I ran out of business cards this week, and took a strategic decision not to print more! LinkedIn was a key factor in my decision. Increasingly LinkedIn marketing is becoming a must have tool for any company working in the Business 2 Business arena, and a great tool for getting your name out and engaging with contacts. Once connected, contacts will be informed (via their update feed) every time you post on LinkedIn, whether it is a personal or company update, or more recently when you make a post on LinkedIn Pulse (More on that here). So every time you post – of course you you are being thoughtful and joined up about what you post, aren’t you? – your LinkedIn marketing network will see that content and so….
- Get a reminder that you are around
- Learn more about how you think, what you offer and where your strengths lie
So, back to the business cards: My thinking was that probably 98% of my business cards are used at networking events, where business cards have 2 purposes:
- Save you writing your email address down every time you meet someone
- As a tool to build your contact network
More broadly, they allow you to start a connection with someone you meet.
Skip the business card – go straight to LinkedIn!
Now, rather than exchanging cards with someone I meet, I go directly to LinkedIn on my smartphone and invite them to connect there and then. This way I have the information to contact them directly if needs be, but in addition they will also be updated automatically every time I post on LinkedIn – unlike the scenario with the business card, where they will probably file it and forget our meeting fairly quickly, That’s great after a reasonably in depth discussion, but what about the “Hi I’m Duncan, have my card” type engagements which are still common at most networking events? In my view, the vast majority of these are pretty much worthless. They are transient, and unless the recipient of your card happens to be actively looking for your skill at the time, you will be quickly forgotten. What’s more, simply pushing your card on someone is increasingly seen as disrespectful. Why should you want someone’s card if they don’t have the time or inclination to have at least a brief conversation? My aim at networking events is to focus on the real conversations, and then afterwards, to look through the delegate lists (often only available after the event), and select delegates where I believe there could be a relevant connection, even though we didn’t get the chance to speak on the day. I then go to LinkedIn and (assuming I can find them!) invite them to connect with the message “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to meet you at the …… event yesterday”, but I would like to add you to my linked In Network”. In my experience the majority of these invitations are accepted thus creating a connection with these people, and an increased audience for my LinkedIn marketing content! Assuming that my content has value (hopefully it does!), there is at least a chance that some of these will remember me, and what I do, as and when they have a need! There is much more to using LinkedIn as a marketing tool, and we will cover this in more detail in future articles, but much of its benefit is based on having a growing and more importantly RELEVANT list of connections. I believe my lack of business cards and my switch in strategy will enhance this process!
