LinkedIn was created in 2003 as a way to do business differently. It was founded as a business-related social network and has kept that reputation as the go-to place for business connections over these nearly 20 years. I believe it’s critical for senior executives, business owners, and sales executives to use LinkedIn to connect with peers, business partners, and yes, even potential customers/clients.

Cold calling prospects almost never yields very good results in this technology age where the buzzword of the day is “relationship marketing.” LinkedIn is THE place to be seen.

But how exactly do you get “seen” in a sea of over 800 million monthly active users? Let’s explore some simple ways:

1. Use keyword phrases wisely on your Profile. Start by thinking about how your target audience would search for you. What are they looking for exactly? How do you want to be known? Use those keyword phrases throughout your Profile where the LinkedIn search bots look, such as the Headline and About section as well as the Experience and Skills sections.

2. Use a professional, friendly-looking headshot. No blurry selfies or brooding, artistic headshots. If you do make it to the top of a search, you’ll want to catch your prospect’s eye very quickly and a professional-looking, happy headshot is the quickest way to do that.

3. Inject creativity into your Headline and About section. Address your top skill or benefit your prospect will receive but add some flare to it. “Business Coach” certainly describes what you do but in a very general way. “Business Coach to the Fastest Growing Multimillion Dollar Companies” adds pizzaz and immediately identifies who you want to work with.

4. Edit the details in your About section. Like it or not, people skim your Profile instead of taking their time reading, so edit the important details into powerful sentences. No need for subtlety here; be straightforward and place the most important details first. It’s ok to brag about yourself and your accomplishments!

5. Be consistent with searching for connections. Business networking is never complete; it’s an ongoing process you should learn to love if you want your business to grow. LinkedIn only displays your connections up to 500 but you can certainly connect with more people than that. You’ll find two different schools of thought when it comes to making connections. One side believes it’s vitally important to increase those numbers quickly because you want to be seen as well-connected. The other side believes the smart way to connect is only with people you have met previously, thus creating a higher quality network of known names. Personally, I believe that quality is much better than quantity. But no matter what, it’s about making the right connections.

6. Be active and consistent. Don’t think of LinkedIn or networking as a one-time task or a “set it and forget it” process. Being active on LinkedIn means: creating content to share, joining relevant groups (yes, those do still exist), and making comments on other people’s content. When you share content, it displays to all your connections, thus informing them of your expertise and inviting them to make comments. Being active means starting a conversation, asking a question, giving advice to others, and sharing content. If you are active and then disappear, it leaves a bad impression, and your connections will start to question your dedication to your business.

Final Thoughts

LinkedIn is the premier source to connect with business owners, executives, peers, and decision makers. Creating an optimized Profile that looks professional is important but don’t just leave your networking to chance. Be active!

We’re very busy. I get it! But don’t panic…once you get the hang of it, you should be able to spend just 15 minutes a day using LinkedIn very productively.

Eight Tips for Building a Great Personal Brand

What is the image you portray to the world? Developing a likeable and professional personal brand is essential for succeeding. If you want to rise to the top of your particular arena, you need to first be able to sell yourself.

Think about it. Would you rather do business with a person who smiles and comes across as friendly or with one who snarls and ignores you? Your first impression is absolutely critical. Make it a good one.

How can you accomplish this?

One: Become an expert source. We talk a lot about being a “thought leader” – and it can sound intimidating. But, it basically means being able to share your knowledge, wisdom, and opinion in a way that others pay attention to.

Two: Become a great communicator. Research shows communications skill is the top determinant for upward social and professional mobility. There is simply no excuse for typos, bad grammar, and so on. If you make a mistake, FIX IT! Online posts can be edited or even deleted.

Three: Create a marketing plan for yourself annually and review it quarterly. Include specific goals, strategies, action steps, and a timetable.

Four: Develop your elevator pitch that talks about you, not your company. Within the time that it takes an elevator to travel one floor – about 60-seconds – be able to deliver a succinct description of what you do, how you do it differently, and the benefit you provide.

Five: Build your Rolodex. For those who don’t know what a Rolodex is, it’s about building your connections! Make new business contacts and stay in touch with them. Most people with powerful brands have powerful and influential friends.

Be VERY strategic with who you connect with on LinkedIn. Quality is definitely better than quantity.

Six: Balance your individual style with clothing that will appeal to those you are trying to impress. Even on a virtual meeting, be conscious of your appearance. From the waist up, be professional! Also, be conscious of what appears behind you. Is it professional…or silly? Just because you can add an image of the beach, it doesn’t mean you should!

