LinkedIn－especially Premium－can offer numerous benefits to both individuals and companies. From looking up networking connections to posting jobs, it’s a fantastic forum for business.
To find out how we could be better utilizing our own LinkedIn Premium subscription, we polled 11 entrepreneurs from YEC about ways they’ve used the service to benefit their businesses.
Building Marketing and Integration Partnerships
We’ve been using LinkedIn to contact key players at companies where we’ve built software integrations and at companies that would be great partners for marketing cross-promotions. It’s been great because our profiles lend us a lot more credibility than if we were just writing to a support or info email address. We can be sure we’re reaching key decision-makers directly.
Making Lists to Track Progress
I love building lists of people I know and people I want to know in order to track communication progress and status.
– Lauren Perkins, Perks Consulting
Connecting With Long Term Partners
Long term partners can be worth millions for us annually. LinkedIn Premium makes it easy and cheap to reach out directly to the most targeted of potential partners. In just the past three months we’ve begun relationships with four major partners all via LinkedIn Premium.
Using inMail
LinkedIn allows you to email other members through their inMail program. In order to do so you must buy credits. This feature is not available with basic (free) accounts. Since one of the great benefits of LinkedIn is networking for business purposes, this ability to contact potential partners/clients is very valuable.
– Nicolas Gremion, Free-eBooks.net
Using Sales Navigator
The Sales Navigator feature on LinkedIn Premium allows me to keep up with my accounts and leads like never before. It also offers insights on lead updates, potential leads, news, and shares from your network and will even let you message new prospects privately, which is a feature that isn’t available with a basic LinkedIn account.
– Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep
Forming Relationships and Partnerships
LinkedIn has been instrumental in building our business. Many of our partnerships and deals have come from me personally reaching out to certain people in organizations when I saw the company wasn’t too responsive. Personal connections are everything, and it’s usually the best way to go about getting business done.
– Pablo Palatnik, ShadesDaddy.com
Creating Real Conversations
With LinkedIn Premium, our company is much better able to talk to potential clients across the globe and create real, meaningful conversations with them. Instead of blindly adding connections with no sort of real relationship, the premium account gives us more opportunity to learn about an individual and reach out to them in an organic and genuine manner.
– Miles Jennings, Recruiter.com
Generating Leads
LinkedIn premium really helps our business development team generate leads. Not only can they send messages to people they are not connected with, but they can also see who views their profile and have access to more robust search capabilities within LinkedIn. This helps them prospect and generate more leads.
Quickly Establishing Points of Connection
Beyond giving us the contact information of potential partners and clients, LinkedIn Premium has also helped us establish a strategy to establish rapport as quickly and efficiently as possible. That is invaluable in terms of increasing our closing rate.
Taking LinkedIn Polls
LinkedIn Polls are a great tool to use to get quick feedback for anything from new product features to blog topics. Most of Leadnomics’ clients are more active on LinkedIn than other social networks, so it’s a great place to source feedback. Polling tools provided by Premium make that process even easier.
Seeing Who’s Viewed Your Profile
Using the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” feature is a great way to get warm leads for potential business partners. People who have found you on LinkedIn tend to be far more amenable to connecting, particularly when you reach out by asking what it was that led them to visit your profile. I definitely recommend people check in on this part of the site with regularity.
– Joshua Dorkin, BiggerPockets, Inc.
Featured Image: Atelier_A via Shutterstock
