Why LinkedIn of all Social Media Networks - Getting Started

Hi, my name is Ruth Kusemiju and it feels good to be back here again. And today I'm going to be talking to you a lot about LinkedIn, the importance of LinkedIn, why, uh, LinkedIn of all social media networks, and basically also how to get started. All right, so, um I guess introductions are out of the way. So, uh, well, the thing about LinkedIn is that LinkedIn, it's a social network with over 400 business professionals that allows you to network professionally, to be able to post jobs, find jobs, to answer questions, even build thought leadership, while at the same time you're trying to help, um, your targeted clients or your targeted customers with products and services and/or problems that they have right now. Um, you can do so many things with LinkedIn. I mean, you can easily discover people that are employed in a particular organization. You could, um, find a lot about people, what they do professionally in the corporate world on LinkedIn. So it makes you wonder what makes LinkedIn a little bit different from other social media sites. I would try to explain this for you in like a very simple example. Um, you know that every social media tool, every social media platform has its own personality, right? So let's look at Facebook for instance. Now Facebook is— it's like, like a local bar, like a local bar, local pub. And a pub is like a place where you go to, to chat with friends, tell a few jokes, relax a bit. You know, that's what Facebook is. It's like the relaxing social media platform. Now LinkedIn is a little bit much more formal, much more buttoned up, like more like a trade show. There's no need to mention the vacation that you had or the food you gave to your dog last night or the window that you broke yesterday. But if you have like a product, maybe a white paper, an article, or a particular service that your company offers, LinkedIn is the place where you can talk about stuff like that. So basically, it's— most people call it that, it's like your, uh, professional CV online. Or no, let me not use that word. More like, yeah, it's a place basically your professional life is put on display. All right, so, um, social networks like LinkedIn actually remove barriers and accelerates networking processes for people, business owners like you, that don't want to go through the stress of of having to meet people face to face or meet people from across the globe, you can actually cut that process short with LinkedIn. You— because on LinkedIn, information is shared, articles are shared, reviews, information about your business, about your products, about your services, everything is shared on LinkedIn. And, um, so you don't have to like go to this place to meet this person, go to that place to meet that person, or meet client, with that client, everything. If you need to find information about anybody, any business, any company, you just need to go get on LinkedIn to have that done. All right, so, and, um, basically with LinkedIn you can create awareness for yourself, not just only yourself, your company, your business, your product, and your services. So with these different reasons why you should use— why LinkedIn is— I mean, it's very important. It should actually be a major part, an integral part in your marketing, in your social media marketing. And if you're not started on LinkedIn, I, I strongly, strongly recommend that you get started. Now, like I said at the beginning, that, um, there are over 400 million professionals on LinkedIn in over 200 countries. Now, literally, you could take that, that it means that you have over 400 million people who could be your next client, right? I'm sure most of you are thinking, yes, that's like the ideal answer, but I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Actually, no. What LinkedIn doesn't tell you is that you are only visible as the size of your network. So if you have a very small network on LinkedIn, you're missing out on your ability to be seen by others as well as the ability to find and target strategic clients. So LinkedIn is so many things. It's, it's one, it's a professional portrait, your professional portrait to the world, basically to your clients, your potential clients, to your partners, to your alliances. LinkedIn is also a network builder. With LinkedIn, you can connect on a professional level with others who will be of benefit to you either now or some point in the future. With LinkedIn, you can promote whatever message you have about your product, your service, your company, about yourself to thousands, millions of people for free. It's also a research tool where you can also look for, search for your target audience, your target clients, your target customers. With LinkedIn, it's also a branding and positioning tool. You could use LinkedIn to enhance your personal and your business brand. And with LinkedIn, you can also attract targeted customers. You get noticed by clients, by partners, by alliances that you want to have now or in the future with your profile. I mean, with keywords and different things. So LinkedIn is a lot of things. I'm just— I just mentioned a few so that you could see how important it is for you to be on LinkedIn. Now, um, just like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, With LinkedIn, you can also drive by word of mouth information about your business, about your organization, in a way that you've never done before. Now, how I explain this is I like to call that the network effect. Now, when you share information on LinkedIn, like