Seven: Practice good business and social etiquette. Buy elegant personal stationery and send hand-written notes. No one sends personal notes, so they’ll stand out!

Even if you’re not sending hand-written notes, never, never, NEVER forget to say Thank You! You might think something is insignificant, but the person who you thank will be grateful – and even more likely to help if you ask for something again.

Eight: Give something back. Giving your time, talent, and money to charitable causes is a brand-builder especially when it complements your brand strategy. Find a cause you are passionate about. And it’s OK to talk about it!

Or, give back to individuals. Become a mentor! YOU have so much to share!

Final Thoughts

Your personal brand is one of your greatest business assets. Put as much time and effort into it as you do in branding your product or service. In the end, if you can’t sell yourself, you’ll find it nearly impossible to sell anything else.

It’s all about your connections!

On LinkedIn you have at your fingertips a vast network of business associates with whom you can call on for a variety of professional reasons. You can use your network to share your thoughts, to expand awareness of your business or cause, and even to make money! It’s up to you how you use your network but don’t overlook the power of it.

Networking has been the main way people connected with other professionals for centuries. It’s always been about who you know, more than what you know in the business world. Word-of-mouth advertising and marketing is an essential element in all forms of business whether it’s an individual need to make a connection, or a business need to locate more of your target audience. Networking gets the job done faster.

Use LinkedIn to connect to decision makers and thought leaders, often bypassing gatekeepers entirely by upgrading your account. For a minimal monthly investment, you have the ability to use InMail to contact them directly. When you reach out, provide them with a specific reason as to why they should connect with you. Don’t be generic…be creative and different! It’s likely they receive many requests per day, so you want to stand out. Be sure your request is top notch to get noticed. You never know what can happen until you try.

Here’s one key thing: DO NOT SPAM THEM! Connect and pitch very rarely, if ever, actually accomplishes anything besides annoying the person being pitched to. The key is to provide relevant, helpful, and interesting information. Always keep in mind that we work with people we know, like, and trust. Do everything you can to build that with your connections.

It’s OK to compliment them on a recent accomplishment or to mention posts they’ve made on LinkedIn. You might choose to Follow them for a while to get a feel for what they post. In this day of virtual meetings and presentations, reaching out with a request to connect immediately after an event gives you a good reason for connecting. If they were a presenter or speaker, mention something they said. If they were just another attendee, mention something that you heard during the presentation to build rapport.

Final Thoughts

When you realize the power that LinkedIn gives you over your vast network of connections, you’ll realize that you can and should leverage the power of that network to help you reach your goals.

When it comes to using social media to market your business, choosing the correct platform can make or break your marketing efforts. LinkedIn is one of the premier social media platforms that boasts a very professional atmosphere. While sites like Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram, and Twitter are geared toward the more casual user, LinkedIn was specifically built for professionals in business.

As we know, LinkedIn allows users to build a network of professional contacts through direct introductions or posting helpful information on their own feeds and in groups. While relationship marketing requires effort on your part, you can also encourage others to network with you by putting forth a professional image. As the old saying goes, “You only have one time to make a good first impression,” and that one time often lasts only a few seconds when someone looks at your LinkedIn Profile.

Let’s discuss ways to make that right first impression:

1. Create a professional-looking Profile. Splurge on a professional headshot instead of a blurry selfie. Consider how you dress: do jeans and a t-shirt represent you well or should you dress in a suit or a business casual look? Fill out your LinkedIn Profile completely, using every section. Always use keywords in your profile descriptions; keywords accurately describe your experience but will also grab your profile when someone does a keyword search.

2. Ask for introductions. Instead of just spamming dozens of people a day in hopes of making a connection, ask others in your network to introduce you to decision makers you want to meet who you’ve identified as prospects. Your choice of introductions shouldn’t be random; instead, think of companies who can use your services and then check your network for connections to those companies. Be sure to give the person you are requesting the intro from a very good reason and don’t forget to say “thank you” – even if you don’t end up connecting with the other person.

3. Be a helpful resource. LinkedIn is extremely helpful in connecting people with like interests, but LinkedIn also protects its users from spammers. Randomly connecting – or bulk connecting – may get you labeled a spammer inadvertently. Mix up your interactions and become known as a helpful resource. Ask questions; answer questions; direct others to resources you have discovered. It’s key to share great content!

4. Send thank you notes. Thank you notes are rare these days but it’s a simple act that will make you stand out from the crowd. Even a quick email thank you is better than none at all. Send one to your newest contact, especially if you have plans to meet in person or online, as well as the person who introduced you. A simple thank you will be remembered and may encourage those contacts to help you in the future.

