LinkedIn is certainly a very powerful social network, or perhaps I should say professional network, when used correctly.
Today, I have the great pleasure of being the host on DAY 3 of the Virtual Blog Tour for Melonie Dodaro, author of the brand new book, The LinkedIn Code: Unlock the Largest Online Business Social Network to Get Leads, Prospects & Clients for B2B, Professional Services and Sales & Marketing Pros. That book will be celebrating its official launch on Tuesday June 3rd, 2014. Yesterday, Melonie visited Teresa Lea’s ‘A Touch in Life’ blog where she asked about finding connections and building relationships on LinkedIn.
Today, I’d like to share with you a recent interview I had with Melonie where I asked her about ‘best practice’ when adding connections to your mailing list.
Before I begin, let me share a little about Melonie Dodaro:
Melonie Dodaro is the founder of Top Dog Social Media, a social media agency that helps brands, businesses, professionals and sales teams use social media marketing and social selling to boost their visibility, attract new customers and increase their revenue. Dubbed by the media as Canada’s #1 LinkedIn expert and social media strategist, Melonie provides LinkedIn training to corporate sales teams and speaks worldwide at both industry and corporate events and conferences.
As a business owner, how does one manage a personal and business identity on LinkedIn?
Unlike the other social media platforms, LinkedIn is strictly a professional social media site and is very different from Twitter or Facebook. Your personal profile is also your professional or business presence. Except for the Interests section of your profile (where you can list some of your personal interests and hobbies), you should only add things of a professional nature. Everything that you add should be something that you would want your clients, partners and potential prospects to see. Within your personal profile you can and should post updates that include information that is relevant and helpful to your ideal clients.
In some cases, such as if you own your own business or run your company’s social media presence, you can also create a Company Page for the business. From this page you can post relevant updates that are related to your industry as well as posts that would be considered of value by the company’s ideal clients.
What do you see as the best practice / etiquette for adding connections to your new mailing list?
You should NEVER add your LinkedIn connections directly to your mailing list. Just because someone has connected with you does not mean that they have given you their permission to add them to your email list.
What you can do to get your connections to add themselves to your email list is offer them something of value in exchange for their name and email address where they actually opt-in to your list. This could be something like a report, checklist or whitepaper. The best time to offer them this item of value would be right after you become a connection via a thank you message.
What is the best way to provide ‘support’ through LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is not ideally suited as a “support” platform for clients but rather a relationship building platform. This being said, if you receive a support request in a LinkedIn message from a client, like any other social media platform you should reply as quickly as possible and if required, move it to another medium such as email, a phone call or in-person meeting.
I hope you enjoyed this brief interview with award-winning social media expert Melonie Dodaro. You can find out some of Melonie’s TOP SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES – along with those of 10 other TOP world-class social media experts – on her FREE 3-Day Telesummit:
Cracking the Social Media Code:
The Masters Speak!
Register FREE today
If you cannot make the live broadcast, register anyway so you can listen to audio replays. When you buy The LinkedIn Code during its official Amazon launch, you’ll receive dozens of valuable free gifts from Melonie and her friends and colleagues. Find out more about these great Free gifts by clicking here.
Be sure to follow Melonie tomorrow on the next stop of her Virtual Blog Tour, when she’ll be visiting Ton de Graaf’s ‘Worldwide Coaching magazine‘ blog where they’ll be talking about LinkedIn Ads and how to create a ‘virtual presence’ in order to stand out from the crowd.
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