mass market broadcasting.

5 step process

1. Profile: Build a complete and fully developed profile that highlights expertise, experience and capability that you offer. Your profile should show your unique selling proposition of why business prospects should use your services. Include a link to your website and blog if you have one.
2. Invite: Send out connection invitations to friends, colleagues, customers and suppliers. Look at their connections and discover more people that you know and invite them to your network. Use the advanced search tools to find people you once worked with or went to school with.
3. Network: Use LinkedIn Answers to interact and network with your targeted customers. Ask questions that would interest your customer. Invite these people to become a connection and join your network. Meet these new connections for a cup of coffee or by phone to strengthen your relationship.
4. Prospect List: Using LinkedIn Advanced Search as well as other sources, compile a list of targeted prospect companies. This can be by Industry, geographic area or other demographic.
5. Introduction: Search thru your contact list for people that are currently working at your prospect companies. Look for connections that worked there in the past or that have contacts currently working at those companies. Get an introduction and create a warm call opportunity. This greatly increases your success rate.

LinkedIn is very different from many of the social networking sites that are online. It is positively focused towards businesses and business members.

Trust is the glue that holds LinkedIn together and recommendations are a way to cement stronger bonds within your connections. Recommendations are important in building your image and brand. Authentic references from customers and people you have actually worked with speak volumes about you.

Endorsements from colleagues, clients, and employers add instant credibility and strengthen your profile. These recommendations are really your testimonials that are powerful because they are written by others.

How do you get recommendations? LinkedIN allows users to ask for recommendations from past managers, co workers, business partners and service providers. Don’t be shy about requesting recommendations.

Recommendations

1. Targeting: Seek testimonials from business leaders and satisfied customers. Testimonials from friends and fellow workers will hold much less weight.
2. Customers: Encourage customers to give you a recommendation as you complete work or a project. This is the ideal time to ask for feedback.
3. Give to get: If you are feeling awkward about asking for recommendations, start by giving one. You’ll be amazed at how flattered they are, and they are likely to leave you a professional endorsement.
4. Add value: Think about what value your recommendation will give. It should address the person as a professional or their business. They are meant to show a professional endorsement for that person.
5. Be specific: General comments are weak endorsements. A good recommendation has specific information or examples. Instead of saying “John puts on excellent workshops”, say “John’s workshops are interesting and full of tips and examples that you can immediately apply to your own business.”
6. Be credible: If your recommendations are full of hype and raving statements, they will be discounted by readers. The best recommendations are honest and transparent.

Networking is an increasingly important part of business. Business managers and entrepreneurs are using networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to establish business contacts and to locate talent for their organizations. The lines are fast becoming blurred between social and professional networking.

LinkedIn is the platform of choice for professional networking. It is a social networking tool that allows members to maintain a list of contacts they know and trust in business, make new connections and re-connect with past contacts and acquaintances. LinkedIn has over 20 million members making it the number one professional networking site today.

The best business networkers are connected into the broad fabric well beyond their immediate professional boundaries. They build relationships and interact with people. They are genuinely interested in people and what they are thinking. They seek interaction because they are curious about people and their ideas.

The modern business networker uses online social networks in addition to traditional networking. They make regular contributions in forums such as LinkedIn Answers and write regular blog articles that are thoughtful and helpful. The modern business networker has a “pay it forward” rather than a “what’s in it for me” philosophy.

They are always looking for ways to help people. They learn something and are looking to pass it on to help others. The best networkers rarely expect a personal payoff. This makes them a natural magnet for people wanting to join their network.

Business networking is a communications skill based on human interaction. The same rules apply to face-to-face and online networking.

I often hear from people who don’t see how using LinkedIn can give them new business. They will ask: “So I have these connections… Now what do I do?”

What they are not understanding is that LinkedIn is no different that face-to-face networking. You can’t expect to meet someone only onceand turn that relationship into a referral. LinkedIn is the same way; you can’t merely add someone as a connection and expect business to just happen.

LinkedIn is like traditional networking; the internet has just made it easier. The same rules apply. Let’s start by looking at what works for traditional networking.

1. Who: Your networking strategy starts with who to I wish to meet? What are you looking for in a good referral partner or targeted client.
2. Where: Where can you best find these people? Chamber events, professional associations or even Rotary meetings?
3. Make a plan: who will be in attendance and why are they there?
4. Listen: Networking is not about you; it is about meeting people, asking questions, subtly qualifying them, and then listening to them. Find out how you can help them.
5. Have a message: Lets people know what you do and how you can support their need.

