Anyone who is in business knows that it isn’t always easy to convert social media fans and followers into actual clients. Sometimes, it is a lot less difficult to acquire fans and followers than to turn them into clients.

The degree of difficulty

It seems as though the degree of difficulty is not the same with every industry or niche. Depending on which products and/or services you are selling will determine how difficult it is to convert your people into paying customers. If you are offering a product or service that people feel they need (it is a necessity, not a luxury), you will have an easier time of converting them and of selling more. If, on the other hand, your offerings are deemed less of a necessity by the people doing the buying, you will have a more difficult time of selling. In each case, you should develop (or have developed for you) a strong and effective web presence. You need to give your fans and followers a chance to get to know them and for them to get to know you. Only after you have successfully built a relationship together with a solid foundation will you be successful at turning them into clients.

There are many people who have developed relationships and have gained customers solely through their online connections. It is critical that you share valuable content,  have meaningful online connections, are sincere in your efforts to help other people. Once they see that your goal is to help them and not to help yourself, the relationship will flourish because they will begin to trust you and to have confidence in  your credibility. People (in general) love to be offered content that allows them to learn new information on a regular basis. The more value that you are able to give other people, the more they will appreciate who you are and what you have to offer. As some point in the relationship, your fans and followers will pursue a conversation with you that involves buying something from you.

Compel them to return to you over and over again

If you can get people to keep coming back to you, they will eventually become loyal customers. Loyal fans and followers = loyal customers. You should bear in mind that it will most likely take people more than one or two interactions before they decide to buy something from you. It will probably take them seven, eight, or even more interactions. You need to be patient and allow them to do it in their own time. The most effective way to make them feel comfortable is to continue to draw them into your discussions and make them feel that they are an important part of the conversation. You need to make them feel that their opinions matter to you. It has been proven,over and over again, that many positive things come out of social networking and online social interactions. It is very important that you use the right tools effectively. If you do, you will experience a great deal of success for your business.

Persistence and consistency

One of the two most important ingredients when it comes to converting fans and followers into clients are persistence and consistency. You need to interact often, make sure that you post content a consistent number of times (and on specific days), and continue to communicate with other people as often as they communicate with you. It is extremely important to make sure that your fans and followers understand how much value you hold and how important your contributions are to them professionally. Once you have established relationships with people with whom your connection started online, there will be a time when you should get to know them face to face. Both types of interactions are extremely important and both are necessary for a successful relationship overall.

The quality of your content

I am sure that you have heard the expression “Content Is King.” That is absolutely correct. Without your content, you have nothing. Because of the fact that the success of social media is based on successful relationships, your content must really be of the highest quality possible. You are relating to people through your content and what you write will make them decide whether they want to continue to build a relationship with you. It has to be as perfect as possible.

Conclusion

Turning fans and followers into loyal clients seems like a daunting task as a whole. However, when you approach it methodically and deal with one step at a time, you can succeed at building relationships with people, getting them to trust you and to believe in your credibility and trustworthiness, and to truly want to do business with you and to be loyal clients for many years to come. If you put the right list of ingredients together in order to become truly successful, you will see that your efforts will pay off and will keep paying off. Make sure that whatever you offer to other people, they are benefitting in some way. You want to try to make sure that when they need what you are offering, you are the first one to come to mind.

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LinkedIn now has more than 100 million professionals worldwide, potential clients for small businesses. If you have a LinkedIn profile, follow these steps to take advantage of recent changes to LinkedIn and create your Company Page today.

Add your company page. In LinkedIn, choose Com­panies on the navigation bar. On the right are links to Add a Company and FAQ. Click on FAQ for com­prehensive information, and go to Company Page Overview for the requirements to add a Company Page. There are only four, but one is that you must have a company email address (e.g. john@companyname.com). Once you meet all the requirements, select Add a Company, fill in the contact information and verify that you are an official representative.

Add basic information. Add com­pany description, industry, website URL, Twitter ID, location, and more. Once your page is established you can click on Admin tools in the upper right, select Edit, make your changes and Publish. Your profile must be associated with the correct company in or­der to edit the page. You can also assign administra­tor rights to employees for later updates.

