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How to Use LinkedIn as a Marketing Tool (Video)

By Michael Stelzner

I recently met with Jason Alba, author of I’m on LinkedIn, Now What?.

We talked about how to use LinkedIn as a marketing tool.

Have you used LinkedIn as a marketing tool? What are your thoughts?

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 10:22 am and is filed under Lead Generation, Marketing, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Michael: The video format is great. Not sure how long you've been using video but hope you keep it up. The interviews are interesting and helpful.

    Regarding LinkedIn, I agree you don't have to pay if you are willing to "work the room" so to speak in terms of building out your network. Just because you've joined doesn't mean you have access to everyone in the database and please don't be one of those people who sends out the blanket statement wanting to connect with everyone to build the largets network without any consideration of interests or job functions, etc. It's like trying to focus on the number of Twitter followers you have instead of looking for like-minded users with similar interests. That is what produces results.

    Chuck
    http://synergybroadcast.com
    http://twitter.com/ccj3
  • Martin - I do not pay and use the service. Not sure what you are talking about
  • ya you are right and I have found it to be pretty useful overall, especially if you are looking for a specific individual, or an individual with a specific profile, and want to get his friends to introduce you to him.

    <abbr>CigArrest's last blog post..Is it fair to request your girlfriend stop smoking?</abbr>
  • LinkedIn is definitely something every professional should seriously take a look at as part of a greater social media strategy. Facebook can be a tad distracting, and a more focused offering definitely has more value for business purposes.
  • Marin;

    The idea is to build a network based on your existing contacts in the real world. Chances are very good that a lot of folks you work with are already on LinkedIn.

    Once you have a network, you can easily reach out to people you do not know via the folks in the your network. Using degrees of separation, they can choose to pass a message from you to your destination.

    Mike
  • Hrm, I wonder if I am doing something wrong then. I registered for a free account, and found a person I wanted to contact. I visited their profile and saw no reference as to how to contact them. The only option was to "Send InMail." I tried this and it said "You have to upgrade your profile to send Jocelyn an InMail."

    I'll have to look into it further. Just seeing that immediately turned me off though as it sounded like I have to pay to do pretty much anything.

    I like how Jason talks about "entering into a relationship" in the video. While I understand its basis it just sounds hysterical.

    <abbr>Martin - Writing Prompts's last blog post..Writing the Six Word Memoir</abbr>
  • Martin - I do not pay and use the service. Not sure what you are talking about. - Mike
  • I honestly wasn't too impressed when I joined LinkedIn. I found someone I wanted to get in touch with over Google by finding their profile on LinkedIn. I created an account with the intention of contacting them and loaded up the service. However, it sounded like I wasn't able to do ANYTHING until I paid for the service. I have to look into it further but it sounds like free users are crippled.

    Can anyone offer any further insight?

    <abbr>Martin - Writing Prompts's last blog post..Writing the Six Word Memoir</abbr>
  • I would agree, since we are a software company, a critical success factor for us is we have great writers, I formed a group called B2B Content Marketing, at the end of the 1st week we have 18 members! This group is of value to our clients who need content and writers, a value to content developers who write and provide content and benefits my company because I add value to the people I serve and rely on.
  • I wish Michael would have talked about the comparisons of facebook vs LinkedIn and how LinkedIn can be better than facebook =D but overall though a great interview! Too bad youtube limits to 10 minutes, hehe.

    As far as at the end of talking about how twitter was able to deliver faster news than the news media itself on tv, well that's the big future potential I see with the media changing over to more internet based.
  • Great interview! LinkedIn has been a really good source for me even before I started my own firm, but now that they've added Groups, Applications, and other features it's become a key part of my social media plan. I just interviewed a CEO and CTO of high-tech company for article I'm writing all due to connecting through LinkedIn.

    I get good quality traffic to my website and blog posts by answering questions and posting very relevant info to groups I belong to.

    I had heard of JibberJobber awhile ago, but I'll definitely check it out as seems like great resource.

    <abbr>Kim Cornwall Malseed's last blog post..B2B Technology Marketing Study Reveals How IT Buyers Use Search Engines</abbr>
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