After going through more than 200 companies profiles on LinkedIn, I find out 5 reasons why you failed in business. (Especially Asian Companies)
There is a huge gap between Asian and Europe and the United States when it comes to usage of LinkedIn
Recently, I joined a new company which is based in Bulgaria and its main purpose is to help tech company sell more. Basically, leads generation is one big part of my work. I have done many times of Lead Gen before but never thought this time is a whole new experience which helps me to reflect on how should business improve to acquire more volume of partnerships.
One difficulty I am facing when I was doing Lead Gen for Asian company is:
I can not find them at all!
What do I mean by “I can not find them at all”. You might tell me they have there company names, company websites with phone numbers, email address on it. Why do I still say I can not find them. This is exactly the thing that I am going to share with you guys about.
Why building LinkedIn Profile is so important for businesses
Usage Social Media
There are countless platforms in the world that connect people together, needless to say: Facebook, Wechat, Whatsapp and etc. But as far as we know, some of the applications are not usable in certain areas of the world. Plus, most of them are based on personal connection, and privacy is always a big issue. There are barely companies doing their business by using Facebook since everyone wants their life back when they off work.
After all, LinkedIn becomes both approachable and professional platform that open to everyone.
GDPR
Some of you might hear about the recent announcement of GDPR in Europe which hugely affect certain aspects of how business operates. LinkedIn was and will continue to be a professional tool with different paid features that can help business to get connect and push things forward. We can never underestimate how social circle affects our business development.
Here are five main reasons I can not find Asian contacts
Less people have comprehensive LinkedIn Profile.
After I filtered companies with specific requirements, there are lists of companies that might be my suitable potential clients. But after I click into there company pages. What surprised me is that there are only less than 10 people who use LinkedIn even it is a medium size company with more than 300 employees. This makes me and other opportunity seekers very hard to get connected with decision makers in this company to build potential partnerships.
Most of the LinkedIn profile are not professional
When I go through the list of employees in a certain company, the first few things come into my eye is Profile Photo, job title, and personal description.
But most of the profiles are unprofessional either by selfie or with a dark background that their face cannot be recognized. Or some of those profile photos are with their family members which are also not very suitable.
This situation will leave an impression with unprofessional and unreliable which hugely decrease the chances to be invited to connect.
Existing profiles are nearly all sale position
If there are 10 people in a certain company, 9 of them will be the salesperson. That is the general case of profiles from Asia. LinkedIn indeed is a great tool to do sales, and it is smart for salespeople to looking for potential clients through LinkedIn. However, only sales person exists on your company employee will lead to following two major problems.
- Potential partners could not find the proper people to start the conversation since sales person only focuses on sales, they barely have time to deal with information delivery. Have multiple roles on LinkedIn such as Head of Partnership / Head of Engineer and etc. will help others to bring opportunities to you easier.
- Negative impact on your brand image. If during the sales process, clients come and want to know more about your company, they can only find out salespersons and might also CEO, what will they think? Is this a shell company? How will you feel if you see two company employees one with different roles, one with only sales roles?
Using own languages rather than English makes things difficult
Some of the profiles are written by local languages, for instance, Korean, Mandarin and etc. which is ok but makes things more difficult for others. Since automation tools can generate email by using your domain and names that written on your profile. But what if the person’s name is written not as English, the machine will be helpless with it. Also if make difficult for others to call your name.
Using multiple fake accounts
Though I only saw a few times about this kind of situation, it still exists. Certain companies will create multiple accounts with the brand logo as their profile photo, and use same family names with different surnames. This might be good for brand exposure, but this might lead to even more confusion for others. Are these fake account? What is his or her real names? Are they reliable?
After all, not using LinkedIn effectively makes huge gap between Asian Market and European Market. Since before actually doing business, building connections is more important as individuals. Try to avoid the 5 points that mentioned above will help you gain much more chances than you thought!
My name is Meiling, a marketing master student in NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.
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