Home: Message List - Event: LinkedIn -Social networking can drive sales

Event: LinkedIn -Social networking can drive sales

SBOCTeam — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:42:39 GMT

Your professional relationships are key to your professional success. Social networks help you be more effective in your daily work and open doors to opportunities using the professional relationships you already have. Find answers to questions like:

How would joining a group benefit me?
Are there any small business social networking success stories?
Can I be searched for business opportunities?
How do I meet other small business professionals?

With over 26 million members, Steve Patrizi leads the advertising sales and operations organization for LinkedIn, the world's largest professional online network.

About Steve:
Steve's team works with the world's most widely recognized brands and advertising agencies to help them connect with LinkedIn's audience of affluent, influential, and ambitious professionals.

Steve joined LinkedIn from Microsoft Corporation, where as Manager of Advertising Sales he led a team tasked with delivering cross-platform digital marketing solutions for Fortune 500 accounts based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to Microsoft, Steve spent 10 years with Dow Jones & Company in various roles, including 5 years as Director of West Region Advertising Sales for The Wall Street Journal Online.

To expand your networking opportunities, if you're not a member of the Small Business Online Community, join today for free. http://smallbusinessonlinecommunity.bankofamerica.com/create-account.jspa

The SBOC Team is collecting questions. Post yours now and see's Steve's expert answer. He'll answer as many as he can but may not get to all of them.

Re: Live Event Now: Social networking can drive sales

EagleEye — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:29:24 GMT

I realize this thread is sort of old, but I wanted to mention that myspace and facebook are not just "for kids". A lot of businesses utilize myspace and facebook to promote their businesses and advertise. Social media is becoming a very sophisticated field. Check out socialmedia.biz for more information.

Re: Live Event Now: Social networking can drive sales

deborahbeatty — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:51:34 GMT

My best advice is to query several of your contemporaries and see which group/groups have been most effective. I have been a member of Linked In since its inception and have been extrememly frustrated in its anti-networking stance until just recently. It is very difficult to grow a network here unless you know people or have worked with them at some point. But working with the groups here has been a big boost to that.

My favorite group so far is BizNik but Linked In is starting to realize that it should grow from just being the alumnae site it was to a viable business networking site.

Re: Event September 22: Social networking can drive sales

Tori — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:55:35 GMT

If you missed the event, don't worry! You can always read the transcript.

Re: Live Event Now: Social networking can drive sales

SBOCTeam — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:08:06 GMT

Steve,

On behalf of the SBOC Team and the members of the Small Business Online Community, we wanted to say we truly appreciated your time today and your professional responses to user questions.

Community members, while our session with Steve has now concluded, please feel free to discuss today's session and the questions answered. Again, if you'd like more information about Steve and LinkedIn, visit the link he provided or:

http://www.LinkedIn.com

Thanks again,
The SBOC Team

Re: Live Event Now: Social networking can drive sales

spatrizi — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:03:11 GMT

4) Vet Demands for Your Time - if someone is trying to sell you a service, a quick search on LinkedIn will help you see how you're connected to that person or company and let you know if it's relevant to your specific needs

5) Find And Research Experts - as a small business, you don't always have all of the answers but you need them fast to make the right decisions. Spend some time on LinkedIn Answers - you'll likely learn quite a bit from other small business professionals just like you, but you can also share your own thoughts and insights to showcase your professional value to potential customers, partners, and employees.

6) Consider LinkedIn DirectAds - these are self-serve ads you can buy and target to specific members of the LinkedIn audience. There's a link at the bottom of LinkedIn.com that says "Advertise" that can give you more information.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did and I hope this was valuable. I can be reached at http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevepatrizi if you'd like to contact me with questions or thoughts.

Cheers,
Steve

Re: Live Event Now: Social networking can drive sales

spatrizi — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:58:36 GMT

In closing, a few extra thoughs on how to get the most out of LinkedIn:

1) Make sure your profile is as complete as possible - this will help potential customers and business partners find you more easily
2) There are over 160,000 Company Profiles on LinkedIn - these bring together robust data from the LinkedIn network and show you how you're personally connected to specific companies. Great if you're looking to do business with a company, buy or sell to a company, invest in a company, etc.
3) Hire Smarter - as a small business, you can't afford a hiring mistake. Do some deep research on potential employees before hiring them - see who recommends their work, who they're connected to, what they've shared in LinkedIn Answers, etc.

Re: Live Event Now: Social networking can drive sales

spatrizi — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:54:05 GMT

Hi Bernoulli -

Of the 28 million members on LinkedIn, about half are based outside of the U.S. The UK is one of our largest markets, with about 1.75M members, and we have almost as many spread through continental Europe (the Netherlands and Denmark are particularly heavy in membership). We recently launched the ability to view LinkedIn in Spanish, with more languages to launch soon, so we expect our international membership in Spain and other countries to grow strongly in the next year.

We also have about 1M members in India, and that market is also growing a nice pace. Asia is an opportunity market for us; we don't have an incredibly strong member base there yet but it's going to be an area of focus for us in 2009.

Re: Live Event Now: Social networking can drive sales

Bernoulli — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:42:53 GMT

Hi Steve,

I have been planning to use social networking sites to help expand my contacts. Most of my business is in Europe and Asia. How prevalent is LinkedIn in these areas?

Thanks!

Re: Live Event Now: Social networking can drive sales

spatrizi — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:46:47 GMT

Hi Interpreter -

Don't be embarrassed; a number of folks are just starting to get involved in social networking and it's still relatively new for quite a few folks. That said, there are now more than 28 million professionals on LinkedIn and more than a million join each month, so it's a good time to get started.

We've actually created a site called Learn.LinkedIn.com (found at - you guessed it - http://learn.linkedin.com) which is a great place to understand what a professional network like LinkedIn has to offer you and how you can best put it to use. My suggestion is to spend some time there reading through the material and see if it sounds like something that could help you and/or your business.