Because many of my clients are B2B companies, we often consider LinkedIn for the marketing mix. I am a frequent user, but I have often wondered how I could use LinkedIn better for my clients and for my own business. A few weeks ago I attended a symposium sponsored by LinkedIn, hoping to learn more. The morning consisted of a talk by Jonathan Lister, LinkedIn’s VP of Marketing Solutions, a social media panel discussion and an overview of LinkedIn consumer analytics and insight capabilities by Brian Thome, LinkedIn’s Head of Insights. The event was well-run, the speakers were knowledgeable and engaging, and it was 2 hours well spent for me.

I came away with quite a few ideas for my clients, and I wanted to share some of the key insights I gained. Hopefully you’ll come away with at least one new idea even if you already know a lot about LinkedIn!

1. Develop Guidelines For Your Employees’ Profiles You can leverage your employee’s LinkedIn profiles to enhance your overall brand messaging. Because LinkedIn is optimized for search, you can enhance your company’s chances of being noticed with consistent messaging across your employee’s profiles. After hearing this, I reviewed some of my clients’ employee profiles in LinkedIn. Sure enough, I found that for one of my clients their employees listed the company name 3 different ways and the company’s category 8 different ways!
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I had some electrical work done at my house yesterday. When I was writing the check out to pay my electrician he slapped a magnetized version of his business card on my fridge. When I complimented him on the idea, he told me that he kept a bunch stuck to the back of his van below the painted words “Please Take One.” I think this is brilliant! What a great way to use the assets you have! And, yes, he has gotten business this way.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that the back and sides of his van provide additional information like “fully licensed and bonded,” either.

In this digital age, it is great to see smart marketing that does not require a computer for someone to engage with your business. I love how low-tech tactics can be a smart differentiator!

I loved reading Jennifer Wang’s recent blog post for Entrepreneur.com about 10 Lessons in Marketing Brilliance. I have always been a sucker for great advertising and love when someone conveniently gathers a “Best of” list all in one place.

Jennifer’s blog piece focuses on “marketing marvels from 2011″ and the lessons they can impart to entrepreneurs. While I agree with many of the lessons she draws from the ten spots, I think my entrepreneurial clients might want to think about some slightly different takeaways for at least three of them:

1. Contagion’s truly “viral” billboard. Jennifer’s lesson: Go guerilla. Since the very heart of the definition of guerrilla marketing is “low budget,” I have a hard time buying that lesson when it comes to a Hollywood movie starring Matt Damon. But I do think this is a great example of making sure that all of your marketing clearly ties back to your core product. This example does that in spades.
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