I’ve already written about using LinkedIn for business and this article is great for people who are just starting out with LinkedIn. Now I want to talk about using LinkedIn as one of your essential tools to really lift your business, and help you make the most of your networking.

You can use LinkedIn as a business development tool in many different ways. Here are the three I want to concentrate on here:

• Developing your status as an expert and a lovely person
• Reach out with your brand
• More direct business development

Developing your status as an expert and a lovely person

I’m assuming that you have already given some thought to your profile, and that you’re keeping it up to date. Lovely photo, you look good there, by the way.

The next thing to do is to develop a good number of testimonials on your LinkedIn profile page. I just had a look at a handful of my LinkedIn contacts, and they averaged 3 recommendations, which is not enough to form a decision on. 3 recommendations looks a little half hearted. Potential clients will be looking at your LinkedIn profile, and trying to decide if you’re the person they should work with. So you need to make sure that other people are telling them that they should give you lots of money. LinkedIn is the perfect place to get people to write good things about you.

Remember that you want a good handful of recommendations, don’t be one of those people that have hundreds of recommendations as no one will ever read them, and it’s either going to look like complete overkill, or like you’ve spent your life asking people to recommend you. I have 20 on my page, which is more than enough to tell you that I’m one of the good guys.

Reach out with your brand

You want people in your network to remember you, understand what you do, and think well of you. That way, they will recommend you, buy from you and create opportunities. And LinkedIn can be a fantastic tool for reminding people of who you are, and getting a chance to get your brand in front of some new people.

If you’ve only really been using LinkedIn as an online cv, and a way of collecting some contacts, you’ll probably have missed some of the great new features they’ve been adding. Have a look around at some of the LinkedIn groups and work out which ones apply to you, and are relatively active. By joining up, you’ll be able to see what other people are up to, and learn what’s going on. It’s better to lurk a little first to get the hang of things, and then start joining in debates or helping out with referrals and advice.

More direct business development

One of the things I often recommend to clients is to put together a hit list of the people they want to work with – your target clients. I’ve just done this with a client who wants to sell to businesses based in Brighton who do business outside the city, for example. We’ve now got a spreadsheet of names to start contacting. Now, I wouldn’t advise using LinkedIn to contact these people – you need to be a lot more subtle than that in your hunt. However, LinkedIn is invaluable in finding the people you want, and getting lots of interesting information about them.

Maybe you know that you want to sell something to Giraffe Ltd. You know from their website that Mr Frog works there. So you look up Mr Frog on LinkedIn, and find out that he used to work for Hippo Ltd, and where your friend Ms Lioness still works. So not only do you know exactly what Mr Frog and Giraffe Ltd do, and that he is the right person to talk to, you can also ask Ms Lioness to either introduce you, or if this isn’t appropriate (maybe Ms Lioness doesn’t know him that well) she can give you some more really valuable information, such as does he like phone or email, or where does he hang out.

This approach only works well if you’re looking for high value business to business sales, but in this area LinkedIn can be a remarkable tool.

The current campaign to keep Radio 6 reminds me of the campaign a few years ago to keep Heinz salad cream. Heinz threatened to stop making salad cream, because it had fallen in popularity, and this made headlines for a few days. People who had not bought salad cream for years suddenly became all nostalgic about the taste of their childhoods, and a campaign was launched to save salad cream. Of course, when we look behind the scenes here, we can see that this must have been a great big PR stunt – companies stop making products all the time if they stop producing enough profit for them, and it doesn’t make headline news. In the normal course of events, salad cream would have just disappeared from the shelves, and the 5 people who were still buying it would have just not been able to find it anymore, and they too would have switched to eating mayonnaise.

In order to make headline news, someone had to have engineered the PR. Someone had to write a press release about Heinz stopping making salad cream, and get journalists interested in the story. And of course, this had to happen before the end of production, so that people could then rush to the shops and buy the noxious yellow stuff.

