Often when I write about social selling we write about sales people and how they can overachieve their number or the marketer, how they can create leads. These are all important, but we don't often write about what business leaders and business owners should do and how they can use social media to achieve their own objectives.
Let's not forget there are 756 million people on LinkedIn, so what as a business leader can you do to
- find investors?
- to sell your business?
- to have a merger with a business?
- to acquire a business?
Some fundamentals...
Social media profiles that reflect the real you
First, as a leader you need a buyer centric profile. This is your "passive" social presence online and you need the people that you want to attract to find this interesting and intriguing.
Having it "empty" will show investors, purchasers, venture capital (VC) companies, P/E private equity companies that you don't understand digital.
Having a leader today that does not understand digital is a massive red flag.
You must have a profile that reflects you, your beliefs and your ability to project your leaderships skills into a digital world. Now that is what investors, VCs, P/Es want. Now I know you are thinking about getting somebody to write this for you. This can be smelt 1,000 miles away and will make you look inauthentic, a fraud and is another massive read flag.
(The same if you get somebody to run your LinkedIn profile for you ...... massive red flag. Shows you are lazy and don't understand digital.)
A network of the company you are trying to influence
You and your advisors will probably have drawn up a list of possible partners, purchasers, VCs, P/E companies that you are trying to influence.
So connect to them, you won't influence them, if you are not connected.
Please remember this is a social network, this is not a list to cold call and spam. So connect to the people to start a conversation, like you would at a networking event. If you try and start a relationship by selling or pitching, you won't get far.
Demonstrate your leadership by sharing your experience
Finally, create content.
Content is your ability to demonstrate the expert you are, to show the world what a great leader you are. Not by pushing out sales messages. Yawn. Write about what matters to you.
Similar to the above, if you get people to write your content, this is a big red flag. Sure if you are Richard Branson, but you are not.
Your unique selling point (USP) is your experience, your ability, your leadership, your emotional intelligence, show the world what a great leader you are. With content.
This is how you will be found by investors, by buyers, by buyers (for your business) ...
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