How to Grow your Business – Part 7: Using Linkedin

Using LinkedIn to network more effectively and find new clients.

Most people with a LinkedIn account probably don’t realise just how useful it can be in finding new clients or increasing your business profile.

If you have a large circle of business associates on LinkedIn you automatically have access to a massive and (often) untapped, knowledge base and business network.

For example, when I did a search for ‘freelance writer’ on my LinkedIn profile it came up with 191,631 results!

Of course only a few of these are already connected to me but this one simple search opened up a world of possibility to connect with other Australian-based writers and editors.

This also opens up huge networking and possible job opportunities, as you share information and contact those new connections in an effort to increase your business or find new jobs.

Even better is to insert other keywords in the search field such as ‘corporate’ or ‘communications’ and look for people in those fields.

Searching ‘communications’ under the ‘Jobs’ field produces 631 results, and gives easy access to LinkedIn’s enormous range of posted job vacancies in your chosen field.

The possibilities – while not exactly endless – are certainly impressive, and this is why LinkedIn is fast becoming one of the ‘must have’ business tools in the corporate world.

Most people just don’t realise how important their connections can be as many of these jobs are actually linked to people in their network – giving them an even closer connection to the job.

Obviously the more connections you have, the better the chance that good jobs will emerge and if you only have 30 or 40 connections that will not be nearly as good as 200 or more.

Another useful job hunting tool is the ‘Alumni’ search where you go to ‘Contacts’ and then to ‘Schools’ or ‘Universities’ to re-establish contact with old classmates.

Here you can find all the people on LinkedIn who graduated from your old school or university and it can also be very helpful in your job search or when trying to kick-start your business.

But the real challenge is to establish a strong presence on social media in general and LinkedIn in particular – that is where the dividends will come from and where your business or your job search will really benefit.

Mike Peeters is CEO of Mike Peeters Media

Be sure to check out my Linkedin Page Here