The Power of LinkedIn: Football Club Signs Player Using LinkedIn! (Plus Top LinkedIn Tips)

The power of social media in today’s business world is nothing new. Social media is used by millions of innovative and creative individuals. Businesses around the world promote, advertise and build relationships using a wide range of social media platforms.

What is interesting is the fact that social media marketing has become popular and used within the mainstream. This January, a football club in Slovenia signed a player by posting a message on LinkedIn searching for a player to fill a specific position.

The BBC writes “After Domzale head coach Luka Elsner, 33, posted a message asking for an "offensive right-back" who "must have an EU passport", the top-flight club received 150 applications and signed Spanish defender Alvaro Brachi, 30, just before transfer deadline day’”

“The advert, posted on 7th January, had got 232 views, 10 likes and eight comments by 2nd February and had professional footballers sending in their highlights reels for Elsner to select the best man to fit into his "very offensive 3-4-3 system”- The full article can be found here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35473129

This shows LinkedIn can be used to build your business profile and drive conversions if used correctly. Below are some top LinkedIn tips on how to do this successfully across your business plan.

LinkedIn: The world’s biggest online business database

With LinkedIn, it’s very easy to connect and reach out to potential contacts. This applies to both sales and marketing departments in your business. You can view a potential contact’s profile, which shows their current role, job history, education, work experience, and even more. This gives your sales and marketing departments great power in identifying the relevant contacts against the business buyer personas. This tool can be used before contacting that person about the services you offer, or launching a marketing campaign.

Advanced search lets you find out even more

LinkedIn’s advanced search feature lets you filter results by industry, demographic, company size, position and much more. This will enable your departments to conduct initial research into the contact, to see if said contact meets your company's buyer persona’s, if you have multiple demographics you cater towards.

LinkedIn allows you to get in touch with connections

It’s very easy to find contacts on LinkedIn because you can find them through your existing connections with your business profile. This enables your departments to make more quality connections that meet your buyer persona’s. You can also easily streamline your efforts and find the exact person you’re looking for – all you need to do is type in the company you’re targeting and with one click, you can see all of their employees. It’s that easy.

LinkedIn’s powerful Ad Targeting tool

A grand quality that sets LinkedIn apart from other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, is the next level targeting that it allows your marketing campaigns to achieve. LinkedIn permits you to target people by job title, employer, industry, and even skills or interests. This enables your marketing department to really target your buyer persona’s on LinkedIn to potentially increase the conversion rate of the advertising campaign.

The quality of the connection counts

Before sending someone a request to connect, or receiving a request to connect with your business, LinkedIn gives you the power to check if that contact is firstly real and secondly if the connection meets your buyer persona’s.

The key factors to look for are:

• A professional picture
• At least 150 connections
• A summary of their career /business history

Without having these three factors, it is probable that the person you are about to connect with does not use LinkedIn very often. Because of this, you will waste a connection by requesting them and never get a response (or if you do, it won't be as frequent). Additionally, connecting with people who have a higher number of LinkedIn connections, allows you to expand your network much further and build meaningful long-term relationships. 

The three area’s mentioned above are just a guideline. Your LinkedIn goals may determine different key factors before engaging with a certain connection.

Using LinkedIn in your business and marketing plans is a vital cog in today’s business machine. With LinkedIn now being used to find professional football players to play for professional teams, it shows the power that LinkedIn can bring to your business when used more effectively by your sales and marketing departments. Using LinkedIn will widen your business profile and increase conversions from social media.

To find out even more about LinkedIn for your business, we have the following articles that can help: https://www.jdrgroup.co.uk/social-media-marketing-agency