Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

If you haven't yet considered LinkedIn as a lead generation and sales development tool, these 12 tips will quickly change your mind!

LinkedIn isn’t just a powerful professional networking tool—when used correctly, it can help you exponentially increase your ability to generate business leads. After all, with more than 175 million users (over 50 percent of which are business owners, managers, senior management and C-level executives), LinkedIn delivers a ready-made professional audience that you can tap into to further your business development.

A quick note? Before we dive in to how you can generate leads from LinkedIn, keep in mind that, as with other social networking platforms, one of the keys to LinkedIn success is to use the site often. I’ll talk about this more later, especially when it comes to your profile, but you’ll want to get yourself in the mindset to check in on and engage with LinkedIn on a daily basis, if not more often. Sure, it may be tough to find the time, but in my experience, diligent use of the site can pay off in a big way, an incentive that likely makes up for the investment of your time and resources.

Without further ado, let’s dive in to the 12 most effective ways to generate leads on LinkedIn....

There are many advocates of using a mutual LinkedIn connection as the basis of reaching out to a prospect, but I think the process in practice is flawed. There are far more direct ways to get into a conversation with a prospect with far better results.

To recap what the LinkedIn connection outreach process typically looks like:

-  Build a list of prospects you want to talk to.

-  Mine their profiles for mutual connections.

-  Email the mutual connection and ask them if you could use their name in a message to your prospect, or even ask them to make the recommendation themselves.

-  Send an email to the prospect saying you have a shared contact that trusts you, and therefore the two of you should talk.

I have tested this extensively. I’ve had some successes and quite a few failures too. After reflecting a bit, there are three main reasons I’d suggest this is no longer an effective strategy....

Once considered a nerdy repository for digital résumés, the service is becoming an indispensable social-networking tool....

In the past year LinkedIn has emerged as one of the most powerful business tools on the planet. Long considered a repository for digital résumés, the network now reports 225 million members who have set up profiles and uploaded their education and job histories. These days they're doing far more than prospecting for new gigs.

LinkedIn users are building professional portfolios that showcase their best work, from publications to videos to PowerPoint presentations. They are relying on a growing array of LinkedIn apps, like CardMunch, which lets users scan business cards to upload contact information. They're recommending one another for particular business attributes. And increasingly they're logging on to read LinkedIn Today, which aggregates news from myriad sources, including LinkedIn Influencers like Krawcheck, Jack Welch, and Martha Stewart.

Thanks to new features like those, the number of users who log on at least once a month on desktops alone (excluding mobile, that is) has climbed to 141 million worldwide, according to ComScore, a 37% jump over last year. Among recruiters, LinkedIn has become the standard -- 88 of the Fortune 100 have licensed the software to help find and track potential job candidates. But as new social technologies force businesses to shift from broadcast communications to two-way dialogues, LinkedIn's utility is moving beyond HR departments....

LinkedIn case study: How James Filbird uses LinkedIn as his main social media resource to build a successful international business from China.

He built out his profile to 100%, joined the maximum allowable 50 groups and spent up to two hours daily on the site engaging in group discussions and looking for people to connect with.

Since then, he has used his strategy on the site to grow JMF International to between $3.5 million and $5 million in annual revenue. “There are a lot of really good people on LinkedIn,” Filbird said. “They’re professional, courteous, friendly, fun, a wealth of information and they’re super-smart. That’s why I’ve been able to get most of my business from LinkedIn.”

Here are Filbird’s seven steps to cultivating successful business relationships using LinkedIn, whether you live in China, Chicago or Chesterfield....

[Smart marketing case study - JD]