Add your key services. Select Services. Under Ad­min tools on the right, select Edit. Add a more de­tailed description of your services with banners and URLs to highlight current promotions. Target audi­ences with multiple variations of your service page. Add products or services by choosing Add a prod­uct or service under Admin tools, and provide information and pho­tos. You can assign specific em­ployee contacts for each service, add a promotion with a link to a specific URL, and even add a You­Tube video.

Ask clients and associates to rec­ommend and follow you. Once you have taken those first few steps to get your page in order, don’t forget to solicit recommendations for your work, which can be done directly within the services you have promoted. Also, don’t forget to ask associates and clients to follow you.

Full steam ahead with promo­tions. You can create paid ads for your company or for specific ser­vices and promotions. Just look for promote my products & services or promote my product under Ad­min tools on your Service page or product or service page. Ad varia­tions can test which image and text performs best. Be brief, creative, and honest. You can target your ads to specific audiences, one of many campaign options available to maximize your ad. There are help links to answer questions and guide you through the process.

NEW on LinkedIn: Status Pages. The most exciting new rollout is status pages for companies. Now, you can create status updates that showcase your company and help to drive your connections and their contacts to your company page! Once you create a status update for your company you and your em­ployees can share it with personal connections. You can also send the update to individuals or post to your groups (if they allow such promotions). There’s a comment space and like link to engage your followers and others too, so make the most of each status update!

Conclusion

LinkedIn is an amazing tool for business and LinkedIn company pages enables you, as the business owner, to strengthen your relationships with other people. LinkedIn is constantly coming up with improvements (tools, applications, etc) that make your LinkedIn experience even more profitable and beneficial.

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At this point in the social media world, it is clear that LinkedIn is a heavy hitter when it comes to effective communications. People feel that LinkedIn is a very powerful channel for business; however, not everyone uses it effectively.

LinkedIn as a business card exchange

There are many people who subscribe to the school of thought that says that quantity rules. The more people who want to connect with you on LinkedIn, the better. Those people feel that everyone is worth the connection. This philosophy also believes that if you have so many LinkedIn connections, you are bound to eventually do business with some of those people.  One thing that is for sure is that no matter what, you should have a presence on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn selectivity

People who believe in this philosophy are more discriminating about who they choose to accept into their LinkedIn community. People who think in this way feel that there may be negative consequences if you choose anyone and everyone to be connected with you on LinkedIn. One of the biggest issues is regarding time. Everyone is so busy managing their businesses and their lives. The last thing that they want to do is waste time interacting with people in a fruitless relationship.

Let’s take a closer look at both schools of thought so that you can make an informed decision about how you want to approach your LinkedIn connections.

The issues in the eyes of people who choose quality over quantity

The following are potential issues from the perspective of people who don’t accept LinkedIn connections solely on the basis of numbers.

• The fear that low-quality connections may say or do something to damage their reputation or relationship with other high-quality connections. From their perspective, their connections on LinkedIn should never be chosen randomly. They feel that it is just too risky.
   
• They are protective of the people whom they have chosen to connect with. They feel the need to shelter them from people who may be questionable.
   
• These people covet confidence. They feel that it is wrong to reveal information that has been given to them in confidence. This puts them in an uncomfortable position. The last thing that they wish to do is to endanger any of the relationships that are important to them.
   
• Smaller, high-quality relationships are more meaningful than a large number of relationships. In addition to that aspect of it, it is also much easier to manage and maintain relationships with a smaller number of people than a larger one.
   
• Connections should not be made until after an actual relationship has been firmly established. True relationships require trust and honesty. From the perspective of people who choose quality over quantity, they are very careful before they say yes.

The issues in the eyes of people who choose quantity over quality

• Those people are not overly concerned with protecting other people. They can certainly take care of themselves. They are secure enough with their own reputation to feel that nothing (and nobody) can affect it. If anything happens, they feel that their network of connections will shelter them.
   
• Imposters are not an issue for them. Proper etiquette is being used at all times and thus, expect the same behavior from everyone else. If anything questionable or unethical happens, they will simply not connect with that person after that.
   
• Sharing information is a positive thing. It is understood that there is some control over the information. You only allow people to see your information if you choose to do so.
   
• With regard to connecting to people, they don’t feel that this is in any way a bad thing. They feel that if you connect with someone, you will start to establish a relationship and, after all, that is exactly what social media is all about. Connecting with people is the only way that you will be able to eventually do business with them.
   
