A lot of people love Facebook because a great way of keeping in touch with family and friends and especially when you’re not in the same city all the time. It’s a great way of sharing those pictures and videos with extended family and grandparents and so on. Very handy. But where does LinkedIn fit in this picture?

My Thoughts

I think it’s got different benefits for different people. For me, I find LinkedIn as just a great way to keep in touch from time to time with people. Certainly, a great way for me to share some of my content, my videos with others that I know. But it’s also had some really good business benefits.

I looked back a few years ago and I had decided, I should be using LinkedIn more. It is a business-focused social network, I’m a business so I should be utilising it.

So, I went out and I thought, “Well, who are the people that I should be adding on LinkedIn?”, and I remembered an old colleague who I bumped into in a conference a few months before, so, I added him on LinkedIn.

Now, as far as I’m aware he’d never ever recommended any business to me or my company before. But just about two or three days, after that particular situation where I added him on LinkedIn, he took a phone call from somebody that needed some help.

Now, it wasn’t a fit for his business, but it was fit for me. And he immediately recommended me. I can only think that look, it had been years since I worked with this particular person, yes, we’d seen each other a few months ago at an event but it was because I just reconnected with him on LinkedIn that would’ve been in front of mine.

So, he recommended that business and it ended up being an account that over the next few months generated a few hundred thousand dollars. Pretty important piece of business for my firm at the time.

You’d never know what connecting in person or online will do, whether the timing could be fortuitous or not but if you’re not using a tool like LinkedIn, you’re not staying connected with those that you know particularly in the business world. Then look, you could be missing out an opportunity.

My recommendation to you is, get yourself a good profile that really describes you, the business that you do clearly and succinctly. Make sure you have a good, clear, profile picture. If you don’t have one, get a nice headshot taken or an image that you can put on LinkedIn.

Just go and fill in the key areas and then make sure you’re connected to the people you meet. And when you meet new people, business cards are pretty old school.

So, my approach is, when I meet somebody new in the business world is I immediately connect with them on LinkedIn.

That would be my recommendation for you and some people are more than happy to connect with people more broadly even if they haven’t met in person and that goes for me too.

So, if you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn, and you’re not already connected directly, then feel free to do so.

I do appreciate it if you’re doing that to add a little note, let me know how you came across me.

Alright, thanks very much for listening. We’ll catch you next week in, of course, you can follow my email updates by going to paulspain.com/updates.