Leveraging LinkedIn: A Philadelphia Direct Marketing Association Luncheon

Direct Choice is an active participant in a number of professional organizations in the Philadelphia region as a way to meet and share our expertise with members of one of the strongest business communities in the world. Account Director Kathy Bademan is the company’s representative at these events and will offer her insights on important discussions shared at these events.

Last week’s  PDMA luncheon was a seminar presented by Brynne Tillman, President and COO of Business Development University on using LinkedIn to build your business. This apparently is a popular topic in the Direct Marketing community because the result was the most highly attended PDMA luncheon yet (extra chairs were required).

LinkedIn continues to be the world’s largest professional network (with hardly any competition) at over 120 million registered users and 33.9 million unique visitors in the last month statistics were made public (June 2011). It has steamrolled right past MySpace to become the second-largest social networking site, and with participation up 63% over the past year, depending on the long-term projections of where social media is headed, even the mighty Facebook might not stay on top for long.

There’s no doubt that LinkedIn is powerful. But the real question is, “How do you and your business benefit from all that power?” Brynne Tillman, who has over 20 years in business development and sales training, has created and taught lead generation and client acquisition programs for many companies, including Dun and Bradstreet, Progress Leasing, Kinko’s and Vantage Point Bank. Her primary focus is coaching sales teams, and working with non-selling professionals who are responsible for client acquisition. There is nothing she loves more than developing sales and networking plans, LinkedIn strategies, implementation and measuring the sales process!

Among the topics she covered included:

1. Five ways to complete your profile so that it represents you well and gets you noticed;
2. Two ways to post content and update your status;
3. Two ideas in leveraging your newsfeeds;
4. Two ways to organize your connects;
5. Two ways to export your connects;
6. Tow to follow companies and create new ones;
7. How to search for prospects and request introductions.

In addition to the Brynne’s presentation, registrants received a comprehensive workbook that help attendees develop an action plan for using LinkedIn quickly and efficiently.

The message and information was well received. Comments heard after the meeting include:

“That was the best webinar/seminar I have been to in a long time.”
“This was great! I want to listen to it all over again because there was so much information.”
“I hope my son’s game is cancelled tonight so I can go home and play with my LinkedIn.”

Brynne did a great job, and the aspect that rung the truest to us was the confirmation that the process we have undertook for using the medium is not only considered a best practice by an industry leader, but puts us ahead of the curve of our competitors. LinkedIn is a powerful tool, and as it continues to evolve, so will our abilities to use if effectively.

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Direct Choice Inc. is a full-service direct marketing agency that has worked with national and regional brands in a wide variety of vertical markets. In addition to this blog, you can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.