your skills, maybe content that you have with your customers, with your different LinkedIn members, with prospects, with potential vendors, with partners in that environment, you not only, um, make this information available to them, but you— these connections also share what you've posted with their connections, who in turn share it with their own connections, and, and so on and so forth. And the effect just keeps on going viral and viral, and you find out that your network begins to expand from just beyond your borders of whatever country that you're in, but you start finding out that connected to people in other parts of the world, in different organizations, in different companies, and you're able to, you know, network and bounce off ideas off of each other. So, um, that's why I would encourage you, you need to be on LinkedIn. If you're not on LinkedIn, you need to be on LinkedIn. Now, um, the next question I feel, I feel that would be on your minds right now, so how is LinkedIn relevant to my business? What's— why is it important? I mean, of all the social media networks, why is LinkedIn important to my business? Now, um, it's simple. This next statement I'm gonna say would just explain— well, would give you the answer to your question. If you want new potential customers to come to your let's say, your company website, and you want them to eventually become permanent customers or permanent clients, LinkedIn is actually a very great place to find them because you have over 400 million business professionals. And so I recommend that, yes, having your own LinkedIn profile set up on LinkedIn, having your company page, having your business page, even your employees also being on LinkedIn, it's very, very vital. Because that way you increase the probability by which you are seen by potential customers. So you can do a whole lot of things on LinkedIn. I haven't found one person that has not achieved a professional goal or grown their business using LinkedIn. I mean, whatever industry you are in, you can use LinkedIn to connect with the right people that would help you grow your business. So if you're looking to, um, you're looking to find a new job, you can easily do that on LinkedIn. Maybe a new business opportunity or a new project or a new contract, you can find that on LinkedIn. If you're looking to hire maybe qualified people, qualified employees, you can do that on LinkedIn. If you're looking to sell your products, to sell your services, LinkedIn is a great place to do that. If you want to drive traffic Um, I mean, I mean, that is, you're looking to get more leads. Um, I mean, you have over 400 million business professionals there, so it's a great, great place to find not just only potential prospects or potential leads, but the high-end ones. Because everybody on LinkedIn is a business professional. B2B, B2C basically are all there on LinkedIn. If you're looking to gain credibility or get more influence, you can definitely do that. How? By ensuring that your LinkedIn profile is complete, reaching out to, uh, well, different ones there, connecting with different people, and just putting your stuff out there on LinkedIn. If you're looking to research on executives, on CEOs, on business owners and stuff like that, you can find all that on LinkedIn. If you're ever looking for investors in your business or events, promoting your events or whatever it is, you can do all that on LinkedIn. So the list goes on and on and on. So it doesn't really matter what you're looking to do. You can actually achieve whatever it is you want on LinkedIn if you do it the right way. So, um, just looking at the screen right now, um, this basically is my LinkedIn profile and, um, it shows what I'm about, what I do, and, um, services that I offer and the content, basically information, valuable information that I've shared on LinkedIn. You find it all there. My summary tells you who I'm— who I am, what I've done, and my experience, the different projects I've worked on. You can see recommendations from people that I've worked with and videos that I've done, information, basically valuable content that I've given, and you can find all that on LinkedIn. And, um, the list goes on and on. And also, um, the different skills that I have, you can see all that there too. And let's say I'm certified in certain courses or maybe certain, um, yeah, certain projects or whatever it is, you find everything on LinkedIn. And if I've done different publications, you find all that on LinkedIn and so on and so forth. So basically, LinkedIn, it's you, you know, like how we do, um, where we print out our CVs and we send them to companies and for maybe to qualify us for a particular job or something. But when you have all this on LinkedIn, the company or whoever the service— the person looking for your service doesn't have to wait for you to send a physical copy of your CV. All they just have to do is just go on LinkedIn, search for you on LinkedIn, and God help you if you're on LinkedIn and you are really, really, really complete in terms of everything that you have, your skills, your services, bingo, the job might be yours. And, uh, yeah, so this is my LinkedIn profile and this is everything about me on LinkedIn. And I'm sure definitely we are gonna get each and every one of you to this spot. All right, so that really wraps it up for me on, um, why LinkedIn is important, and basically why LinkedIn, of all social media platforms, why you as a business owner, as a marketing executive, as a business professional, why you should be on LinkedIn.