• When it comes to the size of their networking community, they don’t feel the need to choose between large and small. They have a smaller, intimate group of people with whom they connect regularly. Having the larger group surrounding the smaller group allows them the option of drawing from a substantial pool.

Conclusion

The two schools of thought are very different but neither one is better than the other one. There are advantages to both and negative points to both. You need to look at them and determine which one works best for you and your business. Whichever one you choose, LinkedIn is an amazing social media tool for business and is well worth your investment of time and effort. You should consider LinkedIn your most important professional media channel. People who have a presence there are serious about making high-quality connections that will help them to succeed in business. So, jump in and start connecting.

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Plan to include more time to network with fellow professionals and potential clients this year. The more you network, the more connections you will have and the stronger those connections will be for your business.

Business may be “busier” than ever, but don’t allow yourself to be trapped indefinitely in your office. Get out from behind your desk and talk to managers, employees, fellow professionals, existing clients, and new clients. Resolve to expand your business and social circles in the upcoming year by including regular networking time in your schedule.

Join a group or two

Visit a few local networking and industry groups, mingle with the members, and choose a group that best suits you and best meets your needs. Some groups meet on a weekly or monthly basis while others may have fewer meetings in a year. Some are more lead-oriented and may place a limit on the amount of members who can represent one field. Groups such as this can offer the opportunity to be the only business provider in your industry, but you should also be prepared to spend time generating leads for others in your group. Some are regional and may include a variety of fields, but place no limits on the number of members. You may have some competition in the room, but there is likely to be a deeper pool of potential clients and there may be more scheduled time to network. Joining an industry group can also help build business. You may get invaluable advice from networking with others in your industry or combine forces with another professional to land a larger joint project, branch out in a new direction, or put pressure on common suppliers for better service or lower costs.

Attend a conference

Conferences can be a great way to make new business contacts across the country and across the globe. Attend a conference to pick up some new skills or learn about current trends in your industry, but also plan to make a few new contacts with other attendees while you’re there, and then continue that contact via eMail, telephone, or over a cup of coffee.

Network in social settings

Networking can be fun. don’t limit yourself to networking groups and conferences. Network while you go to the gym, stand in line at the grocery store, attend a holiday or cocktail party, or pursue a hobby or activity you enjoy. You never know where your next lead will come from, so expand your networking beyond people you know or plan to get to know and make an effort to get to know the person who happens to be in front of you.

Set aside a few minutes a day to strengthen and expand your network

A few minutes a day is all it takes to stay in touch with the people in your database. Executives who spend a few minutes a day calling or eMailing colleagues, vendors, and other business associates have an advantage. Networking can provide business leads, and keep informed about current trends. It’s also a great method to fill a vacancy in your company or help out your associates.

There are different types of networking approaches that can be used with great results. There is in-person networking  (which has been discussed above) and online networking. Online networking works differently than in-person networking; however, the desired results are the same. You can establish and maintain a strong relationship with other people with whom you are connected online and you will see that the relationship is just as valuable and just as solid as relationships that you have face to face. Online networking gives you the advantage of interacting with people in a much broader geographic area (virtually anywhere in the world) and there can be many advantages to having relationships with people in other countries. The broader your scope, the better your chances at a successful business.

Conclusion

Networking connections are critical to the success of your business. You need to take advantage of online and in-person networking and to use all opportunities to build and strengthen relationships that are mutually beneficial.

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There is a good chance that you have a LinkedIn account. You may have had it for a long time. As you know, having a complete profile is critical to using it successfully. Now, you need to leverage your connections.

Leveraging your LinkedIn connections to their fullest potential

Perhaps, LinkedIn doesn’t seem to be doing much for your business. It is very possible that you have concentrated all of your efforts up to this point on increasing your online connections so that you strengthen your credibility and visibility. Believe it or not, building your lists of LinkedIn connections is not your greatest challenge. An even bigger challenge for you will be to take those connections that you have established and to deepen them to the point where those people will buy what you are selling.

The success of social media (including LinkedIn, of course) depends on relationships. Meaningful interactions and face-to-face meetings are critical to the success of your business. So, what can you do to leverage those meaningful relationships so that they become even more significant for you and for your business?

