Consulting Blog for Business Consultants

If you’re a consultant that’s been in the management or business consulting business for any significant length of time, you are sure to have heard of this service… and if you’re looking to expand your practice, you might even be using it to prospect for new clients.

After all, it is perhaps the largest network of professionals on the net (over 20,000,000 professionals, according to their own statistics)… that’s a lot of potential clients.

But they’ve just recently “upped” the ante, so to speak, and with that, given us professional consultants a brand new marketing weapon!  (And yes… it’s still FREE)

So have you guessed what I’m talking about yet?… It’s LinkedIn, of course!  

I’m sure you’ve heard of it, and you’re thinking to yourself “so what’s the big deal?”

You see, LinkedIn recently added the ability for anyone to pose and answer questions in any number of categories… in effect, allowing you to interact with other members on their site.

Why is this significant?  And how does it help us consultants?

Well, we all know that one of the critical success factors in consulting is your ability to present yourself as the preeminent expert in your field.

As a matter of fact, your ability to become the consultant to call to solve a potential client’s problems is one of the sure-fire ways to continuous profitability as a consultant.

And with LinkedIn’s new Q&A feature, you can now do this without appearing too “sales-ey” or overly promotional.

By answering (and posing) questions that are relevant to potential clients in your own field, you can showcase your knowledge and act as the preeminent expert.

And you can be as elaborate or succinct in your answers (and questions) as you want.  

Here are a few quick strategies to get you started on the right path:

• When answering a question, write about the consulting solutions you delivered for your clients who had similar needs, and how extremely effective those solutions were.
• When posing a question, use examples of what you did for previous consulting clients to illustrate your point… thereby hinting at your own expertise.
• When answering a question, use relevant links (read: “only if a link provides true value“) back to your own website and encourage the readers to visit your site for additional, helpful information.
• When posing a question, try to ask questions where a response would identify a potential client and their needs for your consulting services.  Then correspond with those people who answer your question to begin forming a relationship.  

These are just a few quick strategies, but I hope you’re realizing the tremendous potential this new Q&A feature on LinkedIn could present to any consultant.

I hope you take a few minutes to visit their site, and make user of this free marketing weapon!

And don’t forget to leave your thoughts, comments, and questions right here…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Marketing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.