LinkedIn Brief #3: How Do You Use Facebook to Accelerate LinkedIn Results?

When I suggest using Facebook for business to executives, I usually get a raised eyebrow or an incredulous stare. However their attitude quickly changes when I ask them to reflect on the last three business lunches they had with prospects and what they talked about.

Business meetings often include sports, culture, family and light politics/news… things that people share on Facebook.

LinkedIn is the venue whose social context is business, but Facebook is a great way to amplify your relationship building effectiveness:

• Don’t be blindsided because people do a lot of wacky things on Facebook. Search the Groups directory, you’ll find supply chain groups, transfer pricing and many other serious business topics.
• When you are prospecting on LinkedIn, bounce over to Facebook to search for your prospects; depending on their privacy settings, you could learn something about their personal sides. The default is, you will be able to see their Friends, which could be very useful.
• Select some of your LinkedIn Connections whom you’d like to know better. Invite them on Facebook, saying that you’ve found it useful for business. If you have some friends who put crazy stuff on your Wall, assign your business connections to a “professional” Friend List that does not have access to your Wall or certain photo albums or videos (Facebook has some decent documentation on this; make sure you know how it works before putting in motion).

You can accelerate your ability to develop trust with prospects by prospecting and interacting on Facebook. When doing this, be discreet yet open about it.  In other words, tell your prospect that you saw on Facebook that you have friends in common: don’t  be mysterious about how you got the information, or it could backfire and come across as being creepy.

About Briefs

LinkedIn Briefs is a new series of quick advice by Executive’s Guide to LinkedIn Blog to help people become more aware of LinkedIn’s potential to change businesses and careers. I invite you to share your thoughts and ideas for future briefs in comments below.

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Learning More

I lead periodic seminars globally, where participants master these issues and many others. The next one is Chicago’s Social Networking Bootcamp, featuring LinkedIn, Twitter and blogging on August 19-21. And Facebook of course! ,^)