With all the fuss about Radio 6, we see a number of the same elements. We have a product which has disappointing levels of sales, or in this case listeners. I regularly listen to Radio 6, and had been very surprised to find out a few weeks before that the listener figures were so low. The brilliant Adam and Joe show on Saturday mornings was the most popular show, but only had 160,000 listeners, and some of the other shows only had around 5000. So, the BBC has a problem child, their little radio station is a bit of a runt. And they’re doing a strategic review and have to think about whether this is the best use of their money.

I’m not sure whether the campaign was started as part of an official marketing strategy by the BBC, it seems more likely that as rumoured, it was started by a BBC employee – I’m guessing someone who works at Radio 6. Radio 6 has been promoted to millions of people who have probably never heard of it or thought of listening before. And I bet that their listener numbers have jumped this week just as dramatically as the sales figures for salad cream did when Heinz threatened to stop making it. In marketing terms, there are few techniques as effective as making people feel that they might have something taken away from them.

So I can admire this as a marketing technique, and you can argue that the ends justify the means, if Radio 6 is saved and lots of new people get to listen to a wider mix of music. But I’m not convinced that this is an ethical way to do things, so I won’t be wearing any Radio 6 ribbons just yet.

This week I’ve been helping people with boring businesses. That is, the businesses themselves aren’t boring, nor are the people who run them, but the businesses look just the same as their competitors, and there’s nothing to make someone want to buy from them or even notice them.  Any differentiation has just been on the nebulous ideas that “we’re nice chaps” or “we’re really good at what we do.”  But of course, everyone thinks that they are a nice chap, or that they’re the best, but you don’t have any evidence of it.  I’m really lovely, and amazing at what I do, but how do I prove it to you?

Anyway, people don’t spend money with you because you’re nice.  Particularly at the moment, with the new rule that it’s bad to let any cash out of the door, people are only going to spend money if there’s an amazing reason for it.

To get people to buy from you, you have to get them to notice you first.  My friend Aida is this one that you want – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. She’s great Aida, a lovely girl.  And you won’t get even the first letter of Aida’s name if you’re boring – no one will even notice you.

Boring businesses include:

Many people set up a business as if they’ve been to see the careers advisor at school. I’m going to be a nurse, fireman, trainer.  They see what they’re good at, and there’s a category of business which they fit into.  No wonder they’re all the same – they’ve been designed to be the same as everyone else.  Does this sound familiar?

I’ve worked with lots of these businesses, and my first starting point is always how do we make this into something remarkable? We need something which makes people notice it, and even more importantly, talk about it, tell stories about it.  I’ve written elsewhere about the marketing advantages of running a remarkable business , and Seth Godin comes back to this point time and time again in his writing about marketing and business.

My technique when faced with a boring business is to dig deep into what’s really going on with the business.  Is there a niche of customers that the business is really good at servicing?  Concentrate on that seam, establish a reputation for excellence and that reputation will spill over into everything else you do.

Do the business owners have something that other people don’t have?  Jacky Misson at Nido Marketing has made telesales (a boring business if there ever was one) into something exciting, purely by force of her personality.  Because Jacky is so excited about her business, and the act of getting on the phone, she makes you want to engage Nido – her enthusiasm and sense of fun is infectious.

Is there an idea you can steal from somewhere else?  I recently told a café owner that I wouldn’t eat in her café – and she said she wouldn’t either!  No wonder she isn’t making any money.  I set her some homework to go to some great cafes and work out what makes them great – and then we can work on some ideas to steal, once we know what works somewhere else.

Have a look at your business and see what’s there under the surface, or what you can creatively swipe from other people.  Make it different, make it remarkable and then you can work out how to tell people about it.

I’m a big fan of networking to build your business.  I’ve written about how to get started with networking, what to expect when you go to a networking group, and here’s a list of which business networking groups to go along to in Brighton.

So here I want to go over a few things not to do when you’re trying to build your networks and make friends with people, especially when you’re at a business networking event.

While it’s great to follow up and say hi after you’ve met someone, it’s really not a good idea to send this “damning with faint praise” email.

“Just a short follow-up note to say what a pleasure it was to meet you at the BHCC Breakfast on Friday.  Your work sounds interesting and I will bear you in mind for those of my clients who could be in need of your type of service.” I’m really not expecting any referrals from this guy, who has obviously sent the same email to everyone he met that morning, and possibly everyone he has ever met in his whole life, including his mum.

