5 ways to use LinkedIn Companies to find more customers

I have had many questions about all the different features of LinkedIn. And also not to just write about them, but also show them.

So, I guess it is finally time to start using my YouTube Channel 🙂

I will be posting more and more videos with online and offline networking tips on YouTube and repost them here in my blog.

This is the first video: 5 ways to use LinkedIn Companies to find more customers.

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

What’s the use of LinkedIn’s Company Follow feature?

That’s a question I asked myself the first time I heard about it.

But then at closer investigation, it became clear.

When you follow a Company, you can be notified when:

– Employees join, leave or are promoted

– There are new job opportunities

– the Company Profile has been changed

When could this be interesting?

1) If you are in sales or purchasing, you might like to be informed if your contact person changes position or leaves the company. You can then ask to be introduced to the person who gets their previous job so you can continue to easily work together.

2) If you are in sales and it was not possible to do business with a company because of a certain person, you might have a new chance when that person changes position or leaves the organization.

3) If you are looking for a new job, you can be informed when your favorite organizations posts a job.

How to set this up?

1) Go to More…/Companies

2) Look for the company or organization you are interested in

3) On the Company Profile Page you see “Follow company”. Click it.

4) Now you see “Stop following” and a small arrow. Click that arrow and choose “Notification Settings”.

5) Finetune which updates you want (see the 3 options already mentioned in the beginning of this post) and how you want them delivered (via “Network Updates” and/or via daily or weekly email).

For me this new feature is not the Holy Grail, but adds to the collection of handy tools and features LinkedIn already has been offering.

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

How to use LinkedIn’s “Who’s viewed my Profile” to your advantage?

After my post of last week about the confusion of many people concerning the “Who’s viewed my Profile” function of LinkedIn, people asked me: why would I want to change my settings?

Not everybody will want to do that. It also depends on your goals and your function in an organization.

But if you are looking for new customers I suggest you change your settings from “Only show my anonymous profile characteristics, such as industry and title” to “Show my name and headline”.

Why?

If you have visited a potential customer’s Profile, they see who you are and if your Profile is interesting enough, they might contact you.

This is the opposite of cold calling (or cold messaging) and hence works so much better!

Of course this will only happen once in a while (so don’t set your expectations to high), but it only costs you a few seconds to change it and no money. So why won’t you do it?

This is how you change those settings:
– On top of a page on LinkedIn, click on “Settings”
– Then scroll down and under the heading “Privacy Settings” you see “Profile Views”
– Click on “Profile Views” and change the settings

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

LinkedIn Confusion: Who’s viewed my Profile?

Many people are very curious about who has viewed their Profile on LinkedIn.

On the Home page there is a link (at the right hand side): “Who’s viewed my profile”.

You can click on this link and then you will see something like “Your Profile has been viewed by 8 people in the last day, including” and then a list with people.

Most of the times you don’t see a name, but something like “Someone in the Executive Leadership function in the Mechanical or Industrial Engineering industry from Antwerp Area, Belgium”.

If I ask my audiences what they think that needs to be done to see the name, 80% of them answers: upgrade your account.

However, this is not correct!

At the bottom of the page you see “To see more people, upgrade your account”.

You have to interpret this very literally: instead of the 5 people you see with your basic (free) account, you then see all 8 of them. But still no names.

The reason?

LinkedIn is very sensitive about privacy. However most people don’t know they can finetune what others see about them and how LinkedIn can work best for them.

In this case, the clue is in the Settings page (you will find the link on top of each page) and then under Privacy Settings: Profile Views.

By default the option is “Only show my anonymous profile characteristics, such as industry and title”.

Since hardly anyone changes this (because they don’t know they can), you most of the times will never see who has visited your Profile.

Conclusion: even if you upgrade your account you will never see who has viewed your Profile unless they changed it themselves.

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)