Advice from LinkedIn Guru - Chris J Reed - on Social Selling

Indicator and NZ Leaders recently joined forces with special guest presenter, LinkedIn guru Chris J Reed, to host an evening in Westhaven.

Chris is the global CEO of Black Marketing, which is a NASDAQ listed company as part of The Marketing Group. He is considered one of the 100 most influential LinkedIn bloggers and has one of the world’s most viewed LinkedIn profiles with over 50,000 followers. Chris also authors LinkedIn Mastery for Entrepreneurs – Amazon’s No 1 selling book about LinkedIn - and is easily recognisable as he sports an impressive mohawk.

Chris gave us a full noise presentation on what to do with LinkedIn, and a lot of what not to do. With LinkedIn now registered as having 500 million users, it is undoubtedly a powerful force in the social selling space.

Big take outs from the night were to:

• Make sure you focus on your own LinkedIn page - as opposed to focusing on your company page - eliminate weird profile photos, make sure you smile on your profile image and take advantage of the use of background image.
• To get noticed on LinkedIn you need to get busy, make more comments, like more articles, post more content, engage individuals who are highly connected, and make sure you have a strapline description that provides a very clear understanding of what you do. Every time your profile is noticed, such as when you like an article, your one liner will be shown, so make the most of it.
• An area that a lot of companies fail to take advantage of is a lack of consistency among company members. You need to ensure all your company employees are describing your business in the same way. LinkedIn profiles are highly searchable, providing multiple social touchpoints, so you need to make the most of them.

It was a great night with lots of actionable take outs. You know a speaker has hit the mark when you have to stop questions after 45 minutes with half the crowd still with their hands up!

Thanks Chris, legendary night and now lots to do!