Is LinkedIn The Secret Weapon for Joint Venture Success?

By Jim Chianese

Adjective

1. Pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations: a social club.

2. Seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.

3. Of, pertaining to, connected with, or suited to polite or fashionable society: a social event.

4. Living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in a community, rather than in isolation: People are social beings.

5. Of or pertaining to human society, especially as a body divided into classes according to status: social rank.

me·di·a: [mee-dee-uh]

Noun

1. A plural of medium.

2. (Usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines that reach or influence people widely: The media are covering the speech tonight.

Put the 2 together and you get a definition that looks something like this:

Social Media is devoted to or characterized by friendly companionship or relations using the means of communication that reach or influence people widely.

The definition of joint venture is (noun) a business enterprise in which two or more companies enter a temporary partnership. Abbreviation: JV, J.V.

Hmmm.... Seems like social media and joint ventures may go together better than peanut butter and chocolate!

However, which social media platforms make the most amount of sense when it comes to comes to creating a joint venture and leveraging the assets of 2 or more companies?

Sure Facebook and Twitter get all of the publicity and even your local broadcasters are now consistently asking you to friend, like, or follow them. You most likely have at least a Facebook account, and many of you even have Twitter accounts, even if you aren't quite sure just how to use them for your business. But do you actively pay attention to ad nurture your LinkedIn account if you have one?

LinkedIn is considered the "professionals social media". It is strictly intended to be a social media site that is solely focused on business to business communications. What that means is you aren't likely to see what Ashton Kutcher or Lady Gaga had for lunch.

Jump Start Your LinkedIn Success

In order to capitalize on the power of the professional network you must know that filling out your profile completely in extremely important! The challenge many people face here is the fact that a LinkedIn profile may take longer to crate than a simple Twitter profile and for us impatient entrepreneurs that can be frustrating.

So step #1 is to fill out your profile completely. Here are some big secrets to make sure you follow through on.

· Put in your work experience in both current and some from the past

· Don't just put a title or a company name, fill in some details about what you actually did there

· Fill in your education, and don't be afraid if you aren't college educated, put in the school of "hard knocks" or "common sense", but don't leave everything blank

· Upload a photo of you not your dog or even your company logo

· My favorite secret is being creative with how you describe your websites or web presence. In other words don't do what over 90% of the profile do and leave the words 'Company Website" and "Personal Website" as the words that show up on your profile page. Consider instead stating a benefit or creating curiosity for me to click on your link and visit the site. Think like a copy writer

· Invite contacts to connect with you and when you send the invite, put a reason to connect. In other words, LinkedIn will give you a 1 sentence template to send, but you really need to personalize the request at least a little, even f you create your own template and send that to everyone

By the time you read this I will have about 15,000 contacts connected to me on my first level, and have a reach of 20 million total through the 3 levels of contacts that LinkedIn measures. Now do I know even a small fraction of that many people on a personal and first name basis? Of course not, and I wouldn't try to make you believe I'm as popular as Oprah.

But I do have a great opportunity to meet more and more business owners and people involved with companies that can lead me to some very good joint ventures. Oh, and let me tell you something else about those 15,000 contacts. I haven't invited anybody to connect with me for about 2 years. I get about 100-200 requests to connect in my LinkedIn inbox every week.

How do I get so many requests to connect? Well, first I filled out my profile completely before I asked anyone to connect, and number 2, I tell people from my Twitter profile and other social media sites where my LinkedIn profile is. Now I don't have room in this article to explain all of the secrets I use, but I am explaining to you the foundation I used to grow this profile to such a big number.

So let me give you some more tips:

1. Create content on a regular basis and tell people to connect with you

2. Building an email list is what every guru has been telling you to do since 1999, yet I have never had this kind of success with free reports and auto-responders on any of the 100+ websites I've either put up or been the marketing director for since 2002. Social Media allows me to connect to people that want to connect

3. Getting emails delivered through a social media platform is much higher rate of success than auto-responders, so build your contacts

4. Use individual emails to communicate with individuals. Do not send a mass email blast through the system with generic sales pitches and offers. I can't tell you how many people have been eliminated from my contact list by pitching me and 499 of their "closest contacts" through these mass email blasts

5. Search for the right target for you to joint venture with. In other words take the time to look for the right person to contact...then send that individual email mentioned in point 4 above

6. In that email request them to call you or if they prefer to have you call them to discuss their business and an idea you have to help them. Think about that for a moment, I'm thinking purely from the point of view that I want to help them. If you are doing a joint venture it is supposed to be a win-win-win for your JV partner, for the customer, and then lastly for you, if you are going to do this the right way.

7. Okay, now for the part that helped me obtain multiple $35,000-$50,000 joint ventures and personal sales contracts. You pick up the phone and build a relationship first and if you can do that then you, like has happened to me more than 70% of the time, may actually get the other person asking me for the joint venture!

We can all have the world's greatest unique selling proposition and be the nicest people in the universe, but if you restrict yourself to digital only communications you are missing out on the one secret that every multi-millionaire I've ever met has done to achieve the Top 5% of all income earners. They build relationships, network, and reach out to other BOTH digitally and then personally by phone or face-to-face!

No matter what the latest sale pitch filled sales letter or website claims about automation, personal contact build real relationships, and real relationships build real joint ventures and success. (Think about it, if all of the "Easy Button" automated software programs and e-courses worked as they claim why is it that everyone with Internet marketing aspirations retired already? In fact, if you think about it, most of the offers you get are from 2-5 joint venture partners emailing you about someone else's product or service, right?)

Alright, you get the point. LinkedIn is filled with professionals connecting with professionals.

· If you don't have a photo of you and you request to connect with me, most likely I will ignore your invite.

· If your profile is just half-heartedly filled out, I will ignore your invite.

· If you pitch me with an email blast like 2 dozen people do every day to me, you guessed it; I will ignore you and maybe even delete you from my contact list.

· However, If you reach out to me and have a decent reason why we should talk...like helping me with my needs...then we will most likely have a chance to build a relationship which just may lead to a joint venture, especially if you have the courage to pick up a phone and not hide behind an email or profile post...like so many do online.

"Jump Start" Jim Chianese is Chief Innovation Officer for http://www.JumpStartJim.com and has been called "The World's Only Marketing Resultant for The Impatient Entrepreneur".
He is a Speaker and Sales and Marketing Director for Multiple Fast Paced Companies.
His website Reveals the Top Secret to Jump Start Your Social Media Marketing to Gain Celebrity Status and the #1 Marketing Strategy Most Impatient Entrepreneurs Will NEVER Know About Generating Leads And Making Money On The Internet. Just visit http://www.JumpStartJim.com to see The #1 Secret.

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