Event Leveraging

You should be paying close attention to what your connections are doing and where they are going. Because you are connected to them online, the chances are great that they will be sharing information on which events they will be attending. If you see that those events are in your geographic area, you should plan on attending them also. If the events are live, you should consider them a wonderful opportunity to interact with your online connections face to face, even if they are not first-tier connections to you online.

You should approach this by visiting the RSVP page of the event, identifying who among your connections is attending the event, and reaching out to a few of those people. You can communicate with them by sending them a message if they are a close connection or sending them a message through InMail if they are a more distant connection to you. Your message should indicate that you will be attending that particular event and that you look forward to the opportunity to interact with them in person. This approach is effective but unobtrusive at the same time. 

Timing is critical

The optimal time to start to build a deeper relationship with your connections is when you are on their minds. Right after you have made a new connection, received an introduction, made an introduction, responded to a question or comment or received a response to a question that you have posed are all ideal times to reach out to build a more meaningful relationship. Online interactions can easily lead to phone calls, continued discussions and face-to-face meetings.

Seek advice from others

There is not a person around who doesn’t love to give his or her 2 cents. Everyone loves to feel valued. If you reach out to your connections and ask their opinions on something that is important to you, you will be surprised at the amount of valuable responses your will receive in return. You will also be strengthening your relationship with your connections. When you do reach out, make sure that you clearly communicate who you are, explain the common thread or threads between you, pay them a compliment and explain why you are seeking their advice. This will prove to be a wonderful approach for you.

Coordinate geographic locations with travel

If you happen to have clients in several different locations, and you have a business trip planned to one central location, and other business associates are planning to be in the same city, try to arrange a meeting or meetings. If you are comfortable enough, you may want to arrange to meet them all at once for a networking meeting or dinner. If that isn’t a good idea, you can have separate one-on-one meetings. All sorts of good things can potentially come out of that.

Act as a valuable resource for your connections

The more you position yourself as a subject matter expert (SME) in the eyes of your online connections, the more often they will think of you first when it comes to needing help or advice. The more valuable you become to them, the more they will want to do business with you. Pay close attention to their status updates, topics of discussion, types of questions that they ask, etc. The closer you get to understanding their issues, the more valuable your advice will be for them. The more they trust that you know what you are talking about, the more meaningful the relationship that you share will be for them. Try to create opportunities to interact with them offline and face to face as well as online.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social media channels that exists for business. Of course, it is critical that you establish high-quality connections but it is also very important that you strengthen those connections and make them work for you and the other person. The stronger your connections, the more successful you will both be in your respective businesses. Remember that your success at strengthening your online relationships is dependent on you and the other person. Even if you initiate the approach to a deeper level of the relationship, chances are great that the other person will reciprocate. You have valuable connections all around you. You just need to reach out and touch them.

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Anybody who has any professional life at all (or even those who don’t) should have a profile on LinkedIn. It isn’t enough to have a profile. The profile must be complete and it must be working for you effectively.

LinkedIn is an extremely effective way to build relationships that will eventually lead to opportunities for you in business. It is also a great way to strengthen your network, keep it strong and get the most out of it for your business. Initially, you establish connections that will help you to increase your online exposure and boost your reputation. Make sure that your business has a profile that people can check out. You should include people with whom you work in your company.

Once you have accomplished that, you need to go to a deeper level with those people with whom you have started to build relationships. If you connect but don’t interact, neither of you will actually be gaining anything. Your interactions with other people are critical to the success of your business and you basically have to go from connecting with people to relating to them on a more personal level.

• It’s all in the timing: Right after you have made a new connection, been introduced to a new business associate, responded to a question, received a response to a question that you have asked, or received a comment on some content that you have posted, you need to take the next step and start to actually communicate with that person in some way. There are many different ways that you can approach the person, such as complimenting him or her on something that he or she has said, asking a question (which demonstrates that you are interested), ask for some advice, or request an invitation to a person whom you don’t know yet but whom your new connection does.
   
