Social selling – get on the bus or be flattened by it

If you think “social selling” is just the latest marketing buzzword, then spend a half hour checking out the websites of the startups covered on TechCrunch on VentureBeat each day. Every one of these dynamic young technology firms, which are raising millions of dollars in venture capital funding, has one or more blogs and multiple social network accounts. This at a time when the most recent research by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth finds that blogging among the Fortune 500 is actually on the decline. What these growing companies understand that many big corporations apparently don’t is that the terms of engagement wit…

Use Alumni Connections to Prospect on LinkedIn

LinkedIn gives you boundless ways to prospect by contacting people through shared connections. One of my favorite lesser-known LinkedIn features is the ability to connect via shared classmates. This is a LinkedIn Gem, which is my term for tools with great utility that few people know about. How to find classmates To find classmates, start at the profile page of the person you’re trying to contact. Navigate down to the “Education” section and note the colleges and years attended. Undergraduate experience is a good place to start, since that’s the time people are most likely to live on campus and engage socially with other students. C…