How to Use LinkedIn for the Growth of your business

I tell people all the time that your business is a job and your job is a business. How?

In your business, you still work for someone - your clients. You still have KPIs and if you’re a good leader not a boss, you should be pulling your own weight and not just calling the shots. Your job (9-5) should not be seen as you working for an employer. See your employer as your client, and your skill as your service. See the job as a retainership and an opportunity for growth and clientele build.

This mindset improves your approach to work.

Understanding the correlation between a job and a business makes it easier to see the opportunities in career-driven tools for your business. It means you can take advantage of tools created for careers and channel it to the growth of your business.

We’ll talk about this in 5 phases:

• Your Brand
• Your Perception
• Your Network (Clients & Investors)
• Your Team
• Your Growth

Your Brand:

You need to know yourself and the business. Your brand is not your name. The brand of a business is not the logo or colors. Those are just results of a brand. Think of it like this, there are other Blessings in the world, what makes me different? Ask yourself this.

Your brand is not your product. Your brand is your culture - it is the way of life.

• How you/your business do things?
• How do you speak?
• How do you present yourselves?
• What qualities do you look for in a team?
• What vibes do you exude?
• What brands can I associate you with?
• What do you do?
• What value do you give?
• What makes you special?
• Who are you talking to and how are you talking to them?

The answers to these may differ when you think of your personal brand and your business brand. Answer honestly and tell yourself the truth. These answers make up your brand, how you define yourself, and how you communicate that. This is where your logo and all come in. This is the point you decide if you even need LinkedIn for your business or industry. This is also the point where you decide if you want to tie your personal brand to your business brand. Do you want to be like @uchepedro and @bellanaija OR Do you want to be like @OloriSupergal ? They are both great brands but they have different styles of expression.

When you decide all of these, and weigh the pros and cons you will then implement this on your bio. If you choose to link your personal brand to your business brand, then your personal LinkedIn profile will come in handy. It is easier to work from the known to unknown. You can start by building your personal profile and bio and tying conversations you have to the brand. When you build your personal brand on LinkedIn, you can then funnel your audience to your business. That’s one strategy.

If you are building your brand independent of you, create a good bio and command a good following by getting your friends to first follow and interact and you need to be consistent and deliberate. Your bio is the first thing everyone looks out for on your business profile. It’s like the about us page of your website. Ensure that the communication style reflects the personality of the business. If it’s a fun brand don’t be afraid to be fun. Don’t copy people. Be authentic. Fill in every gap. Ensure that your profile is 100% with keywords that relate to what you do. These keywords are how you can be found or searched out. Your audience may not know the name of your business but they know what they are looking for e.g. E-Learning Platforms in Nigeria.

Your Perception:

This is formed by your execution, your content and manner of communication. It is how people begin to compartmentalize you and your business in their head.

The perception people have of you is basically determined by your actions and inactions

Be consistent. Create content relevant to your audience. Don’t be selfish and sell sell sell. Sell actively only 20% of the time and solve your client surrounding problems (sell inactively) 80% of the time. This way you attract your potential audience to you. If my business is about “Writing Business Plans and Proposals”. I’ll break each part into series. We can discuss profiling your target market as a business and this will attract your potential client. You can talk about “Your idea to launch strategy” and things they want to know. They’ll come to you and they’ll ask questions. If they don’t patronize you, they’ll tell someone who will. Don’t be afraid that they won’t need you. They definitely will. You will become that doctor who gives them medical advise and when they are sick they’ll still come to you.

People are too lazy to do it by themselves. 95% of people (in Nigeria) are more likely to get someone to do things even when they know how to do it. They’ll rather entrust it to someone else who they perceive is better at it. This decision often comes based on their evaluation.How can you influence their evaluation cycle? By sharing content that answer their questions. By engaging with them when they engage with your content. By humanizing your brand and not sounding like a robot. By sharing articles & your view of those articles that will benefit them.

Your Network:

Be very careful who you let into your LinkedIn circle if you are focused on building your personal brand. LinkedIn works great with "connections" and the people you let in either speak for or against you. If people love your content, they should follow you, you don't necessarily have to be "connected" except there is a reason. It's not about the numbers. With LinkedIn, it's a game of quality over quantity. If it’s a company, there are hacks on how to grow your network, get clients, partners and possibly investors. Be creative about how you share updates on your business. Explore video content, infographics and show your growth and sometimes your failures. Show that your business is not stagnant.

People like and associate with progress

Share your learnings from your failure. Before you share anything, ask yourself, how does his benefit my business. Be willing to share! Do you like a person and you’ll want to draw that person’s attention to your business. Say something and tag the person e.g. @richardbranson daring attitude to life makes us believe in the power of risks as regards learning and growth. Go on to share a link or a video emphasizing the message. You can include a feat you conquered based on that learning point. People love it when they inspire people. Tag people, use your personal handle to tag people, share and reference their content. Be deliberate. Cheer them on.

Think collaboration not competition.

Project your company culture and dream team on LinkedIn like it’s a mood board. Nurture the LinkedIn friendships you get by following up with a message, an email, a call, something. Online friendships are best built Offline. Tease people with your business accomplishments and live up to your brand promise.

Your Team:

If you don’t have one, you can build them from LinkedIn. What should you look out for? Read this - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-position-yourself-get-job-linkedin-blessing-abeng/

@cregital founded by @evansakanno is a good example of how to use your team to grow your business LinkedIn. I don’t know if it was deliberate but it worked. Reflect the brand through your team. Let your team take control and share. Let them see themselves. Tag them! They are humans and if they are on LinkedIn they would share. Remember that you can only reflect or simulate what happens offline, online. So ensure that your offline team cohesion is on point before you try it. If you have team members who have achieved remarkable milestones, share it. Talk about their accomplishments, their wealth of experience, their current strides. Be fun! Don’t be too serious! Share birthdays, and fun achievements too. It will reflect experience, cohesion & history.

As @onyekaakumah of @farmcrowdy said at @StartupGrindLAG last week,

There are different aspects of a team that investors look out for - Experience, Relevance to business, History and Cohesion/Chemistry.

So, express this on LinkedIn and you may just have one coming your way.

Your Growth

I have touched on this in previous paragraphs but just for emphasis. Don’t be stuck in an idea or just one phase.

Take steps to ensure you’re a little closer to your dreams than you were yesterday.

Show that you have a learning culture and you are not afraid to take calculated risks. You can’t fake it! So learn it and it will show. Read books or articles and share your learnings.

Watch series and share your business learnings. Series you can watch - Billions, Startup, Dragons Den, Silicon Valley, The Bold Type. Don’t be afraid to share and take feedback.

If you have questions or contributions, please comment below.