• Making the most out of events: You should pay close attention to the activities and events that your LinkedIn connections are involved with. There are probably a lot of events that are of value to you and your business in many ways. An easy way to find out about them is on LinkedIn. If they are attending those events, your connections will have them posted on their profiles. You should try to find live events that are taking place in your geographic area. Web events are another possibility and they can be of great benefit. You should visit the event’s RSVP page, check out who is going to be attending the event and communicate with a few of those individuals. You can send them a message through LinkedIn, telling them that you plan on attending that particular event and that you look forward to speaking with them there.
   
• Combine face-to-face interactions with several connections in one location: If you will be travelling to an event that is in another city, state, or part of the country, you can make a point of setting up face-to-face meetings with several of your LinkedIn connections. You can meet them for coffee or lunch or even invite them to a small networking group so that you can all interact together.
   
• Be a resource to others: It is important for you to know how to listen to others. However, it is also very important for you to be a resource to other people who need the benefit of your knowledge and expertise. That is a very effective way to build significant relationships with your connections on LinkedIn. You should pay as close attention to your LinkedIn connections as possible so that you are always on top of whatever information people need from you. Pay especially close attention to discussion topics. Discussion topics are one of the main building blocks of your relationships, which will eventually lead to increased business. You should reply to your connections’ status updates, questions, etc, publicly (even if your responses are brief). You should then follow up with a more detailed interaction.
   
• Ask for advice from your connections: The majority of people love to give other people advice. People really enjoy being asked to give their opinions because it makes them feel that they are valued and appreciated. Whenever you reach out online, you should first explain who you are, how you came to reach out to that particular person, offer a sincere comment, and then ask for advice and explain why you are asking for their advice. You will be pleasantly surprised about how receptive the other person will be to you.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is one of the most effective professional social media websites. Absolutely everyone should have a profile and should be connecting all over the place and interacting as much as possible. It is critical that you not only have a profile on LinkedIn but that you make sure that your profile is as complete as it can possibly be and that you devote time to it on a committed and very regular basis.

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LinkedIn is one of the best-quality and most effective professional social media networks. It is well worth using, knowing well, and optimizing. Once you have set up your profile with basic (and complete) information, you should explore its other features.

Some of the features that you should definitely take advantage of when building your LinkedIn profile  are applications, recommendations, Resume Builder and LinkedIn Answers. Those features are tremendously useful and are, ironically, very often ignored. There are several ways in which you can get the most out of LinkedIn’s features, including the following tips:

• Start with the basics: The first principle that should govern your actions when it comes to  LinkedIn is that you should fill in as much information on your profile as you can. You can consider it your online resume. You should devote a great deal of care and attention to your profile. The information that you have in your profile should reflect where you are at this point in your career. It is also critical that you include a recent photo and contact information. Once you have completely covered all of the bases, your next step should be to start establishing as many high-quality connections as possible.
   
• Optimize your profile with keywords: When you are building your profile, make sure that you put in a lot of rich keywords that pertain to what you do professionally. This will cause you to drive more traffic to your profile than others on LinkedIn. Make sure that your headline on LinkedIn is compelling and that others read it and want to know more about you.
   
• Request important recommendations: It isn’t enough, whether you own your own business or you are pursuing a position in a business that is owned by someone else, to express to others all of the wonderful things that you have done and are doing and how great you are at what you do. Recommendations (or testimonials) go a very long way. When you request a LinkedIn recommendation from one of your professional connections, you should make sure that you are confident that the recommendation that you will receive will be really effective. When you request recommendations, you should choose people with whom you worked very closely. It is recommended that you make the request for the recommendation in person whenever possible. That human touch will go a long way for you. Of course, always remember to thank each person who is kind enough to write a recommendation for you and offer to return the favor.
   
• Use applications that add value to your profile: One of the big advantages of LinkedIn is its capability of incorporating applications. You can obtain a list of apps that will enhance your profile from LinkedIn’s Application Directory. The following is a partial list:
  • WordPress: You can import WordPress blogs postings into your LinkedIn profile. You can control what you wish to display (all posts or only those posts that have been tagged).
     
  • SlideShare presentations: If you are involved with doing a lot of presentations or publishing a large number of reports, SlideShare is a great way to let people know about your work. If you don’t already have a SlideShare account, you should open one.
     
  • Tweets: If you like to use Twitter, you can access it directly from LinkedIn. You can also display your recent tweets on LinkedIn if you want.
     
