LinkedIn for Business? Is it Worth it...

You’re in good company if you already have a LinkedIn profile - taking new age networking to its full potential. Considering executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members and many business managers are now also using it for recruiting, common sense says a LinkedIn profile is a necessity not a frivolity.

Not just a professional trawling space for bigger companies, LinkedIn is becoming a valuable resource for smaller business in the B2B market to build their connections and generate leads in order to grow their businesses. It’s also a great way to keep abreast of your relative industries and target markets, such as latest news snippets, sharing of ideas and events.

If you’re thinking of linking to LinkedIn, here are some useful statistics:

• It has more than 150 million members - and 2 new members join every second
• Australia has over 3 million members
• Membership demographics are 39% female; 61% male
• 40% of salaries are $100K +
• 41% of people who use LinkedIn for marketing have generated business with it
• 80% of people use LinkedIn for recruiting - as a tool to find and research employees
• 70% of people are using LinkedIn for job-hunting

If you are trying to find someone in particular, or want to be introduced to the decision-maker within a company, if you follow the ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ rule on LinkedIn you will probably be surprised to find that you know someone who knows someone who can introduce you using this form of social media.

How Using LinkedIn Can Help Your Business

LinkedIn’s core is making business-to-business contacts, but its power goes beyond simple connections. No matter what your line of work or type of business, LinkedIn can be beneficial for:

• Staying on top of industry news. Using LinkedIn today, you can have the latest news sent straight to your inbox and/or seen immediately at the top of your screen every time you log in.
• Regularly refer to your connections to see whether or not they may become potential clients, alliances and referrers.
• Find experts or other business people to assist you in a particular challenge. People in business are usually quite happy to help others by passing on their expertise or sharing lessons they’ve learnt the hard - or easy - way.
• Ask others for certain recommendations about suppliers of services and products.
• Review businesses you are thinking of doing business with by reading their client reviews on their LinkedIn pages, and seeing who they know.
• Reviewing and attracting potential employees. LinkedIn is another great way to source and research potential employees. On the flip side, LinkedIn provides a resource for potential employees to check you out, too. They can read about your strengths, what people are saying about you, the relative businesses you deal with and more.
• Define your strengths and prove your competence by posting content on the website’s Answers section. Check out the Recently Asked Questions posted by others and you can choose to answer any that may relate to your level of expertise.
• Communicate in real-time with professionals like yourself in the Groups area. Like most social media websites, LinkedIn offers a platform to discuss current affairs, products and opportunities. Groups is a discussion forum, whereby you can share ideas, gain advice to help build your company and connect with like-minded peers.
• Assist your search engine optimisation. To help you achieve a higher pagerank in Google searches, your personal profile and company page can both link back to your website.

Check out Bloomtools LinkedIn page and follow us to keep up-to-date with the latest industry news and receive great tips to enable you to grow your business through the Internet.