Board Guru™ Tracy Houston of Board Resource Services, LLC was kind enough to share her insights about how to use LinkedIn for board networking with Women on Business. She offers some great suggestions to help you leverage the leading professional social networking site to begin executive-level conversations with other business leaders.
Following is Tracy’s advice. She includes a link to join her Board Guru LinkedIn Group, which is targeted to both directors with “from the trenches” experience and next generation directors:
Dedicated time networking on LinkedIn is well spent. Once I reached the level of posting strategic content based on my expertise in LinkedIn groups (once a week with content from my Board Guru™ eBooks), I had my first client within 90 days in the fourth quarter of 2012.
I do not think that the fundamentals of how a director search is done will change dramatically; I do think that a focused effort on LinkedIn will provide visibility and introduction. For example, you can join my Board Guru™ LinkedIn group and meet executive recruiters, sitting directors and director candidates. For more tips, see Becoming a Public Company Director: Social Media Strategies
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To help you begin your own executive-level conversation on LinkedIn, here are a few ideas:
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Use your content. Write a piece of 200 – 300 words on a board-focused topic you are an expert on. Add a call to conversation at the end. One of the best examples of this type of post is done by Lucy P. Marcus on LinkedIn.
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Share event key thoughts. Contribute some of the substantive thoughts, what you learned, what surprised you from a conference or webinar you attended.
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Best Practices. Pick a topic and share the story with the best practices used or learned.
What do you think? If you’re new to LinkedIn, you can check out my book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
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