Networking: one of the most important wedding business growth tools and mindsets a wedding professional should factor in to their daily awareness.

LinkedIn, a marvelous social media platform targeted particularly at businesses, is a great networking tool. One should not have a serious expectation of getting exposure to brides, but you can find new funnels of business, sharpen your business skills, and gain tremendous industry insights.

Here are some ways to use LinkedIn:

1)   An online resume: while brides aren’t necessarily searching for vendors or interacting with them as they do on Facebook and Pinterest, whether or not you have a LinkedIn profile may influence a LinkedIn user’s decision to contact or hire you.

2)   Find vendors in your area and connect with them: if you are actively seeking relationships with other vendors to recommend them, be recommended, or even resell their service, you can search on LinkedIn for individual companies or join industry groups. Make those outreaches known.

3)   Learn about industry trends and discover new products: you will find posts about companies launching new products, discussions on industry issues, and trends that can broaden your knowledge and inspire new ideas and concepts to offer to your clients within wedding industry groups on LinkedIn.

4)   Get opinions on your website and your ideas: almost like hiring a consultant, LinkedIn members who are qualified industry peers from all over the world are open to sharing honest feedback that can really help your business.

5)   Post listings for job openings or sell equipment and products: LinkedIn provides easy exposure to a vast network that can effectively expose whatever message you are trying to send.

It is easy to build your contacts on LinkedIn quickly. The social network will capture your email contact list and send an automatic communication to invite them to connect with you. Once e connected to those contacts, you have access to their contacts so then you can connect with them too. You can often get the attention of individual easier through LinkedIn communications than if you emailed them directly.

Also after joining one or several of LinkedIn’s groups, you can have the new discussions emailed to you so you can decide which topics might interest you and  just click on the link to see what you can gain from monitoring or getting involved in the discussion.
LinkedIn is more of a supplemental tool to balance with your other multiple priorities and should in no way be construed as a substitution for any current marketing or networking strategies.