Can LinkedIn help me grow my professional services practice?

I remember playing a game when I was in 3rd or 4th grade called the “Telephone Game” Maybe, you played the same game.?

The teacher gives a message to the first child.

Each child passes the message to the next child until the message reaches the end.

The last child stands up and says the message.?

Inevitably, the class erupts with laughter when they hear the message repeated by the last child. It’s completely different from the original message.?

Of course, each child has heard a different message from the last.

The second child has much less distortion than the 20th child. But, the 20th child is dumbfounded when the first child reveals the original message. Each of the first and last children has the biggest WTF moments.?But everyone is amazed by how much the message has changed.

The whole class erupts with laughter.

The Telephone Game is a fun way to learn about gossip.?

Thankfully today, we don’t have to use the grapevine to share our message.?

Social media networks are a powerful tool to share our expertise, our unique perspective without distortion.?

This makes it an incredible tool for building relationships with people that share our values. We can use our LinkedIn profile to build our social presence, sharing who we are with our network.?

People connect with us because they like us. As they engage, our message travels farther and farther through our connections. The larger and more engaged our network is, the farther our message travels.?

People all over the world learn who we are and our expertise.?

It’s never been easier to build and influence a loyal community of followers.

Today, few professionals are using social media’s power to build their businesses.?

If you’re an accountant, lawyer, or consultant, you win new business by sharing your unique perspective with your ideal clients.?

Usually, your ideal client is not well served by their existing service provider. They’re dissatisfied with their service. You meet them at a networking event, share your unique perspective, or maybe just some information their existing service provider neglected to share.?

When the prospect has a new matter or project, you get the call.?

Traditionally, we would look for industry conferences or special events where we serve as a panelist elevating our profile and enabling us to share our expertise.

Social media platforms, especially LinkedIn, allow us to share our expertise 24/7/365 directly without being a panelist.?

It’s the best networking conference ever.?

Every ideal customer is always accessible.?

When used strategically, we’re building a community of advocates who spread our message effortlessly through their connections.?

When we share our insights consistently, our unique perspective travels through the network just like that message in the elementary school classroom, except there’s no distortion.?

We create demand for our services, generating a continuous stream of inbound traffic.?

This is the best way to protect our existing client base and to attract new clients.?

The firms that learn how to do this first over the next few years will be the powerhouse firms of the 21st century.

While the firms who don’t wonder, WTF?