LinkedIn: Curiosity is Key

With so many social media avenues available and new ones popping up constantly, I find myself wondering how to best use LinkedIn for business. It was curiosity that first led me to Facebook and LinkedIn and I’ll admit that today the only other social media platform I use is Pinterest.

I like Facebook primarily for personal social media. Monarch has a Facebook page, so I now dabble in the business side too. Pinterest is my personal go-to place for ideas to spur my creativity—or make me feel really bad for not handcrafting my child’s valentine cards! It made the crossover into my business world when I needed inspiration and graphics for a recent speaking gig.

And then there’s LinkedIn. I signed up for LinkedIn as my primary professional social media tool, but in reality I don’t use it like I use Facebook or Pinterest. Perhaps I don’t know its potential. Beyond researching a colleague’s profile or surfing my contacts as if in a huge electronic rolodex, what can it do for me and my business today? How do you use LinkedIn? An article recently published by Target Marketing shed some light on how to use it to prospect clients, saying that the best practice is to use a systematic approach to create attention and engagement, converting that engagement to leads. Making the leap from engagement to lead is all about one principle: Curiosity. It suggests using compelling copywriting to engage prospects. Basic, high-level resume-writing, when used on LinkedIn, reaches the masses with the hope of piquing the interest of a few.

So, we’ll add “write curious copy” to our to-do list for LinkedIn and see if our rolodex in the sky brings us any new leads. How are you using LinkedIn? Share your ideas with us!

— Chellie Thompson, Cofounder, Monarch Media & Consulting, Inc.