I first joined LinkedIn many, many years ago, when it was probably the first and only ‘social networking’ site available. No one really seemed to know how to use it, but that has all changed now and virtually every professional person has a LinkedIn profile.

How does LinkedIn work for Appletree?

Most of our clients are within an hour’s drive of our offices. However, we also have a client in Switzerland! Back in 2009 Matt got in touch with me, because LinkedIn told him that we might know each other. We actually went to University together many years before. Because my profile and his both say that we attended Nottingham University, LinkedIn thought it was time we connected again. My LinkedIn profile explains that we help coaches, consultants and trainers to find new clients and to grow their businesses. Matt emailed me to ask if I could ask his consultancy firm with just that.

Would I have approached Matt as a prospective client, if LinkedIn hadn’t suggested it? Probably not, as I hadn’t spoken to him for years and targeting my old Uni friends wasn’t high on my list of marketing activities. Would I have approached a consulting firm in Switzerland? No, because to date all my clients have been in the UK. But because Matt found me through LinkedIn and could see how I could help him, he got in touch. The fact that he works abroad doesn’t matter, as we do all our work over the phone and email – apart from meeting once a year in London. LinkedIn is a great way to expand your market and work with a wider range of clients.

Is your LinkedIn profile up to date?

How does LinkedIn work for our clients?

One of our other clients runs a sales training company. They’ve been around for a long time and are very good at what they do. When they asked for our help in growing their business, we looked at all sorts of marketing activities and realized that they weren’t using LinkedIn as well as they could. The Directors were all on LinkedIn, but one of them didn’t have a photo on his profile and one of them was using a holiday snap instead of a professional photo. There was no consistency between their profiles – they were all saying different things about the same company that they work for. There was some work to be done, to improve their profiles; and then we started using LinkedIn to help them keep in touch with their contacts.

Every day, each of the three Directors sends out a short update on LinkedIn – details of some of the work they’re doing that week, the type clients they like working with, or a link to an article or blog post on their website. We talk to the Directors on a regular basis to find out what they’re up to; then we write the updates and schedule them to go out. This means that when our clients are busy travelling around the world running training programmes, they can still keep in touch with their contacts. The result? They’ve started to receive calls and emails from lapsed clients who want to buy from them again. Through LinkedIn, they’re growing their business.

Are you using LinkedIn to tell your contacts what you’re up to?