5 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Land New Business

In last month’s Be Bold blog, we talked about the Brave New Sales World we are living in and the fact that you need to be on-board with social media or risk eventual extinction. (Or a really bad cold sore—the kind that never heals. It festers.) Anyway, Gomez, the point was made to go where your clients are to strengthen relationships and to communicate the way they communicate … and your clients are on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Jetline’s Dana ‘Zoint’ Zezzo (he’s short, but smart) makes the very intriguing point that there is no rule that says Facebook is personal and LinkedIn is for business, but the fact is this is how most people pigeon-hole these sites. And the topic of this month’s column offers up FIVE (count them!) ways to use LinkedIn to land some new accounts and expand existing ones! Yes. I’m a giver.

While early adopters flocked to Google+ and MySpace (when was the last time you went there?!) and now our kids and moms have become Power Users on Facebook, LinkedIn is where business gets done. Execs from all the Fortune 1000 companies are there and 59 percent of professionals active on social networking say that LinkedIn is their platform of choice over Facebook and Twitter. I know, I’m stunned too.

So kids … LinkedIn is a happening place. It is the unsung hero of social platforms (nobody has made an Oscar-winning movie about LinkedIn! Come on, Jesse Eisenberg!) and it CAN be used to obtain new business. Here are five approaches for you to use LinkedIn effectively:

1. Target Searches for key words you’ve identified as central to your business or your sales area of expertise. If you sell to the medical manufacturing industry, search "medical devices" or "medical marketing." Put in an industry or a specific company and add "VP of Marketing" or "Marketing Manager" or "Director Of Marketing" and see what, or WHO, comes up. Search by specific zip codes to focus on a particular area and identify key contacts to call, email or send LinkedIn InMail to. Search former contacts you loved working with that have moved on from client companies. They’ll be on LinkedIn … find them and revive them and land a new account. They already know how incredible you are!