Using LinkedIn to Create Value for Your Members

Published on February 1, 2016 - By Cecilia Amador

Help your members thrive by providing them with insights to win over new clients. A lesson on LinkedIn.

The biggest player in the serviced office and flexible workspace industries is the member. Your spaces and locations would cease to exist if you had no members to give use to your facilities. Which is why if your members don’t thrive, you won’t either.

Operators are constantly seeking ways in which they can create value for their clients. Oftentimes, these efforts go into organizing events where members can network; this is a strong and safe approach, but we’re leaving a big player out of the equation if we simply focus on this: the clients of members.

After all, members need clients in order to keep growing.

Stephen Furnari, founder of Law Firm Suites (an office provider for lawyers),  recently shared an e-book titled A Lawyer’s Guide to Effective LinkedIn Marketing, which prompted and inspired us to write this article for you. Yes, we know you’re not lawyers and we know not all of your members are lawyers, but what Furnari says isn’t just for lawyers; it’s for every professional out there that wants to stand out from the crowd and win over new clients.

As you can guess from the title of the e-book, it’s about LinkedIn marketing. As with other social media platforms, it’s not enough to simply be present; it’s a tool that needs to be used not just created. Think of Aristotle’s ax analogy: if the ax isn’t used to chop something, it’s just a piece of metal and wood; it’s not fulfilling its functionality, its essence. If you have an account on any social media platform but you don’t use it to drive and attract traffic or clients towards you, then you’re just a combination of letters floating in the world wide web.

In our article last week, we saw how in just one day LinkedIn is estimated to get 43,978 mobile job applications, 172,800 new users, 7 million  endorsements, and 25 million profile views. Clearly, there’s not a lack of LinkedIn profiles out there, and it’s up to you to make sure that your profile stands out from the rest.

A simplified summary of what we learned from Furnari is that, when used correctly, LinkedIn can be quite a powerful tool: it can help boost client referrals, enhance brand visibility, and drive traffic to sites (among other things as well).

We strongly recommend reading Furnari’s e-book, as it provides valuable insight that all can take advantage from. For the time being, here are some of the main points that Furnari explains and believes everyone should implement.

*The e-book does a wonderful job of explaining  how to do it and providing examples for every step*

As a workspace provider, you can take advantage of LinkedIn, but what we suggest doing is sharing this insight with your members. You can send a link to the e-book or organize an active workshop type of event; have members join you with their computers and go step by step, helping each member pump up their LinkedIn profile.

Remember, it’s about creating value. If you help your members by helping  potential clients find them, then the chain is connected and remains strong. More clients = successful member = successful you.