You can save time with your business development activities by using social media such as LinkedIN for networking. Let’s look at what needs to go into your daily routine on LinkedIn to use it as a great business development tool.
The daily LinkedIn routine I will describe will allow you to ditch at least one networking event a month, possibly more – and if you only ditch one face-to-face networking event a month will save you between 2-5 hours every month.
LinkedIn did some research which found out that the optimum amount of time on LinkedIn per day is 9 minutes (yes, I know there is a certain amount of conflicting interests here, but let’s go with it).
Here is your ideal daily LinkedIn routine (which assumes you have already got a decent LinkedIn profile)
- set your clock – as you only want to use 9 minutes of your time (setting a timer can ensure you don’t go over your 9 minutes)
- Have a look at who has viewed your profile and send a message/connect with anyone who is interesting
- If you have time left, then add a status update, i.e. share an interesting bit of content for your target market or some good news story about you or your firm (new client won, etc)
- If you have time left, look down your LinkedIn wall and comment/like some of the updates by important people in your network
- If you still have time left, go into one of your LinkedIn groups and leave one comment on one discussion
- Job done!
Your effectiveness in using this routine on LinkedIn, will be significantly improved, if you:
1) Commit to your niche – particularly in your LinkedIn Summary and LinkedIn professional headline
2) Have a well thought out and well written LinkedIn profile, which highlights your credibility in your chosen niche (for a checklist of what should go in your LinkedIn profile, see here)
3) Have carefully researched the groups that you participate in – i.e. they are engaged communities with a large proportion of your target market in the group
Take a step forwards to working on your own career development and sign up to my weekly tips here and you’ll find out what you need to be working on in your career development (and how to make the time for your career development) to progress your career in your firm.
