Third Sector Connector Blog

Most of us already know that if you’re a serious professional, you need to have a profile on LinkedIn. What you may not know is that you can use LinkedIn as a powerful tool for building your organization’s brand. Below is a list of 21 ways that you can maximize LinkedIn to:

• Connect with existing donors and leverage their networks
• Prospect for board members, volunteers and donors
• Promote your nonprofit’s brand

Out of the Gate

• Set your public profile to full view so that even those who are not on LinkedIn can find you. (LinkedIn is indexed by all major search engines.)
• Add all former employers so that former colleagues can easily find you.
• Create a custom url for your profile with your name in it. Hyphenate your first and last name to make it more easily searchable.
• Bring your profile to 100% completeness so that it is ranked higher in searches. LinkedIn walks you through how to do this.
• Make sure your organization’s website is listed on your profile.
• If it doesn’t already exist, create a profile for your organization so that people can link to the organization’s profile directly from yours.

Weaving Your Web

• Upload your personal address list and invite those contacts who are already on LinkedIn and those who are not to join. Sending individual invitations and adding personal notes is most effective.
• Encourage all of your staff to join and build profiles.
• Ask your board members to make sure that their board role is listed on their own LinkedIn profiles if they have one and that it links to your organization’s profile.
• In addition to your personal contacts, import your major donors, your volunteers, and your vendors (like your web designer or your attorney). Invite them all to become linked.

Prospecting for Gold

• Look at the networks of each of your connections. See who they know that you don’t yet know but that you would like to have in your network. Important: Ask them to make a personal introduction for you, either face-to-face or via email. Once you’ve had some interaction with them, then invite them to join your network.
• Check the status updates of your contacts on a regular basis. If something changes, it gives you a reason to give them a call or send them an email and quickly connect.
• Use the advanced search feature. You can search by geography (especially useful if you’re a local organization with a limited service area), company (if you are targeting corporate support), industry (if you are recruiting volunteers, staff or board members), and more.

If You Build It, They Will Come

• Ask for recommendations from your contacts. Reporters often use LinkedIn to identify sources, and those with the most recommendations often appear at the top of their searches.
• Join groups and post interesting news, start a discussion or chime on others’ posts. Set your group notifications to “daily” and scan each of them for interesting news or discussions.
• Use LinkedIn’s “Answers” function to answer questions in your area of expertise or to get free advice from others.
• Always add your full email signature (web, phone, etc) to any of your posts.
• Use LinkedIn’s Slideshare or Google Presentation applications to add any significant presentations you’ve done recently. If you have a general organization or major donor presentation, be sure to add it.
• Use the Blog Link or Word Press Application to connect your blog or your organization’s blog to your profile.
• Use LinkedIn’s Box.net application to share content like FAQs about your organization, e-newsletters, and more.
• Update your status when you want to share great news from work. If you use Twitter for business, you can easily link your tweets to your status update in LinkedIn. Or you can use a service like ping.fm to update multiple social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook simultaneously.

How else is LinkedIn helping your organization?