  • My Travel: My Travel, which is powered by TripIt (an online trip planner), allows you to see exactly where your professional communities are travelling and it also lets you post your upcoming travel destinations. Once you have put in all of that information, you will be able to see who, among the members of your online communities, will be travelling close to you geographically.

Conclusion

The LinkedIn features that were discussed here allow the people who visit you on LinkedIn to get a really good sense of who you are professionally (in a well-rounded manner). If you only fill in the basic information in your profile, you will be using LinkedIn well. If, however, you take even greater advantage of what is offered, your profile and your online presence will be greatly effective and will provide a way for others to easily get to know who you are and what you stand for professionally.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.

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You’ve built your fan base on Facebook and recruited followers on Twitter. Can you generate revenue for your company from those—or other social media—channels? Here are five suggestions for using social media as a sales tool.

Post or tweet a promotion. Offer a discount or a freebie to your fans and followers. Offer a free soda with a meal, a discount on shoes, a free con­sultation, white papers on products, an exclusive gift—anything that you think will be of interest and will en­tice users to act. Use a specific promotional code to track and measure the effec­tiveness of the promotion.

Create a contest. Advertise a contest to win a gift certificate or fun prize. Provide users with a link to register at your website or email an entry. Clear­ly spell out the terms of the contest and how the winner will be selected. Be creative. You might want to ask people to upload a pertinent photo­graph (like a favorite pet photo for a grooming business) or write a short paragraph answering a relevant contest question. To make it easy on yourself, specify that submissions be­come the property of your business and are not returnable. Make sure to post the winner(s) on your website so the participants know the contest is legitimate.

Announce new products and ser­vices. Roll out new products and services on social media and forum boards and include a link for people to respond directly to a page on your website. You can always keep the web page hidden from your site nav­igation to keep it “exclusive” to social media users and their referrals. Spe­cially worded contact forms on that page can help you to discern cus­tomers who email you as a result of your Facebook or Twitter announcement. More specific information and a mechanism for customers to “act now” on that web page can help close the sale. If you have a good analytics program in place, you can gauge how much traffic you gener­ated from the announcement.

Experiment with ads. If you have a Facebook business page, advertise your company to other Facebook us­ers. Pay for impressions or for click throughs. Fine-tune the social de­mographic you are seeking to solicit, and select a specific dollar amount you want to spend daily on the ad. You can select specific days, or a range of days for the ad to display. If you opt to pay for click throughs, even if nobody follows through to your Facebook page or your website, thousands of impressions will help make you more visible to users. View reports to determine the success of any given ad. LinkedIn also offers the ability to advertise—to other profes­sionals. You can create up to ten ads which will rotate and fine-tune de­mographics (including by industry and management position). Select the maximum daily amount you wish to spend, minimum bid per click or view, and end date. You can cancel the ad at any time. Like Facebook, you can view advertising reports. See which ads were the most effective, and pull unsuccessful ads from rota­tion. Twitter is rolling out the ability to advertise too—worth a look!

Reward referrals. Ask your follow­ers to refer others to your business. If you have a small or manageable following, it may be easy to reward a follower for a referral with a discount or small free item if the referral be­comes a customer. (A more complex response mechanism will likely be re­quired for those with a larger follow­ing.) At the least, you can give a pub­lic “pat on the back” by writing a post or tweet directed to your follower thanking him or her for the referral. This acknowledgement will also spur others to direct referrals your way.

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LinkedIn has tremendous capacity to help your business in so many ways. Are you aware of all of the potential that it has and how to us it to boost your reputation and position you as a subject matter expert?

LinkedIn Answers section lets all LinkedIn members post questions for any and all members to answer and to respond to questions posted by any other LinkedIn member. There are several advantages to this feature. It is an excellent way to collect information and to be on the cutting edge of information in a particular industry or niche. Additionally, it is a great way to interact with prospects and partners in a particular niche. If you answer questions, you are positioning yourself as a subject matter expert (SME) in your industry and people will turn to you for answers.

An important thing to remember is to always ask content-based questions because you will most likely get a lot of good-quality answers in return. If your questions are thought provoking and titillating, people will be interested and all sorts of interesting bits of information will come out of the discussion. There is actually a benefit from answering questions over the long term on LinkedIn and that is that you will be considered an expert and people will look to you for answers. It is not just a concept. LinkedIn will indicate that you are an expert by placing a white and green “expert” star next to  your name in your profile, which everyone will be able to see. It is an incredible way to boost your reputation and brand.

