LinkedIn’s Big Change: How Showcase Pages Will Impact Your Company Page – Benefit or Burden? By Dean R. DeLisle
April 2, 2014
Back to Basics – How To Create A Marketing Plan For Your Business
April 22, 2014

Forward Progress Client Reaches Top Ranking on LinkedIn for “Social Selling Index” by Dean R. DeLisle

The CEO for one of our longstanding clients in the Real Estate industry, RealEstateAuctions.com, contacted us a few weeks ago with some exciting news:

“I was on the phone today with an executive from LinkedIn. They called to let me know that our company had the second highest realestateauctions.comsocial selling index rating out of 350 of the top LinkedIn power user organizations that exist on LinkedIn.”

Brian Kuzdas, Founder and CEO of RealEstateAuctions.com has lead this initiative from the top down based on our Social Jack core methodologies and we can explain some of the simple things he followed here.

Before we address the LinkedIn aspect of our training, our training is also relevant to your company culture and leadership. Now, you might be thinking this crazy, however, it’s true that we have found over the years that you can achieve greatness with your organization and you don’t need a large company to dominate.  Nonetheless, you do need to follow some principals in your culture and it all starts with your leadership.

Leadership, Culture, and People

We always say that mastering Social Networks starts with Mindset – an initiative from the top down. In most cases from our studies, this starts with the CEO. We have some clients where this happens quickly and some where it could take decades. Many ask us about what industries are most benefited by Social Networks, and respond with the idea that any company with leadership that has the right mindset and promotes a social culture.  We discuss this in great depth in our training, however for now let’s achieve a basic understanding, commitment to change, and being social. The funny thing is that many separate social networking from people and make it a technology thing, however look up “social,” “networking,” and “social networking” and they all involve “people.”

Network Science (US Army)

Yes. You read that right.  We use Network Science developed by the US Army and it has to do with setting targets (like in target marketing), connecting your nodes (people), forming aligned clusters (teams), and becoming and linking to Hubs (large clusters with targets). So not to slow down the reading here we will let you branch to our training or to the US Army at this point. So take a look at social sellingthis link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_science .

Communication Principals (Social and Emotional Intelligence)

Now, you’re asking “When do we get to LinkedIn?”  Hang in there!  There are many communication principals to apply, however we subscribe to Social and Emotional Intelligence, authenticity, and the building of relationships as core principals. From the success rate of our students, we have also proven that this fits nicely with those who want to triple their referrals either as a professional, team, or organization. Bottom line, relationships and communication work online just like they work offline and people that adapt and work on this as an organization will certainly win at this game and dominate as a force in their industry.

LinkedIn Profiles – Looking Good and Keywords

This one is obvious, however we need to speak about it briefly. Make sure you have a plan for your company and professional LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn Profileto work with your keyword search strategy. These are the words and phrases, with which you want to get found in the world by your target prospects. Then make sure your teams update their profiles and by all means make them complete. There is nothing worse than looking at a company and seeing half complete LinkedIn profiles in today’s world. In fact, we have a whole reputation business out of building profiles for professionals and companies because so many get stuck here. It’s worth the time or the money to do it – either way – do it!

Engage, Engage, Engage

Just like with any business that wants to be “in relationship” and “connected” to its clients and prospects, engagement is required. So make sure you have a plan for engagement. Our Social Jack training has always had a daily plan which only requires 20 minutes a day, LinkedInto be successful, in relationship, and attract referrals. We have marketing, business development, customer service, and recruiting as some of the top tracks that people follow, however you can even create your own. Top Fortune 500 companies are also making big moves to create a more solid team environment with internal network development, then surging those network to external clusters and hubs as described in the Network Science portion of this post. The bottom line is getting your entire team or organization aligned and engaging with other target professionals and target organizations.

For More Information on LinkedIn or Social Selling Contact Us

In summary, you too can have what Brian Kuzdas and the RealEstateAuction.com team has; you just have to follow these steps and commit to success in this new world of Social Networks  (LinkedIn in this case). If you want to learn more about our systems you can view a few of our sample classes shown below, visit us at www.ForwardProgress.net, attend our Upcoming Events, visit www.SocialJack.com, www.LinkedinOnDemand.com or google us for more resources. We hope you embrace this before your competitors do.  This is a brave new world and not going away anytime soon.