Why Small Businesses Are Getting LinkedIn Wrong [Wall Street Journal]

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Why Small Businesses Are Getting LinkedIn Wrong
Wall Street Journal
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• Here are tips on how small businesses can use
  LinkedIn.
• Dont use it for marketing. Smaller companies
  need to be strategic about where they invest
  their content-marketing budgets..By all means,
  cross-post the occasional article or update to
  LinkedIn, but focus on it as a source of
  connections and expertisenot as a way of
  building an audience or brand awareness.

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• Tap your network for trips. While large companies
  may have sales teams in multiple cities, small
  firms must squeeze the most out of every business
  trip. Once salespeople book the meetings and
  events that constitute the primary purpose of a
  trip, they should use LinkedIn to fill the
  calendar with more meetings.

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• Dont help competitors. Its great to have
  collegial relationships with other people in your
  field. But when connecting on LinkedIn, it pays
  to be a little cutthroat. In a small town or
  industry, some exposure is inevitable, but
  theres no reason to make competitors work
  easier for them by accepting their connection
  requests.

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• Keep critical activity private. .So if
  small-business people dont want somebody to know
  theyre looking at their profile, they should
  open a private browsing window. Conversely,
  small-business people should be sure to look
  periodically at who has viewed their profile,
  because it may provide useful insights into their
  own business.

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• Dont focus on lead generation. Instead, a small
  firm should polish and update its page only often
  enough to attest to its credentials,
  professionalism and experience.

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• Sell the business, not yourself. Small-business
  executives should include a descriptive summary
  of their business, leveraging the brand of top
  clients, like CFO of Acme Accounting, financial
  advisers to The Gap and Target. Likewise, for
  founders, executives or principals in a small
  business, a profile needs to tell a story thats
  bigger than their own career It needs to tell
  the story of the business or brand.

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• An exec can weave the two narratives together by
  showing the value the company brings to customers
  and noting the contributions the exec has made to
  that effort.

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• Get focused when hiring. If a small firm knows a
  couple of people who represent its dream hire,
  the firm should use their LinkedIn profiles to
  reverse-engineer a dream applicant What are the
  roles and experiences those dream candidates had
  before they landed in their current positions?
  The firm can then search for people who hold
  similar positions, and assemble a candidate pool.

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• Ask for help. Bidding on a government contract
  for the first time? Instead of hiring a
  consultant, ask the LinkedIn network for its
  collective wisdom. Need a new supply-chain
  management tool? Skip the costs of commissioning
  an assessment, and ask LinkedIn pals what they
  are using.

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• Joining LinkedIn groups can help small-business
  people broaden the range of expertise they can
  access. But this approach only works for people
  who are generous helpers in turn Users should
  make sure they check into each of their key
  groups at least monthly, and try to offer help on
  questions where they have insight.

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