LinkedIn sits idly by collecting dust for most individuals. About two years ago, a business associate asked me if my profile was on LinkedIn. I said no and didn’t think anything about it. He went on to tell me how he swears by Linkedin and how many connections he made on the social yet business website. I decided to try and see for myself what it does thinking it would give me some sort of huge advantage to grow my technology consulting business since technology services were in a slump.
Putting gas in the tank of LinkedIn
I jumped on it. I took the time to upload all positions that I had done to provide services to America’s leading technology and consumer brand companies. You name it, I worked it: Apple Computer, Lucas Arts and Entertainment (makers of Star Wars), Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Verizon, etc. I was excited and with the economy being so low with hard to come by contracts anymore, I felt excited that this would now give me the inside track to decision makers who would see my resume and their eyes would pop out when they saw all of these big names on my LinkedIn profile. PLEASE! All EGO!
I waited for the first week thinking people would do a search, come across my profile, and my phone would be ringing off the hook with contract offers. I gave it another week. Maybe it takes a month. Nothing happened. So, as a former division 1 quarterback, I decided I would use my aggressive tactics and go after people instead of sitting passively waiting for them to find me the way I had grown my business in the Silicon Valley to over $100,000 per month in revenue. In those days, I never marketed my technology service business at all. I was a handful of people who knew the technology worldwide. Business came to me.
I joined groups that were directly in my niche offering. I then started discussions in my group where people didn’t really talk much. This simple act of becoming a non-passive communicator in these group discussions and leading discussions branded me as a thought leader. Once I became a thought leader, my reputation started to grow beyond the corporations listed on my resume. Once the reputation grew, business connects were now drawn to me and I started to grow the business itself.