5. Focus on relationship-building instead of selling. In the world of social media, nothing turns people off more than accepting a new connection and then getting a “like my page!” or “here’s my sales pitch” messages. To avoid being that annoying spammer, focus on building a relationship first by sending articles, videos, or case studies without any expectations. Go back to basics and learn how to converse again and interact with these contacts in a group setting. Let them see you as a person first instead of just a salesperson.

Final Thoughts

Done correctly, marketing on LinkedIn will showcase your expertise; done incorrectly, you’ll be seen as someone who’s just looking to make a buck or who doesn’t know the first thing about marketing. Be smart with your marketing efforts and watch your business grow.

LinkedIn is the premier social media platform for professionals in all industries. With over 810 million monthly users, you have a large base to develop new connections and build relationships with potential clients and business associates/partners.

However, there are several LinkedIn “sins” which can haunt you and affect your credibility and reputation. Here are just a few things to avoid doing on LinkedIn:

1. Judge others for their choices. No matter what their choice – whether a prospect chose a different business partner or chose a branding color palette that you don’t like – posting your negative comments on LinkedIn serves no purpose. If your prospect chooses not to work with you, ask them privately what influenced their decision. Feedback is useful, public shaming is not.

2. Start political arguments. Unless you’re an aspiring political strategist, politics don’t have any place on LinkedIn. You are most certainly entitled to your political opinions but save those debates for Facebook or Twitter. LinkedIn has the most professional atmosphere of any other platform and with today’s political climate, you will only scare people away if you start political arguments.

3. Add my network’s email addresses to my list. Just because you have access to your connections’ email addresses via their LinkedIn profiles does NOT mean they give permission to add them to your email list. The same is true of anyone you meet who gives you their business card. Not only will these people mark your messages as spam, but this also goes against the CAN-SPAM Act, which requires permission to add people to your list. Add them to your inbox as a personal contact, NOT to your autoresponder or CRM.

4. Post personal photos or reminisce about college partying. Save these fun stories for less professional sites. LinkedIn serves a professional purpose, and those types of photos will give pause to anyone looking to connect. We’ve all heard the stories of someone who lost opportunities because of what they posted online. If it has the potential to harm your reputation or credibility, keep it offline.

5. Use others strictly for introductions or job opportunities.  No one likes being used. Put yourself in that same situation, where your connections didn’t really care about you, they only care about who you know. Instead of hitting up new connections immediately for introductions, build a relationship first, then ask.

Final Thoughts

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you should NOT do on LinkedIn. Across all the social media platforms you’ve probably seen plenty of tacky things that made your eyes roll. Use your common sense and think before you post on LinkedIn. How will your posts be perceived? These tips are not meant to discourage you from being your authentic self; they are instead meant to act as guidelines to maintaining your professional credibility so your ideal clients will find you and trust you.

Your personal brand is everything about you. It’s your professional reputation, online image, offline image, your work style, and how you engage with everyone. To develop a personal brand, consider what you want someone to think of when they hear your name. What knowledge, skills, and talents do you want people to think about?

Right now, how do you think people would describe you? Does it match with what you want people to see you as? Using LinkedIn strategically will help develop your personal brand, increasing the chances that others view you how you want to be viewed.

Once you’ve decided how you’d like to be known, then you need to develop a plan to let it be known to the world. It is in the information you share and create, the comments you make on other’s posts, and most importantly, in your Profile. Regardless of what your personal brand is (or you want it to be), it’s important to use LinkedIn in the right way.

Be Yourself

The very best way to develop a personal brand is to be yourself. Authenticity is key! Include on your Profile the things you want to be known for. It’s ok to include some personal information, including your volunteer activities. After all, we work with those we know, like, and trust, and sharing appropriate personal information helps us to bond with people.

Focus on the Headline

On LinkedIn, your Headline is critical for how you want to be seen. Use it well because some people may never go past the headline when conducting a search for people with your knowledge and expertise.

Think of it like a newspaper headline. Use keywords and keyword phrases rather than sentences. You can separate items with characters like a pipe “|”, bullet “•”, or star “?” symbol. It looks better and differentiates each word or phrase. Don’t be shy on the headline! Catch the reader’s attention!

Brand Your LinkedIn URL

On LinkedIn, you can choose a unique URL to point to your profile. Most people use their name, which is a great way for people to find you if they are searching for your name. But, if someone is searching for a Paleo Nutrition Expert, will they find you? Consider using a keyword in the URL, but only if you are sure that you’re always going to be doing this. Otherwise, choose your name if available. If your name is fairly common, you may need to be creative by adding a middle initial or name.