Then there are the people who “work the room” and collect as many cards as they possibly can, without taking any real interest in anyone, and certainly not making any friends.  If you can meet 3 people and have a genuine conversation with each of them, then you’ve had a successful event. Networking is about making relationships, not collecting people like they were football stickers for your album.

And there’s the people who are talking to me, but make it clear that they’re desperately trying to find someone less boring.  If you’re looking out for someone in particular at an event, why not ask the person you’re talking to help you find them. They might be able to introduce you, or help you out with this.  And if I really am boring (I know I can go on about the joy of spreadsheets) and you want to move on, then just say “Shall we mingle?”  Don’t just keep looking over your shoulder for someone better.

When someone offers you their card, please don’t refuse to take it, as I saw someone do to a friend of mine recently.  This guy thought he was doing my pal a favour, as he didn’t want to take a card unnecessarily, but he ended up being ridiculed by me, and upsetting my friend.  You can always throw it away later (although you never know if that person might be useful, so I wouldn’t) but there’s really no need to be rude.  Think about how you might feel if someone did that to you – it wouldn’t feel good.

If you’re desperate to sell something, then please don’t be so very obviously desperate.  The whole point of this networking thing is to make friends with people who may buy from you or encourage their friends to buy from you.   If you rush round telling people about your product, or shoving leaflets at people, they will be disinclined to buy from you, even if you’ve got the cure for cancer ready to be dispensed.

Right, that’s enough ranting about poor behaviour for now…I shall be watching out for more dodgy techniques and will probably rant some more.  Feel free to add your comments about what not to do at networking events.

Once upon a time, coffee was just a warm beige liquid, maybe with some undissolved granules of Gold Blend on the top.  Then we went all New York, and discovered cappuccino, latte and the delights of the caffeine high.  There was suddenly a rash of coffee shops across the UK, with leather armchairs and noisy espresso machines.  They were exciting and different…for a very short time.  Now we take Starbucks et al for granted, and while the ubiquity of the décor and the fancy names for the coffee may reassure some people who want the same frothy beige liquid in every coffee shop they go to, it becomes very difficult for anyone who wants to attract regular customers to make their coffee shop the one that everyone wants to go to.

This is the same issue that almost every small business faces – most of us are selling something which is very similar to what everyone else is selling. We might know that it’s the best, but how can we be sure, and how do we get this across to everyone else.  How do we make the thing that we care about, that made us start selling this product in the first place, into something that someone else is going to want to buy.

You’d be amazed at how many people don’t seem to think about this, or even to give a damn.  Of course, I’m just banging on about differentiation or unique selling point, which is a pretty basic business concept, but one that unfortunately, many businesses seem to ignore.  Many people are continuing to sell the same old mediocre crap that everyone else does.  They’re selling a commodity – and the only way to make money out of a commodity is to sell lots and lots of it.  Which is what Starbucks does – they sell a lot of coffee, and make big money.  Or they have historically – it may be that the novelty of New York style coffee shops is beginning to pall and fade now as we see Starbucks coffee shops closing down.

So here’s my advice – if you want to make decent money, do something that is worthy of commenting on. I’ve had two coffees today, both in independent coffee shops.  The first was probably one of the best cappuccinos I’ve ever had in my life.  Creamy, thick foam, and wafer thin real chocolate floating on top, which of course I had to immediately eat with a spoon, like a child being given the first icecream of the summer.  And when I told the waitress how much I enjoyed it, she blushed and told me that she makes the coffee with 2 shots because she thinks it tastes better.  She cared whether I had a good cup of coffee.

Now I’m sure she’s on minimum wage + 50p like every other waitress, but I felt good because she cared.  The double shot may have helped as well.

The marginal cost of the chocolate and the extra shot may have cost the cafe around 16p, mostly for the extra shot.  16p for me to bother to take the time to tell the world about the quality of the coffee, and to make sure that I’ll go back there.

How many 16p’s does it take for you to make sure that what you sell is worth talking about – how many 16p’s does it take for you to buy a customer for life?  And how much is that customer really worth for you?