from LinkedInWorks

Networking Campaign

LinkedIn is a social network, not a sales database. It may or may not be an ideal place to market your service. See LinkedInWorks.

There still is a way to market to your network regardless of the fit of LinkedIn to your product. It's called a Networking Campaign, a form of marketing for social networks promoted and practiced by MarcFreedman. Networking Campaigns are a personal, genuine, and one-to-one communications style.

For the average networker it's a simple referral to a small group of friends saying "Hey, Chuck, I found this great new web site called MyLinkWiki that has a vast array of LinkedIn help resources. I highly recommend it."

The challenge is scaling that up for thousands of connections for ActiveNetworkers in way that remains personal and appropriate.

The campaign is a go-to-market (or in this case go-to-network) program whereby you proactively create and execute your networking strategy. It should include the following:

• GrowYourNetwork . A large and targeted audience is key to your Networking Campaign, just like it is for any effective communications plan. Build and filter your own network, or work with a meganetworker like me that has over 20,000 contacts.

• Plan. Rationalize your campaign from start to finish. What is your objective, which connections can you proactively enlist, who are you trying to reach, how do you want to be perceived, what do you expect from your contacts, how will it convert to business?

• Communications. All of your communications, including introduction, followup, and other collaterals should be appropriately crafted to support your campaign.

• Tools. LinkedIn limits updates to 200 connections at a time. You'll need to use your own tools if you're contacting thousands of connections.

• Products. In many cases you just want to get a direct expression of interest, which is fine for a personal email. As a marketeer though I push my clients to maximize the opportunity. Remember this is networking, not selling. Your target isn't only the executive receiving my email, it's his circle of friends. I've experienced up to 30% of my responses coming from referrals.

So engage the other person. Start, don't close, a conversation. You can do this with networking products, which are similar to marketing and support products you may already have. They can be surveys, blogs, reports, white papers, newsletters, groups, free seminars, etc. It's part of soft-selling. At this point you're giving, not taking. These products incent business contacts to accept your contact. They provide value to the recipient, demonstrate your expertise, and open the door even wider to a business relationship.

MarcFreedman

As an example of the above, you can use Linked In's Questions and Answers to promote your business.

Each and every month you get to ask 10 questions. Every question, when promoting your business allows your to send a personal email (called "Question") to 200 of your contacts. Yes folks, that's 2,000 targeted emails for free.

Best regards Ron