Want to know more customers through LinkedIn? Read LinkedIn Mastery for Entrepreneurs by Chris J Reed

LinkedIn is one of the most popular social networking site with 467 million members worldwide.

Yes, most people just identify LinkedIn as a platform to look for job.

But you can also leverage on it to grow your business and network too.

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Reading the book LinkedIn Mastery for Entrepreneurs by Chris J Reed has given me some ideas on how I can utilize LinkedIn to grow my business and my network.

LinkedIn is unlike Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat. At it’s core, it is a professional social networking platform so you will unlikely to see people posting what they had for breakfast or posting of the cute puppies. It’s mainly about business.

Chris said that everything you do on LinkedIn should be business focus but in a personable way. It is like when you go for a networking event. You don’t communicate on a corporate business level but you communicate on a human level to talk about business.

LinkedIn is also not a platform where you blatantly push for sales. Do not spam your followers and connections. Such actions will be frowned upon.

Do you go to a networking event and start selling to all the people there? No, I guess you will not do that. So don’t do that on LinkedIn. If you want to build a good reputation for yourself and your company.

I still received first message from newly connected person that directly offer their products or services. You know that they are just blasting out messages to all their connections without knowing what you do or whether you may need such products or services.

Sometimes it is frustrating.

Start by building a rapport with the new contact. Find common points to chat about. Most people on LinkedIn will chat about the business opportunity, job opportunity or asking for favor to refer to a connection of yours. It is not Facebook, where you start by saying he or she has a cute pet, their dresses, new hairstyle, their holidays etc.

You can start by knowing more about what the person do as a career or business. You can to look through their profile and ask them something about what they do.

Then you can proceed on to ask about whether they travel for work, have they visit your country (if they have not, do offer your hospitality if they do visit your country in the future). Basically, talk like you would to a new friend.

I love meeting people face to face. I have met lots of people in Singapore through LinkedIn. Some I initiated the meetup. Some they initiated the meetup.

I travel around the region, especially to Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Surabaya and I always arrange to meet up with some of my network from LinkedIn.

Some have become good friends. Some have become business partners. Some become my customers. Some I have helped linked up to other contacts of mine. Some are not interested to further the relationship.

Chris mentioned that he love meeting people virtually on LinkedIn, but he love it more in real life. I shared the same view as him.

LinkedIn is a great platform to find targeted people.

When I was working in the corporate, I used LinkedIn to find out more about my clients before meeting them. I get to understand them better by knowing what the like or post on LinkedIn. I get to know who are his or her connection and maybe I may know some of them. This is give me an upper hand in building rapport. It’s like, “Hey, I see that you are also connected to who and who. How did you guys meet?” It’s a great way to build instant rapport.

Even though he doesn’t really know that person, you can always say something good about the common contact to start warming up the conversation.

Chris also mentioned to be yourself. That means how you communicate on LinkedIn as you would as a real person. Well, sometimes it is not easy to express that in words. But I guess you will get the hang of it once you started writing.

Another thing that he mentioned in his book is to have fun. Business if fun! Sharing content is fun! I truly believe this. As human being, we love to share our experiences, knowledge and perspective on things. Sharing is caring, some say.

Start by liking people’s post. They like to know who like their posts.

Next, start with short comments about what you like about that post or maybe share your own experience.

You can start to share other people’s posting and add your own writing.

Through LinkedIn, you will never know who you will meet. It’s unlike what Forrest Gump said, life is a box of chocolate, you never know what you gonna get.

You may know who you are going to meet but you will not know how the relationship will turn out.

Without LinkedIn, I would never had the opportunity to meet so many people from various background. I would most probably know only people within my industry.

So I hope that I can meet some of you whenever I visit your country or we can also meet up in Singapore. Don't be surprised if I invite you out for coffee. And my intention is to get to know more people. My principle is Relationship First, Business Second. The coffee will be on me.

I would like to borrow 2 paragraphs from Chris’s book:

“This can often lead to a great debate, but all in a business-friendly context. It is the same on LinkedIn. Share, comment, like, discuss, and debate, but in a business context.

Yet, have fun in doing so. Business if fun; it’s our lives, it’s where we earn a living and where we build a reputation. It’s where we spend most of our lives, so enjoy it.”

This article is inspired by the book “LinkedIn Mastery for Entrepreneurs by Chris J Reed”.

So it’s now your turn to like, comment and share this article.

I don’t expect you to do it but I would appreciate it if you do it.

Thank you.

Sunny Lim