LinkedIn: Your Virtual Assistant

Nearly everyone in business has a LinkedIn profile with the majority of those users accessing their LinkedIn profile from their mobile app. What the vast majority of users do not use if the built in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag that comes with LinkedIn. In this article, we will show you how to use it to your advantage. NOTE: The RFID tag is only available on the mobile application, it is not available on the PC.

All individual profiles on LinkedIn have the RFID feature. NOTE: This is only available to individual profiles and not company profiles. This feature allows individuals to connect immediately by scanning/showing their RFID tags. Before we give you the step by step guide to using the RFID tag, here are some instances where you can put this feature to work for you.

TRADE SHOWS OR CONFERENCES

Whether you are an attendee or exhibitor at a trade show, the RFID tag should become your virtual assistant. When you attend a trade show, you will likely bring a stack of business cards to pass out to potential customers, contacts and influencers and most likely collect as many business cards. Once the conference is over, you return to your office with a stack of business cards, feeling pretty good and accomplished, you made great contacts! What do you do now to solidify your relationship with them? Connect on on social media naturally. However this sometimes isn't as straight forward as one would think. You jump on LinkedIn and set about finding the contacts whose business cards you've collected. Hopefully they have kept their profile and contact information updated. allowing you to find them accurately. Once you find them on LinkedIn you send them an invitation to connect. You may choose to add a note to the connection reminding them you met at the trade show, so they remember you and agree to connect. And now the wait begins.

CONNECT IMMEDIATELY

Rather than going this route and leaving your connection on LinkedIn up to chance at several junctures, why not connect on the spot? It only takes about 30 seconds. By using the RFID in LinkedIn you can connect immediately, ensuring that the moment you shake hands and say goodbye, you are connected. No work to do when you get back, no risk of not finding this person, or waiting for them to accept your invitation to connect.

INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF CONNECTING BY PROVIDING VALUE

To increase the likelihood that this new connection will want to connect on LinkedIn, you should have something of value, posted to your LinkedIn profile that this connection would benefit from. It could be a blog post discussing a topic of interest, a presentation explaining your services or unique offering or maybe a video describing your business. Even having your corporate presentation on LinkedIn is valuable as more and more conference attendees are not interested in collecting a telephone book of information to carry around.

SHARING YOUR RFID TAG

When you open your mobile application for LinkedIn, locate your picture on the top left, beside that is the search bar and then at the end of the search bar what looks like 4 boxes (see below).

When you click on the 4 boxes, it will open up a new screen with two options, SCAN (allows you to scan your contact's code) and MY CODE (allows your contact to scan your code). See below:

One of you will select the scan option, the other the code option. The scanner simply holds the scan over the code for 3 seconds and voila, you are immediately connected. NOTE: It is not necessary for the person showing the code to scan the other persons code, you are both connected.