So how can you make this work with LinkedIn? Start with a complete profile that has your photo, links to your website and a complete story about who you are. After all, when a person is interested, this is the first place they will go to learn about you. An incomplete profile shows you in a poor light .

The best networking in LinkedIn is LinkedIn Answers. This is where you can ask or answer questions. Anyone can ask or answer any question. That gives you access to over 20 million people. By asking a question that interests your targeted client; you get a chance to start a conversation. A well written question can get over 50 answers.

I follow up with a personal response to everyone who answers one of my questions with one of 3 possible responses:

1. Already a connection: I thank them for taking time to give an answer and tell them I appreciate their taking time with my question.
2. Not connected, but I want to: I thank them for their answer and ask them to send me an invitation to connect if they are likewise interested.
3. Not connected, but not interested in connecting: I just thank them for their answer.

This gives you a way of increasing your connections, interacting with current connections and becoming increasingly known by the LinkedIn community. This gives me a steady stream of leads and an increasing network of people that I send referrals to.

The top most organic listing on the Google search engine results page (SERP) will sometimes display links to a half dozen pages within the website. These are called Google Sitelinks. Sitelinks are the multiple links that Google will add to some of the #1 organic search results.

Only the best sites seem to get Sitelinks. According to Google, Sitelinks are designed to provide searchers with more valuable search results. Google does not disclose what it takes for a website to get these Sitelink listings. Sitelinks enhance a web site’s visibility and reputation.

Which websites get Sitelinks? We can infer this by examining which websites are currently receiving them.

1. They only apply to websites that rank #1 for a particular phrase.
2. Website age must be a minimum of one year.
3. The text navigation must well structured and easily spidered.
4. They must have fairly high natural search traffic
5. They have a high click through rate from the search results page.
6. They have many useful outbound links
7. They have inbound links from high quality sites.

A website may have Sitelinks for some keyword phrases and not for others. You will notice this in the two examples shown here for the same website. The top one is for a low volume search term and Sitelinks appear. The lower example is for a much higher volume search term “small business consulting” and the same website does not have Sitelinks.

The workings of all the Google algorithms, including Sitelinks, are kept secret to discourage people from manipulating the rankings. But with the interest in Sitelinks, we can expect Google to expand the use of these in the near future.

The rise of blogs, social networks, social bookmarking and other social media has created a new source for traffic for websites. A top story on Digg can drive much more traffic than a top search engine ranking. This has created a new process called Social Media Optimization (SMO).

Social media optimization is a form of word of mouth marketing through the use of social networking, social bookmarking, and media sharing (photo, video) websites. The essence of SMO is giving people a reason to visit and link to your site because of great original content.

Social media optimization is different than search engine optimization. Social media markets directly to your target audience and search engine optimization markets to the search engines. SEO is about building rankings while SMO is about building a community.

5 rules of social media optimization (from Rohit Bhargava)

1. Increase your linkability: Increase the linkability by adding new, original and interesting content that others will want to use as a resource. Look at adding a blog, white papers, statistics, and lists key information.
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy: Include “Quick Add” buttons or links making it easy to del.cio.us, dig, etc.
3. Reward inbound links: To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you.
4. Help your content travel: When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.
5. Encourage the mashup: In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason).

Once you have a website, how can you get visitors to come to your site? There are many ways to promote your website to targeted, interested web traffic.

1. Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization uses keywords in the text, headings, page names and META tags and get other relevant sites to link to your website.
2. Pay per Click: Advertise on the search engines for almost instant results.
3. Blogging: Blog marketing attracts readers. Blog regularly about related topics your targeted customer is interested in. Include links back to your website.
4. Social Networks: Set up profiles at popular social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace , etc.
5. Forums: Participate in online forums as an expert. You get to promote your business “quietly” in your signature line.
6. Signatures: Include a signature in every email that you send that includes your company name and website URL.
7. Printed Materials: Include your website URL on all invoices, statements, proposals, letterheads, business cards and brochures.
8. Promo Items: Purchase things like pens or stress balls with your Web site name and URL on them and give them away to your customers.
9. Links: Trade links with as many people as you can. Just make sure they are highly relevant to your targeted visitor.
10. Article Writing: Write and publish articles and place them on article syndication sites. Other web site owners pick them up and publish them on their web sites.
11. Video: Setup viral video about your company, products and upload them at video network site.
12. Webinar: Setup a webinar and promote it on the social networks.
13. eBook: Offer a free ebook on your site. This could be information that would be helpful to your visitors that contains your business information, too.
14. Free Report: Give away a free report or analysis. Promote this on the social networks or in emails.
15. Quizzes: Design some quizzes and place them on your website. Statistics show that visitors love quizzes and assessment tools. Promote these quizzes on social networks and in emails.
16. Guest Speaker: If there is someone fairly prestigious in your field ask them if they might come and chat with your readers. This can be in a chat room on your site or a public chat room.
17. Viral email: Create an email with a joke that relates to your website but ‘leave out the punch line’. Next, create a page on your website with the punch line of the joke.
18. Contests: These get people interested in your site. And if you have a good prize, you’ll get people excited to try to win. Announce the winners on your site.
19. Newsletter: Keep in touch with your clients and potential clients by sending out a newsletter on a regular basis. This can be printed or email. Add newsletter subscription to your website.
20. Car Signs: Use your car, especially if your website is area-specific. Turn your car into a moving advertisement, literally driving traffic to your web site!

