WAXING LYCRICAL ABOUT LINKEDIN

“The platform is a wonderful place to grow and elevate your professional brand and give your business a voice to an entirely new and diverse audience…”

AUTHOR: Casie Scott

Several years ago when a friend encouraged me to get immersed in the world of LinkedIn, I baulked at the prospect and failed to properly understand or see its value.

Fast forward to the present day and I can’t sing the praises of LinkedIn loudly enough.

What started as a recruiting/ networking site is now so much more. As well as those core functions, LinkedIn has evolved into a wonderful space to share content, have meaningful connection with other professionals and gather feedback and information.

My LinkedIn family is an amazing networking tool. I’ve managed to re-connect with people I worked with two decades ago- this is particularly impressive in light of my extremely poor Rolodex skills.

I regularly use information shared by others as a referral point and have been able to build relationships with people and organisations I might otherwise be unable to reach.

This week I was asked if I could recommend someone on the Gold Coast who could work with a local company on their communications. Thanks to LinkedIn, I had a recommendation at my fingertips. A respected former colleague from my television news days had popped up in my feed with her recent business venture. Serendipitous, yes. Possible purely because of LinkedIn, also yes.

LinkedIn can help build trust in your brand and develop a relationship with a large audience so they can better understand exactly what you do and have to offer. While I would advise (strongly) against using the platform to do a blatant hard-sell of your wares, offering insightful and useful information is a great way to connect and help people to have clarity around your area of expertise.

By offering engaging and useful content, you can cement your brand as a trusted leader in the market. I help a lot of clients to reach a new audience through blog pieces and the sharing of interesting industry insights. It can be a relatively small cost outlay that can provide a significant return on investment.

The last two clients to join the Captive Communications family have reached out after seeing the agency on LinkedIn. Interestingly, the clients are from entirely different markets and have little in common. LinkedIn provided an avenue to reach them both, at a time and in a way that was convenient to them.

The platform is a wonderful place to grow and elevate your professional brand and give your business a voice to an entirely new and diverse audience.

Even better? The basic version is free and creating and building a profile has never been simpler.

[ENDS]