One of the most useful tools on LinkedIn is the ability to ask and answer questions. If you ask a question, you get free business advice - sometimes from people who are experts in their fields.
I'm going to give you some more ways of using LinkedIn as a business tool, but first I thought I'd start out by showing you one way to use it.
I'm writing an article about "How to Recession Proof" your business - and I wanted some new sources. So I asked for advice using the "Questions" on LinkedIn - you can see my question - and read all the responses - by clicking the link.
In less than a week, I got 18 answers - and several of them are so good that I'm sending emails to the writers, to interview them for the article. Other tips I'll be posting on this blog - and I may write a special report about it - I'll let you know.
But let's get back to you and your business.
Are you worried about the recession? Do you have a strategic plan in place for how you will keep your sales on an even keel - or even increase them? What's your marketing strategy for the rest of 2008?
Read the answer that I chose as the "best answer" (and let me tell you, it wasn't easy making that decision!) and see if any of Michelle Dunn's answers resonate with you:
If you plan ahead you can survive the recession with a positive outlook and some specific actions.
1. Invest in education:
2. Network and make contacts online and offline:
3. Follow the market: Read the papers or watch the news, know what is happening and stay on top of it.
4. Pay off debt: If you can pay off any debt, now is the time to do it.
5. Cut back on extras: Seems simple, but do you need all the bells and whistles you have on your business or home phone or even your cell phone? Do you need to get Starbucks twice a day? Can you bring your lunch? Can you carpool to work?
6. Build your online presence: With a website, blog, newsletter or articles.
7. Have your clients sign a long term contract or review their existing contacts and renew them or extend them.
8. Specialize in something: Make yourself valuable, employers are more likely to keep an employee who can do more than one thing.
9. Turn your hobby into a part time business: for example selling items on ebay.
10. If you don’t have to sell your home or any property, don’t. You won’t get top dollar and will end up losing money.
11. Update your resume now, just in case.
12. Learn more about jobs that are recession proof, industries such as food, energy, vices (tobacco), entertainment, medical services, debt collection, security or alarm services.
13. Don’t cut prices, but reward your customers: During a recession business owners may think that cutting prices will help them and their customers. Don’t do it. Keep your prices as they are but offer your customers a coupon or a rewards program, to reward them for sticking with you during tough times.
14. Build value: Offer a buy one get one deal or buy one get something at 50% off. This increases your sales, where someone might have only purchased one item, with a deal like that it seems almost foolish to them not to take advantage of the deal and therefore purchase more from you
15. Get in contact with past customers who have not purchased from you in a while, this can activate a dormant account and possibly create more sales for you.
16. Follow up on any new leads and all old leads: Call them and see if they have a need for anything you offer.
17. Offer Outstanding customer service: To keep your customers you want to give them more than what they pay for.
18. Aggressively work on your marketing plan: send out press releases, keep yourself in the eyes of your target audience during the recession.
19. Tighten or update and keep on top of your credit policy: now is not the time to extend credit blindly, and it is the time to collect from any customers that owe you money.
Want more? Stay tuned, because in my next post, I'm going to tell you how you can create your own strategic plan in under an hour!