Contribute Your Knowledge Regularly

Post often! But don’t panic – once or twice a week is adequate, but daily is ok, too. It’s also important to like, share and comment on items that your connections have shared on their status updates. If you have created a white paper, eBook, or blog post about your niche, share it on LinkedIn. Share other people’s work (with your added commentary) within your niche as well. By curating other people’s work, if up to your standards, you will get a reputation as the go-to person who can find the information people want about that topic.

Final Thoughts

Establishing a personal brand takes time, consistency, and true knowledge of your audience. But, LinkedIn is a fast way to be noticed if you use it regularly and use it strategically.

If you’re the CEO of your business (whether it’s a company of one or a company of thousands), you encounter numerous relationships on a daily basis: with your business network; with your business vendors or partners; with your employees; with your customers; with your prospective customers; and with your local community. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to run any kind of profitable business without forming a variety of relationships.

1. Always Be Authentic

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Fake it till you make it”. Some believe that you need to copy a certain style or mindset before you reach a certain level of success, but can you do that and still show your authentic self?

People want to connect with you and do so many times via social media. They want to know what your life is like. They want and need to relate to you on a personal level so that you become more real to them. If you are authentic with your image and what you post online, they in turn will give you their trust and, likely their money.

If you fake it too much or are caught in a lie on social media, your image can come crashing down. Instead of being a trusted professional, you’ll have a reputation as being a fake or not walking the walk. If you want to be trustworthy, earn that trust by building your relationships based on integrity and honesty.

2. Listen Carefully

When building professional relationships, remember that you are not the center of the universe. Even though you ultimately want people to purchase from you, new prospects will be leery of you until they get to know you.

Show an interest in THEIR business or THEIR life. Once you ask one question, people naturally want to keep talking, especially if they are passionate about their industry and mission. Listen to them speak, tuck away interesting nuggets for a later time, and remember to send a follow up email the next business day, simply commenting how nice it was to meet them. At the next event, make a point of acknowledging them and start a new conversation.

Listen to what your audience wants and needs. What are they struggling with right now and how can you help them? Listening is a very important skill when it comes to business relationships as well as creating loyal customers.

3. Share, Share, Share

Be careful…this does NOT mean to share too much information of a personal sort. This simply means keep sharing your knowledge, resources, free articles, and ebook chapters; anything that will be of value to your audience. This can include content from OTHER experts. By sharing information, you are building yourself up as an authority in that area of expertise and also showing what a kind and generous person you are. This evokes good emotions of happiness and kindness which, hopefully, meld with your online image and will endear you to many more prospects.

It’s All About the Relationships

We all know that being successful in business is all about “know, like and trust.”

What tips do you have for creating successful business relationships? Share them below!

With all the different social media platforms available today, it’s easy to focus your marketing time there because it’s generally less time consuming to engage from your computer than it is to attend real-life functions and actually talk to people face-to-face. However, if you depend solely on social media for your marketing, you’re missing a vast opportunity to market your business to locals right in your own backyard.

Your marketing goal should always be to build relationships with people you can help with your products or services. Even though you may be tempted, never push the hard sell on people you’ve just met. They don’t know you, so they likely won’t spend their hard-earned cash on your product. However, by interacting with them “in the real world,” in addition to engaging them on social media, you develop a foundation upon which to build a stronger relationship, which may ultimately lead to them buying from you.

How to Get Started Networking Offline

The idea of walking into a room without knowing a single soul can no doubt be daunting. But the alternative of not sharing your story and your mission to those who may be seeking this exact answer to their problems is equally troubling. No matter how you want to start networking in real life, put on your brave face and tackle your fears head on.

1. Join a Relevant Business Networking Group (or more!)

Usually, there are dozens of business networking groups and chambers of commerce organizations in every community, so you can pick and choose which group (or groups) is best for you. Yes, you want to reap a reward for being a part of the group, but your acceptance into any business group will depend on what you can contribute. After all, it’s all about building relationships. Some groups are more formal and have standard meeting rules, while others may be much more casual and usually smaller in scale. See if you can visit a meeting or two before submitting an application and never be afraid to ask questions about the organization – especially from other members.

2. Hold Live Workshops

What better way to showcase your authority and expertise than to speak to your local community! Turn an online webinar into a live presentation or create a presentation customized to your community’s needs. Contact your local library, business association or community college with your ideas and very often if the presentation is unique and relevant to the community, you will get a booking.

Even if live events are not your forte, choose a topic you are passionate about and that you could speak about for hours. Your passion will carry through and you’ll be less likely to be nervous or get tongue-tied. Make sure to collect business cards or to have attendees sign in so you can connect with them on social media – especially LinkedIn – and continue the relationship building.

