Use LinkedIn to ‘Be The Hunted’ and Make New Business Opportunities Find You

Article appearing in Phoenix Business Journal

With over 175 million users, are your prospects on LinkedIn? Better yet, are you getting inbound leads from your social media profiles?  Are you the hunted in social media?

“The Hunter and The Farmer” sales concept is no longer relevant. The top of the sales food chain is ‘the hunted’. This updated sales term reflects the online world and how businesses seek out experts and utilize social networks to find the “perceived” best in class companies and individuals to work with.

To be the hunted in social media, there are three things that need to have in place:

1. Visibility on top business-oriented networks that companies can use to hunt you down (referrals and recommendations from your network are key)
2. Well-positioned profiles and syndicated content that updates your profiles and defines you as “The Expert” and not a “jack of all trades, master of none”.
3. Making it easy for “the hunters” to get in contact with “The  Hunted”.

How Do You Become ‘The Hunted’?

An industry expert is well-published in their niche market. They are active on social networks and typically have a personal blog along with contributing on industry-related sites. ‘The Hunted’ are influencers and are the most relevant from consistently publishing educational and informative content in multiple forms of media; press releases, articles, photos, status updates, videos and blogs.

Self-Test…Are You an Expert?

Take 5 minutes and do this exercise with your LinkedIn profile. Cut and paste your profile content into a Word document and read it. Now change hats and think in terms of one of your ideal prospect coming across your profile and see if you look like an expert. Would you do business with you?

Do you have these 5 things well defined in your LinkedIn profile?

1. A compelling summary that describes you today as an expert with all your past experiences relating to what you do today.
2. Are the top terms and keyword phrases included in your profile, summary and work experience?
3. Do you have references that tie in with your current expertise?
4. Are you publishing relevant updates to your profiles to make you current and you more visible?
5. Do you look at statistics that LinkedIn provides for who is clicking on your profile and what terms they find you under?

It Goes Beyond the Sales Team

All employees of a business should have comprehensive and dynamic social media profiles in LinkedIn (and other social networks). Your company blog can automatically update each member of your team’s LinkedIn profile to increase the number of prospects that see your content.

Remember, social media profiles mean you have publishing rights on social networks. Get active and strategic with your marketing efforts. Leverage your underutilized assets (your team) for increasing your influence, visibility and relevance in social networks and search engines and new business will come your way.