Clearview National June 2015 - Issue 163 | Page 92

businessnews

In her monthly column on social media Sarah Ball,
Communications Director at specialist glazing and
construction marketing and PR agency, Balls2 Marketing
talks about how to use LinkedIn for business.

Linking In
Facebook for grownups
LinkedIn is often referred to as Facebook
for grownups, and it’s probably the best way to
describe it. But while it’s like Facebook in lots
of ways, LinkedIn is all about business.
The old saying: “it’s not what you know,
it’s who you know” has never been more
fitting. And linking with people can open up
opportunities.
Get your profile right
Step one is set up your profile. It’s not a CV
so make it easy for people to see what you do
and how it can benefit them.
Choose a head and shoulders photo that’s
appropriate to your business. So if you
normally wear a uniform, that’s what you
should wear. You want people to recognise
you, so make it clear and representative of you
at work.
Link-up
Then start linking. You want as many as
possible to get started. Here’s a list of ideas to
get you started:
• Friends and family
• Customers
• Suppliers
• Local businesses
• Other companies in the industry

Be a groupie
One way to increase the number of
connections is to join groups. There’s a whole
range of groups on LinkedIn including
ones for local businesses, the glazing and
construction industry, and networking groups
like PIGS (People in Glazing Society). Being
a member means it’s easier to link to people
within the group and keep up with the latest
news.
Inbox messaging
The LinkedIn inbox works exactly
like email. Direct messages can be sent
and received. It’s really useful to start up
conversations and get to know people better.
We have picked up several leads through
this.

‘LinkedIn makes it
really easy to do a
quick update or pos t
a photo. Installations,
products, and news all
make great updates’
92 » JUN 2015 » CL EARVI E W- UK . C O M

Keep up to date
Update and photos: LinkedIn makes it
really easy to do a quick update or post a
photo. Installations, products, and news all
make great updates. Post these onto your
LinkedIn wall and they can be seen by all the
people connected to you. If they ‘Like’ them,
the updates appear to their connections too.
Publish a post: LinkedIn has recently
added a great feature for publishing longer
pieces. It gives you the chance to include
a photo, more words and headings and is
visible on your profile. The advantage of using
LinkedIn is that the number of views can be
much higher than you’d get on a website. So
if you’ve got a new product or service, a case
study or just something that you think would
be interesting, this relatively new way to post
onto LinkedIn is already proving to be very
successful.
This is just a quick overview of LinkedIn.
It’s a great social media platform to do
business. You can link to me, Sarah Ball,
join the PIGS networking group and follow
Clearview!
Next month Sarah will be talking about
how to make the most of Google+