3. Volunteer in Your Community

Look for groups or charities that are relevant to your experience, but don’t go in thinking you need to change everything. Building relationships should be a positive experience, so offer your guidance and input when asked. Otherwise, enjoy conversing with other volunteers, board members, and administrative personnel, all of whom hold the possibility of referring you to their family, friends, or other networking contacts.

Volunteering is also a great way to learn new skills – especially for those who are considering a new career or are getting back into the job market after an absence.

What Suggestions Do You Have?

There are so many opportunities to build networks and these are just a few. What organizations and methods have you found beneficial?

Business owners everywhere implement marketing tactics every day to tell the world about their products or services. Without marketing, no one would know you have a business, let alone want to make a purchase from you.

Why? Because people purchase from those who they know, like, and trust. They want to know that you’re a real person with real feelings instead of someone who only cares about the almighty dollar. They want to know you’re not a scam artist who will steal their last dollar without providing a product. They want to hear recommendations from others who have purchased before them to be sure your service delivered what it promised.

Here’s the key: People with purchase power want a relationship with you before they buy.

Relationship-based marketing gives you:

Visibility

In order to have a relationship with a single person or large audience, you need to interact with them.  Get to know THEIR likes and dislikes, know what problems they are experiencing, and think about how you can help them solve their problem. In order to learn this information, you’ll be forced to be consistent with your interaction, whether on social media or in real life, naturally giving you more visibility.

Authority

Do you share your knowledge with your audience, or do you save that only for paying customers? Sharing your knowledge, practical experience, and even case studies for free will position you as a knowledgeable authority figure and an expert in their field who cares about helping others. Platforms such as social media, podcasts, YouTube videos, or writing an ebook or short reports are all ways to both increase your authority rank and your visibility.

A Stellar Reputation

Can you see how Visibility and Authority build on each other and lead to a Stellar Reputation? As you interact with people and become an authority figure, your audience will naturally form an opinion about you. If you over-deliver with your products or your signature programs, your reputation will continue to shine. Overall, a stellar reputation will shorten the length of time it takes you to earn the trust of your audience or new followers.

Happy and Enthusiastic Fans

You’ll know you’ve made it when fans are clamoring for your latest product and telling all their friends how wonderful you are! This is the ultimate result of relationship marketing and worth all the time and effort it takes to reach this destination.

One key to remember is to never stop the process of building relationships. Like gears in a clock, you must find a way to consistently interact, show your authority, improve your reputation and take care of your happy fans. Keep these gears working to consistently grow your business for years to come.

Relationship marketing should be a win-win situation for both parties involved. You should gain visibility, authority, and happy fans, and your audience should be thrilled with the value that you deliver to them.

When it comes to relationship marketing and building solid business relationships with your audience, a certain amount of interaction is vitally important. But is there such a thing as too little or too much interaction?

Let’s compare three different scenarios and audiences.

Almost everyone has a long lost cousin, friend, or acquaintance who you only hear from once a year in the form of a holiday card. Sure, it’s nice that they reached out, but communicating just once a year doesn’t give you a chance to stay up to date with them.

Then you have your college roommate who lives out of state, but you only hear from them when there’s drama in their life or they need to vent about something. These are the people who are in touch more frequently than your cousin, but only when they need something – not because they have any interest in what is happening in your life.

And lastly, you have the father who dropped off his 18-year-old daughter at college for the first time and who texts or calls every day, just to check on how things are going. Did she get to class on time? How’s the food at the dining hall? Do you like your roommates? What do you mean your books cost $800? Do you want us to come visit for Parents’ Weekend? And on and on.

Each of these real-life scenarios can translate to a business situation.

Businesses that only use their email list to communicate with their connections just a handful of times a year won’t create name recognition. They run a high risk that their emails will be ignored, deleted or marked as spam.

Businesses that only use their social media accounts and emails to promote their products and sales are only interested in making money from their connections. They don’t care about what their followers may really need at that moment.

Businesses or individuals who send emails every single day run the risk of annoying their audience and causing people to unsubscribe. An exception is a trusted expert in an industry providing information or daily tips.

The bottom line is this: you must know your audience to know how often you should interact with them to build a solid relationship. There are always exceptions, and even within the same industries different businesses will experience different responses to their communications tactics. Research your market, understand their pain points, and create a solution for them.

Don’t communicate so infrequently that they don’t remember who you are and don’t communicate so often that you’re a nuisance!

Have you found that “sweet spot” in your communications? How often do you post on social media and send emails? Comment below!