Business Development

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As we are in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, online networking has never been more important to stay top of mind and build connections.

There are three essential building blocks of LinkedIn – your profile, your connections and your interaction on the platform. I find that many professionals focus on the first one – creating a strong profile, but they don’t take it to the next level by strategically building their network (meaning sending and accepting connection requests) and maintaining a consistent presence through liking, commenting and sharing posts.

Here are some ways you can fire on all cylinders when it comes to strengthening your LinkedIn presence. Remember that LinkedIn is where business professionals gather, do research and look for information especially now.

While we all have to do our part by staying apart physically, online networking and content marketing are tools that every professional and company should use to market themselves (in an appropriate way) and their company. The worst thing you can do is to do nothing right now. We will all be relying on social media more than ever before in the foreseeable future, so it would be wise to embrace it now.

The most important question you should ask yourself right now is “how can we support our clients and our profession during this time”? Let that be your guiding light.

Here are some ways you can build relationships during the era of social distancing and quarantining. They just require a more human and online touch.

You may not always have a steady stream of referrals to give out to your referral sources, and here’s what to do when you feel stressed out about that.

Here’s a great article by Sue-Ella Prodovonich on referrals and how to pay them back when you can’t refer them work at that time.

As she says, “referrals are the lifeblood of most professional services firms.” Think about idea of mutual reciprocity and being helpful. Invest in your relationships in a way that provides something of value to them and you will strengthen the relationship until you can make an introduction that may lead to a referral. Remember that referrals are never guaranteed – but you can certainly make connections and go out of your way to help people. No one forgets when someone goes above and beyond for them. Read on for Sue-Ella’s tips. 

In what is a major game changer on LinkedIn, the platform has rolled out its new Events option to all company pages as part of its efforts to assist companies dealing with the impact of COVID-19.

With so many in-person industry events and conferences either canceled or postponed as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, the new LinkedIn Events feature is helpful to find meaningful ways to connect and promote virtual events to your followers, such as meetups, coffee breaks, happy hours, CLE programs or webinars.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the sadness and uncertainty of the current public health crisis, but so many of us have so much for which we should be thankful and grateful.

It’s important to look on the bright side of things and count our blessings in a time when it’s so easy to feel sad and have a loss of control.

I hope this list inspires you to think about the bright moments in your life too.

As so much writing is being done right now during the COVID-19 outbreak, causing a content tsunami for clients who likely feel overwhelmed at the sheer volume of options to read, I wanted to highlight a few key points to keep in mind to draft stronger alerts and blog posts.

Promoting the successes of others in your network can build stronger relationships and lead to new business, especially now when we are relying so much on online networking to keep close with our connections. Here are some tips for how to shine a spotlight on others.