Businesses need both managers and leaders. Businesses need leaders to chart the direction and set organizational goals. Managers get things done methodically and effectively. I use this as part of my business consulting and executive coaching.

You feel leadership. You do management. Leaders are the visionary influencers. They set the direction and are concerned with the outcomes, not necessarily the process. Managers create plans with specific goals, organize teams and then control and monitor the progress of the plan.

Leadership without management is like a sailboat without the sail. Management without leadership is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Leadership
Leadership is concerned with the outcomes, not necessarily the process used to achieve it. A leader has to be creative and willing to introduce innovation. Innovation is the essence of leadership. Leadership is the catalyst of motivation and inspiration in others.

Leaders have vision; they align people towards that vision and then inspire the people to march towards that vision. Leaders affect human behavior to accomplish the mission. They are forward thinking and solution oriented. They set organizational strategies and goals.

Management
A manager makes sure the job gets done. They organize and deploy resources to meet business strategies and goals. They have the learned skills, the operational knowledge and the ability to translate the vision into action. They are known to be organized, methodical, efficient and effective.

Management is the ability of getting people to act toward accomplishing a goal. It is the ability to deliver a process as close to perfection as possible.

In the end, a successful organization requires both leaders and managers to be successful. It is leadership combined with management that creates success.

LinkedIn is much more than just a networking tool you can use it to meet new prospects and generate new business. It is a powerful research tool that helps with background information on sales prospects, your competition or even prospective employers. With over 20 million searchable profiles, LinkedIn is a powerful people tool.

Imagine going into a conference room filled with people you have never met. You may know their names and their companies, but not much else. You can use LinkedIn to understand these people and develop some ideas for conversation starters.

1. Research your sales prospects: Look for connections and contacts within your network to create an introduction. Use LinkedIn to understand your prospect before you meet with them. You can learn where someone has worked, where they went to school, their hobbies and more. LinkedIn details their past career experience and positions held, and reveals their personal interests and expertise.
2. Research your competition: Do an advanced search on their company name. Understand past and present employees by reading their profiles. What skill sets and backgrounds are in key positions? You will get an idea not only what they are doing now, but what are the capable of doing.
3. Research a prospective employer: The more you know about a prospective employer, the better decision you can make if you are offered a job. Do advanced searches by company name. Contact people in your network that currently or previously worked there. See where people go before and after. How long do they stay?

Combine LinkedIn with a thorough Google search and you can gain a great deal of intelligence to help make decisions and increase your sales conversions

Facebook has about 70 million users worldwide and this is expected to reach upwards of 200 million by January 2009. But Facebook is for personal social networking, not for businesses… right? It seems that Facebook is evolving to capture the business social networking market that LinkedIn has previously locked up.

A basic premise of marketing using social networking is that business is both social and personal. Business involves people, communications and relationships. In business, we prize networking skills. We forge relationships by talking about sports, weather, hobbies and family. Marketers need to figure out how to best use online social networking.

Not only are your friends on Facebook, so are your prospects, your customers and of course your competition. Facebook has been changing itself to be the place for both personal and business social networking.

Unlike Plaxo, Xing or LinkedIn…  Facebook is both a personal and business networking site. Recently, Facebook launched a “People You May Know” feature that is almost identical to a popular LinkedIn feature of the same name.

Back to the question we started with. Should Your Business be on Facebook? This should be a strong YES! Facebook is not just for college students anymore. It has attracted the white collar business market. Facebook is in transition and growing strongly. Facebook is poised to become a major B2B marketing site that attracts corporate executives and decision makers.

Facebook is slowly positioning itself to be a place where both personal and business networking can take place at the same time. It is in direct competition with LinkedIn but largely depends on word of mouth to influence business buying decisions.