Recently, someone asked me how they get conversions from social media. For some businesses, you can create a conversion point in social media. For other businesses, it’s just the start of the conversion process so we don’t see the sales conversions happening on the social networking platform.
So, why use LinkedIn? Here are some reasons why businesses use LinkedIn:
- Visibility or Awareness
Increase your visibility by connecting with more people. The more people you connect with, the more connections will have access to your LinkedIn profile and be able to seek you out. It’s who your network knows which is very important and being on LinkedIn is like having everyone’s extended Roledex connected to you indirectly when you’re trying to search for people. If others are trying to locate services like your own, it’ll be easier for them to find you when you’re connected to their network. Spend time connecting with your network online. - Brand Awareness or Become an Expert
Beyond just a profile, its important to develop a brand to differentiate yourself from others in your industry. Use blogs & micro-blogs to create a conversation about your expertise, service, processes and what your business solves for other people. You’ll be remembered for your expertise and generating that awareness amongst people. And, the great thing about your LinkedIn profile, blogs and other online sites is that your communications will stay there for people to read even after days, weeks or months have passed. - Become an Expert
Start by joining groups. Get to know some of the people within the group. Then, begin to answer questions. You’ll be rewarded for the best answers and soon, you’ll become recognized as an expert in your field. Ask questions and you may find your next prospect trying to answer it. Finally, the most advanced form of participation is starting your own group. It does take more hours of management to take on this task. - Build Credibility
Testimonials help others understand what we do well for other people. It’s called Recommendations within LinkedIn. Once you’ve completed something that people have enjoyed, request a Recommendation. An automated, pre-created message is already there or you can customize it a bit so people might get more of a hint as to what to write up as a recommendation for you. - Page Rankings
LinkedIn profiles rank quite well in Google. So, you want to develop a good profile and also list your websites. So, create a public profile of your account with FULL VIEW and also give it a URL with your actual name or your business name potentially. That way, if people want to research your name or your business name, your profile will more readily appear in a Google search. Cross promote your full profile on your websites and vice-versa. The website feeds your profile and your profile will feed your websites. Using page rankings to feed each are vital components of getting found on the internet and the initial steps of the Online Marketing Funnel. - Improve Search Engine Rankings, Increase New Website Traffic
The great thing about your account is that you can connect it to your website and certain platforms such as WordPress have an application within LinkedIn so you can feed your blog postings to your profile and get traffic back to your website as well. So, this is the starting point for achieving higher search engine rankings, there’s still a lot more to the activities in order to achieve the optimal traffic volumes and search rankings to improve potential prospective traffic. - Run an Event
Now, for some people, this a great way to convert on the network that you’ve spent time building up. However, even if this isn’t true, this is not the only conversion point in an Online Marketing Funnel. In fact, for most people, this is also just another step towards qualifying your potential prospects.
Social networking like other forms of business networking or in some cases, cold calling, is a great way to start a marketing funnel but like all sales or marketing funnels, it needs more care and attention in order to further qualify your contacts or social network of people. If you want, conversion is a little beyond what I discuss here at this site. But, feel free to visit the Yenius Interactive Marketing website to find out other steps in building up a systematic Online Marketing Funnel which will feed you and your organization with business leads.
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