Don't build your house on someone else's land

"Don't build your house on someone else's land" is a phrase I've heard a lot recently. Mainly as my business is now completely reliant upon Linkedin (someone else's land)

This clearly applies to housebuilders - if it's to be taken in it's literal sense.

But also - more importantly - applies to ANYONE using social media to promote and build their business

You put in all that work and, one day, could find that Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc have just VANISHED

Yes, it's unlikely but it COULD happen.

So there's 2 things you need to do:

1: Aim to take the communication away from that platform and onto phone, email, meetings etc (the real world if you like) - your social presence should be there as a starting point for a real, actual conversation away from that platform

2: Back up your contacts - On Linkedin, that's pretty easy to do - Click on your pic in the top right>settings and privacy>privacy>download your data.

Other sites - I'll be honest, I have no idea but I'm sure a quick google will give you the answers you need (not being unhelpful, but I specialise in Linkedin so might as well stick with what I know)

If you're putting a strategy in place to use Linkedin effectively, I'd always advise having that data somewhere you can work on it anyway - be it a spreadsheet or a CRM - somewhere you can make notes on that person, put in dates for key activities (messaging, liking, commenting etc) and actually have some structure to your LI activity

IMHO Linkedin is THE best online resource for anyone in business and, although they're now worth in the region of $26B, it's foolish for any of us to assume that this means it's always going to exist. At the very least they could drastically change the way the site functions so, take the conversation away from the platform as soon as you're able to and back up your data so if/when those drastic changes do happen, your lovingly crafted pipeline of potential new clients will be safe!

And if you or your organisation needs help with any aspects of Linkedin, drop me a line at [email protected] or you can book in a call with me at https://www.cloudhq.net/meeting/[email protected]

Dan Smith

Inspired Business Development

www.inspired-bd.com