STEPS FOR MARKETING TO YOUR LOCAL LINKEDIN CONNECTIONS:

1.     Create your marketing copy in an MSWord document

2.     Be sure to include links to your events or landing page e.g. www.integratedalliances.com

3.     LinkedIn now turns these into Hot Links in the message body

4.     Add Affiliate codes to the end of the landing page url if appropriate

5.     Login to your account on www.linkedin.com

6.     Click on View My Profile

7.     Click on Forward this Profile (small link right above your name)

8.     This brings up the Compose Message screen

9.     NOTE; BE VERY CAREFUL DOING THIS AND FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS CLOSELY!

10.  Copy and Paste your Marketing copy into this message screen

11.  Change the Subject Line to be custom for this message

12.  UNCHECK THE ALLOW ALL RECEIPIENTS TO SEE NAMES AND ADDRESSES BOX

13.  Don’t forget to UNCHECK THE BOX!!

14.  Click the check box to Send a copy to yourself

15.  Then search your Tier 1 Connections by Location or by Industry

16.  This will produce a list of your Tier 1 Connections that meet your selection criteria

17.  You can send this message to up to 200 connections at a time

18.  If your query produces less than 200, then proceed to SEND, if not

19.  Select a letter of the alphabet and see how many connections are selected

20.  Add another letter of the alphabet until you are close to 200, then SEND the message

21.  Sometimes you may need to double or triple click the Select All box

22.  If there are over 200 in one letter of the Alphabet you have to individually select the connections

23.  There may be times when you may have to manually click on the connections to add them

24.  Then you’re done hit SEND, or repeat steps 19 to 23, until you’ve sent the message to everyone who meets your selection criteria

25.  Write down the last record that you sent to; so you can pick up from that point going forward

26.  Unlike an email, the advantage of this approach is that it can’t be deleted unopened.  Your LinkedIn connections must deal with Forwarded Profile messages so you have a 100% open rate.

© 2008 Integrated Alliances LLC, All rights reserved.

LinkedIn slipped in a nifty feature that users have been clamoring for.  They have not formally announced this so it is “unofficial” at this time (but it works).

As of about one month ago, your LinkedIn Messages, Invitations, Introductions and InMails now support hot link support.  There is no such capability on LinkedIn profiles themselves.

It is best to write out the entire URL like www.integratedalliances.com.

MySpace, FaceBook and LinkedIn are all well established social networking sites and yet they are all still growing rapidly.  These sites are free to the user; LinkedIn does offer paid accounts with increased functionality for the professionals that are interested in contacting a bigger sphere of people. 

At present most businesses do not have a well defined strategy for marketing via online social networks, I find that puzzling.  It’s a bit difficult to find businesses on MySpace and FaceBook at all.  LinkedIn due to its professional basis has a slightly increased direct business presence.  But unlike MySpace and FaceBook each person is only allowed one profile and any reports of spamming members quickly gets a profile removed.  And once removed coming back is extremely difficult, they are serious about business only.  LinkedIn also allows only 3,000 connection requests per lifetime. 

My analysis shows that social networking is a field that is rapidly and steadily growing in public interest.  And 49% of members on MySpace, 58% of FaceBook users and 66% of the LinkedIn community make over $60,000 annually per household.  Any business owner that does not develop an online social networking marketing strategy is walking away from a huge opportunity for advertisement with very minimal investment. 

I will draw an analogy comparing online social networking to the rise of websites.  If a business had a website at all they were considered cutting edge in 1993, by 1998 any business without a well developed website had been left behind.  Because of the relatively few businesses that are on these sites in a strategic manner, the door of opportunity is wide open for an emerging business to gain a foothold into markets that would otherwise be unavailable.  I have heard some say that this online social networking is just a passing trend; they said the same about rock and roll.

© 2008 Lyndle Savage, Sr.