Remember that LinkedIn is a place to share information with other people and to give others something that they can apply to their own business. After a question is posed, the interactions that follow are interesting and generally lead to the generation of a lot of valuable online content, which will hopefully continue for a very long time. The more discussions you have, the stronger your reputation will be and the greater your online exposure. There are many really good reasons to interact through LinkedIn’s Question and Answers feature:

• An opportunity to help other people: A very important aspect of social media is to help others. The LinkedIn feature allows you the opportunity to give people the benefit of your expertise.You can look for questions within your niche that people have asked and you can answer those questions.  
   
• Subject matter expert: The more frequently you answer questions, the more credibility you will be building for yourself and the more people will want to interact with you. In addition to all of your knowledge that can be of benefit to other people, there are many other experts in your industry who love to share their knowledge with other people and who really contribute a great deal to the discussion.

Conclusion

LinkedIn’s Answers feature is an extremely valuable marketing opportunity for your business because it provides a unique opportunity to really show what you know. It also really helps you to cement relationships with many different people with whom you may do business at some point in the future.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.

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1. Your LinkedIn Summary: Is it a Grabber?
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In our world of social media, LinkedIn is an incredible social media channel for business. Your LinkedIn summary is one of the most critical elements of your LinkedIn profile. Your summary will go a long way to “selling” you.

One of the most important reasons why you have a LinkedIn profile is so that you can expand your business network. Your summary, if written correctly, is an essential vehicle to achieving your goal of expanding your network.

There are many possible approaches that you can take when writing your summary that will engage your readers and compel them to connect with you and to form a bond with you and your business.

• Make sure that you use your summary correctly: When it comes to selling yourself, the first line of defense is your headline, which really has to grab your readers in a huge way. Your LinkedIn summary is an extension of your headline in terms of your “selling yourself” strategy. If the content of your summary is exciting and compelling, your readers will be fascinated by it and want to read more and will hopefully want to interact with you on a deeper level. The summary is your opportunity to get all of your unique selling points across in one succinct paragraph. When you are writing your summary, you need to really make sure that the writing is exciting and interesting.
   
• Write a powerful opening paragraph: You have very little time to grab the reader’s attention with your first paragraph. If you don’t get their attention quickly, they will move on to someone else. You need to make sure to write something in your opening paragraph that will make the readers want to connect with you.
   
• Write content that pops: There is a common theory that your LinkedIn summary should be written like your 30-second elevator pitch. With that in mind, you must always make sure that your writing is interesting, just like you would want to say something in your elevator pitch makes those people who are listening to you remember you after you are done speaking (for a long time after). Your summary should not contain jargon and definitely should not have phrases that seem as though they were not written by you. It is not a bad thing if you want to interject a little humor into your summary (in good taste, of course). That usually makes the writing interesting to read.
   
• Pepper your summary: Throughout your summary, you should pepper the writing with powerful and attention-grabbing words. They are the same kinds of words that you would use if you were speaking to one of your potential clients. Just remember not to overdo it and use too many of those sorts of words. Some of the most effective words are: vitality, inspiration, creativity, and challenge, and last and probably one of the most powerful and compelling words, love.
   
• Write your summary in first person: Content written in the first person is very effective and very personal. You want your summary to touch your readers in a way that is memorable and emotional. People respond to writing that touches them in a way that makes them remember your uniqueness. That is exactly what will help you to build relationships with them.
   
• Focus: When you are writing your LinkedIn summary, make sure that your content is clear and concise; that you focus on your skills, accomplishments and goals; and that you are modest but communicative at the same time. Try to put yourself into the reader’s shoes and write something that you would want to read if you were the reader. You should use your skills, accomplishments and goals to guide you when writing your summary. You should explain your experience in a direct manner without any arrogance and always think of yourself as part of a team.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is one of the best social media channels for business. Your LinkedIn summary is an extremely critical part of your presence on LinkedIn and the impression that you create with your summary will mean the difference between getting people to interact with you and eventually want to become your customers and choosing someone else who has a more impressive and compelling summary that has captured their attention.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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3. Unlocking the Potential of LinkedIn