How Linkedin can win you business
LinkedIn is often ignored as a way for ecommerce businesses to grow sales, but entrepreneurs do so at their peril. Below are a few simple ideas how to use LinkedIn to win business.
While not as “fun” or consumer-led as Facebook or Twitter, professional social network LinkedIn can be a tool for winning business if used correctly.
It’s important to emphasise that LinkedIn isn’t a mass-market consumer channel for your ecommerce marketing, but it is useful for doing business with the industry.
Information
LinkedIn is a great tool for finding out information about others. If you’re looking to expand your product lines, use LinkedIn to find prospective vendors. Using LinkedIn’s “Advanced Search” function allows you to search for specific keywords, which you can use to target suppliers. Just look them up and read about them before that important sales call.
Showcase your company
Create a company page to showcase your products, services and whatever else is relevant to your business. There are more than two million companies signed up to LinkedIn Company Pages, where you can explain what it is your company does. This is also helpful for your SEO, as Google indexes the page.
Thought leadership
You can help to position yourself as an industry leader by being active on LinkedIn – answer questions, contribute to discussions and network with ecommerce peers to demonstrate knowledge. You could also set up a blog on your company page, allowing others to interact with you.
Find new staff
Because LinkedIn is a professional resource, it’s a great place for companies to search for potential staff. By perusing the various relevant ecommerce LinkedIn groups, you can find candidates to join your business. You can also search for people by keyword.
Using InMail, where you can message contacts you don’t know, you can approach them confidentially. (Or, another tip: you can add a personal message when asking to connect with users – cheaper than signing up to a premium account with InMail!)
Keep up with news
The “LinkedIn Today” function aggregates content from across the web categorised by industry – this is a good way for ecommerce entrepreneurs to find out what is happening in relevant ares such as social commerce and social media, for example.
