How You Can Use LinkedIn To Generate Leads For Your Small Business

LinkedIn is a social media website specifically designed with the intention of connecting career and business professionals. LinkedIn’s primary focus is on building strategic relationships.

So it’s not surprising that LinkedIn is a valuable resource for small business owners, freelancers, and others. It allows them to network, gather resources and build relationships with potential clients and partners.

How LinkedIn Can Help Your Small Business

A LinkedIn profile gives you the opportunity to connect with other people in your field. These connections can be very useful in terms of digital marketing. By connecting with like-minded individuals you have the ability to expand your business prospects through collaborations and shared industry knowledge. Most importantly it helps to expand your online presence and allows you to reach more customers or clients.

Advantages Of Having A Profile On LinkedIn

• A LinkedIn profile is like having a digital business card. It allows you to showcase your career, social media prowess, skills and talents to potential clients, customers and partners.
• You are able to source endorsements and recommendations and testimonials of your character and professional ability from your peers and colleagues.
• It offers you the chance to request introductions to potential clients, customers and colleagues.
• With LinkedIn you are able to search for jobs that are often exclusively advertised on the networking site.  It also gives small business owners or freelancers the opportunity to be recruited for jobs.
• LinkedIn is an awesome platform to share your knowledge and expertise, while building the trust and credibility needed to acquire new clients and customers.

How To Generate Leads On LinkedIn

Using LinkedIn to generate leads can be a pretty simple process. All you have to do is put in the time to create a polished social profile for your brand. Let’s breakdown a few simple ways to do just that.

• Let people know what you’re about.

First impressions count when meeting someone for the first time. The same principle applies online. To make a good impression on LinkedIn make sure your profile is well crafted and includes a complete summary of your work, strengths, skills and abilities.

• Make connections

LinkedIn is all about connections because it is a social networking site after all. Take a few minutes out of each day to scan the “People You May Know” list that LinkedIn posts on your feed. By connecting to a broader scope of people you will expand your network. This helps to find high quality business leads going forward.

• Ask for introductions

If you want to connect with someone you don’t know personally, don’t be afraid to reach out to your existing connections for an introduction. LinkedIn has that feature built in specifically for that purpose. This is one of the best ways to expand your lead list.

• Post Updates

Every time you share an update your post (and subsequently your profile) gets displayed on the news feed of all your connections. Use these posts to add value to your LinkedIn community by sharing articles that are relevant to your brand. You can also share insights, helpful information and industry knowledge that your connections will find useful and interesting.

• Get Recommendations

Recommendations are great way to develop your credulity on LinkedIn. Reach out to former clients, happy customers and colleges to write you a recommendation that you can showcase to potential clients and customers. It’s a great way to attract new business.

• Join Groups

Joining a LinkedIn group gives you yet another opportunity to reach out to more people. You can build your credibility in these groups by sharing relevant content about your business and answering questions in areas of your expertise.

Conclusion

Unlike other forms of social media the key to success on LinkedIn is quality over quantity with the primary goal of building relationships.

When done correctly, many of those relationships will allow you to generate more leads, prospects and referrals for your small business.