22 August 2012

How You Can Expand Your Business Through LinkedIn

By Benton Salloum


There are all sorts of ways to increase the amount of success that you find on the Internet. You can use online resources to create a new business or to breathe new life into an existing one. It makes sense to use social media to connect with your prospects, as this is an easy and low cost resource anyone can utilize. You already know how much Facebook matters to your business and have probably already set up a profile there. LinkedIn is a fast growing social network you should also be involved with. You'll have greater success with LinkedIn if you use it in an efficient and professional manner. Let's look at some effective ways to do this.

One of the nicer things about LinkedIn is that you don't have to be on the system all of the time. This makes it quite unlike Facebook and Twitter because you aren't going to always need to be figuring out the best way to update your profile on the system. Sure, there are lots of participation opportunities in their groups and in their forums. Still, if you spend too much time there, it will raise flags because the other users are going to wonder why you don't have anything better to be doing with your time. When you want to work with LinkedIn, however, the best thing you can do to help people take you more seriously, don't spend more than an hour a day on the system. You should consider spending even less time there, just to make it look like you're busy doing other things. Just like a resume, LinkedIn has a profile function. Unlike typical resumes, you can be as lengthy as you want to be in describing what your capabilities are. When you print out a resume, you usually only one about one page of material. Expounding on yourself quite a bit is what you will want to do with your LinkedIn profile when you make one. So put your copywriting skills to work. If you have been selling online for any time, like an art form, you have to be skilled at moving your merchandise. You can make money selling yourself through the profiles that you create. Always hire a copywriter if you are not good at writing things like this.

More importantly, help others learn the things that you know. This will help you prove that you are community minded and that you aren't just out to help yourself get head. This helps you seem more likeable and, in turn, a lot more easy to hire or to spend money on. If you want your business to be more successful, proving that you are an expert in something isn't necessarily a bad thing.

One of the things that people both love and hate about LinkedIn is that the system actually works against your being able to make contact with the people you don't know already.

One of the things that people both love and hate about LinkedIn is that the system actually works against your being able to make contact with the people you don't know already.

What makes LinkedIn different from somewhere like Facebook where you can contact or befriend anybody you want, is that you need to share contacts before this is possible. It also isn't possible to send messages to people who do not yet belong to the members of your LinkedIn network. You can, though, find ways to get around the system that is in place. You can just send connection requests to all of the people you know as well as all of the people that they know. In order to build a network that is genuinely usable, though, only connect with people you actually know. You can use the LinkedIn system in many ways define success for your business in many ways. Using this system, you can generate leads and business for both your online store, or an off-line one - either way, you can find success. Using this system is just the tip of the iceberg, the proverbial beginning of what you will be able to do. You'll find out so much more, and be able to do accomplish so much, you start working with the system online. Just keep working at it everyday.




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