Does this sound familiar? “I’m on Linked In but I don’t really know what to do with it.”
I hear this all the time from business owners like you.
In this post I want to talk about using this powerful business tool as a source of leads for you. So you can tap into the power of 100 million business people and grow your business.
First, go to your contacts.
You’ll see a drop down menu for connections. Click that.
This will show you an alphabetical listing of your connections.
Along the left side you’ll see how your connections are sorted – by group, by schoolmates, etc.
You can search by last name, by company, by industry, etc.
Let’s say I want to expand my number of copywriting clients in the natural dog food niche, an area where I have deep experience. I click companies to review the pet food companies where I connections and see I have two connections with Blue Buffalo, a premium pet food brand.
I click on “Blue Buffalo Co” to see my two connections with that company.
First, I look to see what roles they play. Is there a marketing manager or someone else who may hire freelance writers? It’s unclear, one’s a writer and project manager while the other does in store demonstrations (I think).
At this point I could go in two different directions, I could send one or both of these a note right then and say something like:
“Hi Mary,
My name is Jen Phillips April and I’m a freelance copywriter experienced in writing for the natural pet food market. I have experience writing web copy, newsletters, press releases and more. Does Blue Buffalo hire freelance writers to help with writing needs?
Thanks so much!
Jen”
As you can see, it’s a straight ahead “ask”. It’s not entirely cold since you’re already connected on Linked In and since it only took you a minute, it can be worth your time.
I took this approach with another pet food company and got an immediate response along the lines of “send me your info” with an email address. I sent a link to some of my samples and almost immediately, received a response back, “I’m forwarding your info to xx who handles freelance writers.” Great! I thought. Not bad for 5 minutes of work.
The great part was when the person who hired freelancers got back to me the very next day saying, “Hi Jen, my name is x and we want to hire you to write our newsletters. Here’s our editorial calendar, pick the articles you want to write on and let me know which ones and your rates. Thanks!”
Ok, I’m not saying it’ll always be that easy, but you never know!
Beyond the “Ask”
Let’s say you want to go beyond that quickie approach and dig a little deeper. There’s another way you can go.
That’s the beauty of Linked In. Now that you’re connected, you can see who they’re connected to and who you might have in common.
Going back to my earlier example, if I looked at Mary’s connections at Blue Buffalo, I can scroll through them to see if she’s connected to someone in the communications department (the people who often hire freelancers). If she is, I’ll click on their profile and see how active they are on Linked In. If they have a lot of connections and are in groups, I’ll look to see if we share a group (a good reason to choose groups is based on the membership!).
If we share a group, I can directly message them. Then, I’ll mention we share the same group and ask if they hire freelancers. Similar to above. I’ll also look to see if they have a twitter account, check that out and if they’re active, I’ll follow them. Twitter is a great way to get to know people in a friendly manner.
If I’m really interested in the company and having them as a client, I’ll probably also follow their business page on Facebook to see what they’re doing.
This may sound like a lot of work but in truth, it’s less than 15 minutes of investigating and I’ll probably come across another 8-10 people I’d like to reach out to.
If you know the initial connection reasonably well, you can also ask them to make an introduction for you.
Do this even twice a month with 10 people and you’ll expand your network and likely your bank account!
If you’d like to learn more about the value of Linked In and leveraging it in your business, you won’t want to miss these upcoming classes. Sept. 26th and Oct. 11.
Happy Prospecting!
