Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

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....

As the Internet buzzes with social media activity, knowing where to network can be a challenge.

While LinkedIn is still viewed by many as an online resume (huge mistake btw!) – it lives at the top of my list for professional networking.

Not spending any time on LinkedIn? Let me tell you why you should.....

We’ve written before about some of the best practices to make the most of your LinkedIn marketing, but I’ve recently discovered even more vital facts and stats about the social network, particularly about making the most of your LinkedIn Company Page.

For instance, did you know that 80 percent of LinkedIn users say they want to connect with companies? Which is great news, because users are almost 50 percent more likely to buy from a company they engage with on LinkedIn.

I thought I would share all the stats I’ve found with you here in the hopes that we can fine-tune our LinkedIn marketing and improve our LinkedIn Company pages together.

Salespeople are well acquainted with the power of LinkedIn for prospect research, trigger event tracking, and customer engagement. But what about generating new sales leads (read: a lot of them)?

If your pipeline is looking a bit empty, peruse the following SlideShare from LinkedSelling. You'll discover how to whip up a long list of hot sales leads ripe for the contacting. If you're like most salespeople, you're on LinkedIn all day for work anyway. Now learn how to make it work for you. 

P.S. Looking for even more LinkedIn sales tips? If you're not too busy researching and calling your wealth of new prospects, you might want to check out our guide to hidden LinkedIn hacks...

Since LinkedIn is really focusing on becoming a Content Marketing platform (Publisher, Pulse, etc) it makes sense that they are recreating the Company and Showcase page platform to help in the curation and dissemination of targeted content.  Particularly useful to those of use who do Content Marketing.Showcase pages are essentially sub pages of your LinkedIn Company page. (If you don’t yet have a company page, create that first.)

To create a Showcase page simply click the drop down arrow to the right of the “edit” button in your Company page and then click on the link that says “Create a Showcase Page”.

Creating a Showcase PageShowcase pages look a little bit like Twitter and Pinterest and Facebook got together and had a baby.  Fortunately, they are pretty simple to set up...