How Odd
LinkedIn was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. It received financing from numerous venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital, but in the years following its inception, it struggled. Reid’s vision was to create a networking platform that would enable professional advisors to connect but it lacked a methodology.
In March 2006 LinkedIn achieved its first month of profitability but it was not the success Hoffman would have hoped, even though by 2007, it had 10 million users on the platform, and opened offices around the world, including India, Australia and Ireland.
On December 15, 2008, Jeff Weiner was invited to join LinkedIn as interim president. He repositioned LinkedIn as a giant job board, where professionals could recruit other professionals and were prepared to pay for the services. Under Jeff’s direction, job seekers could post their CVs online and employers could post their job listings for a fee.
In October 2011 LinkedIn was ranked No.10 on the Silicon Valley Insiders' top 100 most valuable startups. LinkedIn had arrived not as a giant networking site, but as a giant job centre.
From 2015, the company’s revenue primarily came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals. LinkedIn also introduced its own ad portal named LinkedIn Ads to let companies advertise on their platform to its users.
Jeff Weiner was also instrumental in the sale of LinkedIn to Microsoft for $26.2 billion.
However, most professionals still use LinkedIn as a networking tool to expand their professional connections. They scroll down the users and ‘connect’ with those who have an ‘interesting’ job title or work for a firm which they recognise.
However, the users are not given guidance as to who they should connect with, and it is very much an ad hoc random choice.
Signing up for a premium membership brings some benefits, such as being able to see who has viewed your profile and they can also have unlimited searches.
Premium members who are job seekers however, can benefit from applicant insights, salary guidlines and AI-powered tools for job hunting.
Those who understand how to utilise LinkedIn can expand their network and with it grow their business to achieve astonishing success.
The most notable example of what can be achieved using LinkedIn is James Quarmby a Top 10 Legal LinkedInfluencer.
James was the creator and Founding Partner of Stephenson Harwood’s Private Wealth team. He formed the department in 2014 in London, and in the eleven years since then, it has grown to comprise 55 lawyers across six jurisdictions: the UK, France, the UAE, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. This is a notable achievement.
He has 14,201 followers and posts interesting snippets of information as far as I can see, daily, thereby remaining top of mind.
When I was appointed head of the Simmons & Simmons team, I was informed that if I did not achieve a City rate of profit, my team and I would need to look elsewhere for work. I had two infant children so could not work longer hours. I was given no mentor, no guide and no manual as to what I needed to do to make a profit.
In hindsight, this proved to be a benefit. To make a profit I discovered I needed to work for the type of clients who would benefit from teh services of a City Law firm and its numerous skills and expertise. My focus shifted to international entrepreneurship, and my chosen area of expertise was the succession of decision-making, for which I coined the term Family Governance.
Within two years, the department, although not large, had attracted international entrepreneurs who not only used our services, but also the services of several other departments in the firm, such as litigation, company commercial and real estate.
All professionals can benefit from gaining connections from LinkedIn, but if in addition they want to smash the 80:20 rule and increase their profits, my advice would be to focus on ‘client mapping’ and build a strategic network. Members of the Club are told how.
In addition, Caroline’s Club also gives its members a digital business card to bring the benefit of their services to life with podcasts, pods and case studies, which are 22 times more visible and 650% more memorable.
Setting up a digital business card takes less than two minutes and can be customised to match the firm’s branding. They never need to be reprinted and can be amended with new digital links at any time.
With the focus on clients rather than skills, networking can be more strategic. A client needs the services of several professionals and when these professionals record a video response to a case study it tells so much more about the services of a professional and how it fits in with others.
LinkedIn is an excellent way to make new connections, but once a connection is established a digital QR code with digital links to pods, podcasts and clusters linked onto a QR code is what makes the connection memorable.
If you would like to find out more give me a ring on 07979 188 288 or drop me a message.
The future of business development is not just about the size of your network, but also whether your type of client engages with it.