It's Business, Not Social™

STANDOUT. Develop and increase your Significance over Time with Authenticity, Networking, Dedication, Open-mindedness, Understanding, and Tenacity.

Colleen McKenna

• Publisher: Intero Advisory
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780578848761
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

Business professionals worldwide need to pay close attention to how they craft their reputation and personal brand. They need an engaged community of peers, influencers, decision-makers, and mentors to create new opportunities. And they need to engage purposefully to stand out.

Woven together, your brand, community, and voice expand your credibility, career, and business opportunities. In an ever-changing global economy, your future may depend on you taking action. Your career is yours to shape whether you are an entrepreneur, emerging professional, or leading in an enterprise-level organization.

This book isn't just about careers, though. It's for anyone in business who needs to influence and gain credibility with clients, investors, boards, members, donors, sponsors, and more. It's Business, Not Social™ combines strategy, tactics, best practices, and real-world examples to provide you with a framework to study and apply regardless of your business initiative.

CHAPTER 1

You Don’t Have to Like It

STANDOUT

Seek opportunity with an open mind and curious nature.

I know very few CEOs, business owners, leaders, or experienced professionals who like social media. I get that. It's partially why from Intero's early days, I differentiated us by continually reminding people that we are not a social media agency and that LinkedIn is not Facebook for adults or anything even remotely like it.

Call me a purist. That's okay. And, yes, a case can be made that LinkedIn is more like Facebook all the time. I encourage our clients to block that out, swipe on past those silly posts and remember why they are there.

LinkedIn is by far the most informative business tool I've leveraged in my decades-long sales career.

Why?

First, it’s user-generated or as close to user-generated as you can get.

Second, people who use LinkedIn are there for a common purpose.

Third, you can glean gobs of important information about your peers, potential talent, worthy rivals, professional organizations, and alumni all in one place as quickly as your fingers will type.

So, when you tell me you don’t like social media, you will likely see me nod my head and agree with you. However, I’m not talking about social media.

And when you tell me that you don’t like LinkedIn because it’s all salespeople trying to pitch you things you think you don’t need, or that it’s not intuitive and it’s not valuable because over the years you’ve connected with so many people you don’t know, I will also nod again.

But it’s an inevitable part of doing business.

You do it because it’s part of your job.

If you hope to position yourself as a leader, an industry-leading company, or a sought-after job candidate, you want to hire the best talent or work with the best clients, you need to take your personal brand and LinkedIn seriously.

You need to be known and you need to set an example for those you lead.

Many of the clients we’ve worked with over the years realize that the reason they didn’t like LinkedIn was because they didn’t take the time to understand it. But when someone sat with them and explained its nuances and power, their perspective and attitude changed.

The least informed are often the first to throw something under the bus. My team and I see this over and over and it’s why we love coaching and training. It gives us an opportunity to demonstrate the power and depth of LinkedIn’s platform.

More than anything, we want CEOs and leaders to know about LinkedIn so that they can ask their teams the right questions.

Consider how you show up

Are you assessing how you show up to others?

Are you presenting yourself in a way that attracts others?

Are you familiar with how LinkedIn and Google work on your behalf?

Are you interested in the success of others?

Your goal should be to control the narrative and showcase who you are.

Ask your team better questions

Rather than ask, "Do you use LinkedIn?” ask your team the following questions:

•"How are you building your personal brand on LinkedIn?"

•"Are you connecting with customers, prospects, influencers, industry leaders?"

•"How are you engaging with those people?"

•"Have you set up any calls or meetings (Zoom included) with those people?”

•"Have you put a messaging sequence in place?"

•"Are you sharing our company’s content?”

•“Have you closed any new business?"

•"Have you expanded business as a result of connecting to new people in your customer accounts?"

•"Are you asking for introductions?"

•"What's your connection acceptance rate?"

•"How many people express an interest in talking with you?"

•"Have you recommended any clients lately?"

•"Are you downloading your 1st level connections and looking for new opportunities and unintended gaps?"

Those questions and the answers that follow will provide enormous insight and conversation. They are open-ended questions that will spark next steps and also let others know you are well informed and understand how LinkedIn works best.

That's a win-win.

There are ways to manage LinkedIn so it works on your behalf. I’m not suggesting you respond every time you receive a connection request or notification of a mention. I am suggesting that you carve out time to know how to use LinkedIn, ensure that your sales, marketing, and recruiting teams are highly proficient, and that you’re building a strong network of C-level peers.

Save the liking for other things.

If you appreciate what it can do for you and your company, that's good enough.

	TAKEAWAY
	Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it doesn't have value for you and your business.
	ACTION
	Take the time to understand it. Commit to a couple of hours and click around. Don’t do anything specific. Just observe.
	TIP
	Hire someone to show you what you need to know to further your initiatives.
	OBSERVATION
	Everyone starts out not knowing what to do. It’s OK. Making a concerted effort to being more informed and learning is the key.

Depending on your role and desired outcomes, you may need to learn different areas. For example, some recruiters are ninjas on LinkedIn Recruiter but completely negle...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword By Dean Minuto
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: You Don't Have to Like It
• Chapter 2: You According to Google
• Chapter 3: Paranoid, Private, or Confident?
• Chapter 4: Learning Keeps You Relevant
• Chapter 5: Go Beyond the Status Quo
• Chapter 6: You Are More Than Your Bio
• Chapter 7: You Are More Than Influential: You are Significant
• Chapter 8: The Power of Weak Ties
• Chapter 9: The Relevancy of Your Network
• Chapter 10: Random or Purposeful?
• Chapter 11: Personalize, Personalize, Personalize
• Chapter 12: Before You Automate, Pause and Consider
• Chapter 13: How Do You Measure Social Influence?
• Chapter 14: Don’t Believe Your Own Press
• Chapter 15: Getting to Know Someone
• Chapter 16: Your Customers See You
• Chapter 17: All Selling (Hmm, Influence) is Social
• Chapter 18: Ghosting Goes Both Ways in Recruiting and Sales
• Chapter 19: Every Referral is an Opportunity
• Chapter 20: Spark That Conversation
• Chapter 21: The Economic Opportunity You Deserve
• Resources