Using Linkedin’s Search Feature to Expand Your Business

Using Linkedin’s Search Feature to Expand Your Business
Promoting technology is boring. Productive tips for “Linked in” is invigorating
Linkedin’s search feature is NOT about finding contacts it is about finding a contact I NEEDED to know.  For those new to Linkedin, the site will track the connections between you and every other member of the site and will tell you how many “degrees” apart you are from any one contact. 1st degree means you know them personally, 2nd degree means you know someone who knows them, 3rd degree means they’re a friend of a friend of a friend…and so on.)    I’m using it to daisy chain my contacts and meet new people.
Here’s a quick example of what I mean.
Say I know “Company X”, and we’d been in touch with them for whatever reason. This time around, we’d stumbled across “Company Y”. Company Y offers up a very similar service, but with prices starting at under $5 a month, we knew they were perfectly targeted for the segment of demographics I needed to reach. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anyone at Company Y. We all know cold calls don’t tend to go over well, so I did what I now always do in these situations…I headed to Linkedin and ran a search. A simple search for the word Company Y turned up a slew of Company Y employees.
As I scrolled through the list I quickly stumbled across the VP of Marketing for Company Y. The first thing I did was look to see how many degrees separated us. Unfortunately, it was three. That meant I didn’t have any direct contacts who knew the VP of Marketing. Now, I could have used the Linkedin network to ask my contacts to introduce me to his contacts, but I’m not really comfortable going that route. That said, at least we had a name to work with, which made it much easier to call Company Y and seek out contact information for him. A few days later, I decided I wanted to try and get in touch with Kodak.com. Once again, I headed over to Linkedin, ran a search and was greeted with a list of possibilities.
There’s great value in those things. But for me, the real value of Linkedin is in using it to discover the hidden connections among my network and the rest of the world. You never know who you almost know. Why not find out?