Hey, this is Teddy Burris, your LinkedIn strategist and trainer. And this course is going to introduce you to why you should be using LinkedIn as a business tool today. And in the future, pretty much regardless of whatever your role or your industry is. I'm gonna predominantly position this conversation around nine reasons. So we'll talk about these nine reasons up front, and then I'll dig into them a little bit deeper in the rest of the course. But let's talk about the nine reasons.

Reason number one, there are nearly 675 million LinkedIn members out there, and that's and there are two new members every second. Now the US is the most is the largest with about 167 million people. But there are other countries that are highly represented on LinkedIn, India being number two at about 65 million. Now there are over 30 million companies listed as 20 million jobs is a great place to be if you're looking for a job or if your job I have job opportunities. You don't Talent so you can be out there so people can find your jobs. And there are over 90,000 schools listed on LinkedIn as well.

Here's the second reason LinkedIn is the world's largest and most respected professional networking site. All industries across all spectrums of business are predominantly b2b. But the b2c business consumer network is highly represented. And I think that's an area that most people are not paying attention to and should be all levels of employment for frontline to board of directors of venture capitals listed referenced out there. There. There's diverse content, diverse groups, diverse conversations going on, there's something for everyone.

And there is no hierarchy as long as you come to the conversations in LinkedIn with something meaningful. His Reason number three, there was I can see 52 million companies listed out there, okay. And the reason why I share that is because knowing how to find the companies then you can then Find the people in the roles in those companies that you're interested in getting into conversations with, you could pay attention to those companies, and you can pay attention to those individuals. It's a really powerful researching tool. Here's Reason number four, the content on LinkedIn is highly indexed. Thus discoverable, not only on LinkedIn, but also on Google.

You can use hashtags to show up in a relevant group or conversation and you can search those hashtags. You can build a powerful brand based on what you produce, what you curate, and what you share on LinkedIn. And you can also find people who are relevant to those conversations that content people that you may be interested in learning more about, or getting into direct conversation with, and you can stay aware of industry trends by following specific hashtags. Really, again, another perspective of the power of the market research is Reason number five, it's a powerful referral network. Again, when you build a good brand on LinkedIn and you start connecting in meaningful ways, and using LinkedIn search, you can find people who can introduce you to other people. More powerful than that.

When you start using LinkedIn effectively and building a relevant network and building your brand, you can end up getting what I refer to as anonymous introductions, people will tell others you need to hunt down Teddy. That really is very rewarding area of using LinkedIn in an appropriate way. And by the way, I'm all about warm introductions, because I no longer want to cold call. Here's Reason number five, professional branding via your words and actions. I live this and I love it, when you we are what we do what we say what we engage on in life, as well as on LinkedIn and other social media. So when you get into a purposeful process of sharing and more importantly engaging on LinkedIn, this creates an opportunity for your target audience to find you, trust you and respect you is Reason number seven.

LinkedIn search engine is a powerful and really fabulous research tool 13 unique filters just in basic LinkedIn, you can use Boolean search strings and basic LinkedIn, you can create focus search criteria to get the best results and build your a workable list. And better than that, you can create save searches so that every week LinkedIn send you an email says, Here's new people need to look at. Now by the way, the basic LinkedIn subscription free has a limited number of search results you can get. But that's that is still something you can work with when you learn to do it, right. Reason number eight. It's a powerful recruiting tool.

And this works both ways on both sides of the recruiting table, the talent acquisition table, you know the old proverb of finding a needle in the haystack. Well it gets easier LinkedIn Yeah, you have 607 95 million people. But again, using the search tools and filters and using your network, then you can find the right candidates or find the right jobs, through search and through your network. Here's Reason number nine people do business with those a trust and respect. When you use LinkedIn to build a very focused professional presence, your profile, you're creating an opportunity for people to understand you better when you use LinkedIn to grow again, a highly relevant network. Again, you're getting more of the right people into your network, so that you can get the right people to see who you are what you do.

When you use LinkedIn to share and more importantly, engage on relevant content. Again, you're creating an opportunity for your brand to be shown and discovered, so people will in time, learn to trust and respect you based on your content, your network. who you say you are through your profile. When you integrate the use of LinkedIn in your day to day routine, it can create a great opportunity for your brand to shine thus be trusted and respected based on who you say you are and what you do. Now, understanding these nine little tips is step one, to figure out how to get the greatest value out of what I call this business tool. And the rest of this class we'll dig in a little bit deeper, and we'll show some areas of LinkedIn and we'll talk about these different areas so that you can walk away from this course with a little bit of insight and ideas and tactics to start using LinkedIn as a business tool.