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Greg Cooper is a LinkedIn coach and trainer located in Bristol. He works with small to medium sized business to find new opportunities using LinkedIn as one of the key tools. He runs regular public courses aimed at individuals, business owners, and sales and marketing teams which are designed to increase individual productivity and encourage a more joined-up and effective approach to business development. Greg recently joined AMP UP Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss ways in which a company can utilize LinkedIn to make connections and build relationships online.

“Comment on the posts of the people you want to influence. It’s a mechanism to show up on their radar, and it’s a way of building the relationship.”

Greg discusses tips for using LinkedIn to form B2B relationships and create new opportunities:

1. The larger your network, the more opportunities you can find. It’s very important to build out your network but, at the same time, to keep it relevant. Link up with people beyond just those you’ve personally met but with discrimination enough to stay within your own niche.
2. The key to building your profile beyond your network is being active. It’s like going to a party with your nice clothes on but never talking to anybody. There’s a ‘status update’ on LinkedIn like other social media sites, and you’ll want to interact and engage to keep your profile active.
3. Use updates as well as published posts. Your status updates are different, shorter posts than a published post. You’ll want to continually do status updates as well as published posts. Your published posts can be up to 40,000 characters and helps you to demonstrate your expertise as more of an opinion piece.
4. Use blogs on your website but also on LinkedIn. Copy your blog from your website and put it in your LinkedIn profile with a sentence on the bottom about where the piece originated from. Google will know which is the original one, so you won’t be penalized.
5. Your blog is not a sales pitch. Share something that is valuable to your audience. These can be done once enough and can even be as short as 500 words, but always be sure to avoid pitching sales to your customers, or you’ll risk losing their engagement.  

Greg would love to hear from you! Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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About Greg Cooper

Hailing from the UK, Greg Cooper acquired his degree in Psychology from the University of Bristol. Some of his projects include We Dig Mondays, a community initiative by members of the Plus Your Business Academy (a digital media training zone) to restore the image of Mondays to its rightful place as the most exciting day of the week for self employed entrepreneurs and small business. Some of his interests also include tennis, cooking, and the theatre.

AMP UP Your Social Media is sponsored by:

• GaggleAMP – Empower your employees, partners and resellers to amplify your social media.

About Glenn Gaudet

Glenn Gaudet, host of AMP Up Your Social Media, brings over 20 years of comprehensive experience in both strategic and product marketing for technology and media companies ranging from startup to $1 Billion in sales. Full bio