Getting In Front of the Right People (Business Series): Let LinkedIn work for you while you sleep.

A few months ago, I was speaking on a platform with a dear friend of mine. And I was speaking about LinkedIn, personal branding, and positioning yourself for greater and all that. She's got a great audience and I spoke for about 20 minutes. While I was talking, a young lady reached into my LinkedIn inbox because of course I was talking about LinkedIn, I shared my link to follow me. She reached into my inbox and said, “Hey, I'd love to talk to you, my company is doing these things and I want to see if there's an alignment in what you offer”. We spoke the next morning, and I sent a proposal that she requested. The following week, I was meeting with her team for the next steps.

Yes, I was speaking live in an environment where she was attending, so she got a chance to hear me speak about my subject. But guess what, when she clicked my LinkedIn profile it spoke exactly about how she could connect with me and what I was doing, and what I speak about all the time.

The subject of getting in front of the right people takes a bit of nudging.

So if you're an entrepreneur, ideally, you're connecting with people on the platform to get them aware of your business, to connect with them, and potentially sell your services to them after you have built and nurtured a relationship. Or, maybe you want to do more speaking engagements. So you should be putting information on your profile that says “I do speaking engagements.”

People will not know what you do unless you tell them. So be very clear in your profile about what it is that you do and the value that you bring.

Your profile and your messaging cannot mismatch. If you're talking about real estate, and somebody goes back to your profile and they see you talking about cryptocurrency, nothing wrong with either one - but there is a disconnect.

If somebody were to look for someone who spoke on the key lock mechanism or smart locks or GPS, they're looking for someone who's an expert, and that's you! Make sure that the content is on your profile. Talk about it!

Do your due diligence, make sure that your profile and what you're communicating outward to the public at large are in alignment, and use your LinkedIn profile as a calling card. Let it work for you while you sleep.

But for it to do that, it's got to be optimized very well. It's got to include information about who you are, and what you do.

So if you are an introvert, I want you to get over that as much as possible. Saying “I can't reach out, I don't want to reach out to people and connect with them because I'm shy” is going to prevent you from making the money that you are supposed to have. The good thing about LinkedIn is that you can have a goal and purpose and you don't have to be aggressive. Connecting is one thing but ideally, do it with a purpose and end goal in mind.

I know lots of people who don't like talking about themselves. Okay, hire somebody like me to do it for you. Because what I don't want you to do is miss out on an opportunity or miss out on those contracts and dollars, because you're not sure about the best way to position yourself.

And so I would strongly tell you to sit down and craft a message that you can share with people. Don't be afraid or shy to connect with strangers because you never know how one is going to react to your response.

Open yourself up for more opportunities by being clear, getting your information correct and solid, and then seeking out opportunities and getting in front of the right people. Some work has to be done on your part. It's not always, rarely is it if you build it, they will come. There’s so much direct concerted effort that has to be done more to get you for the right people.

It's not difficult. It can be done. And so I want to encourage you to do that.