Lawyers ask me all of the time what they can do with LinkedIn once their profile is posted. Some lawyers I think are just putting up the profile and waiting for the contacts to “start happening,” but they can do much better than that for themselves.
Here are a few “do it yourself” tips for those who are wondering what else they can do with this social media tool.
First, you can search for specific contacts at target companies, and then determine “how you are connected” with them. If you have a very good friend who also happens to be a first degree connection in their network, then you might just have a personal connection that could turn a cold call into a warm one.
Second, if you are willing to pay for a business upgrade on LinkedIn, you can:
- check out who has viewed your profile (viewers might often be potential clients who are “just browsing”);
- get introduced to a limited number of the companies you are targeting via LinkedIn messages; and
- get useful background information on virtually anyone with the “reference search” tool.
Finally, if you want more of a step by step walk-thru on how to use LinkedIn, check out Amy Campbell’s excellent piece on the Legal Marketing Reader.
Also, check out Larry Bodine’s useful tips at his Law Marketing Blog.
Those are just a few suggestions to get you started. If you can learn to use just those few tools, then you can probably keep busy with marketing activity for quite a while.
