how do i grow my corporate prospect list honestly this is one of the most common questions i get asked as a corporate partnership specialist and today i'm going to give you a key tip on how to do this and honestly it's easier than you think there is this vastly underused tool linkedin have you heard of it well i'm sure you have and it is the perfect tool for corporate partnership work so today i'm going to talk to you about both how you can get your profile ready for corporate partnership and th
en how you can start using the tool to make it work for you to connect with companies and their prospects in linkedin ceos and their senior leaders at nonprofits have broad networks and strong relationships and these are the relationships that you can use to help with your corporate partnership work you are building community and building community is something that many of us in the nonprofit sector are really good at many ceos and senior leaders are well known through visible events pr opportu
nities conferences and meetings even earned media these these things make it more doable for you to reach out and build your network if this isn't you at your organization that's okay you can be the person that coaches writes posts and gives tips to your ceo or leader to make sure that they are doing what you need of them to help your corporate partnership program through every interaction that your ceo or you have with a company there is an opportunity to connect and make sure you are doing tha
t on a regular basis to continue to grow your network and as much as you can as i said make sure your ceo is doing it too before i get into the how of doing this let me tell you the why there are a bunch of really really good reasons why linkedin is such a good tool for corporate fundraising you can use your linkedin profile or your ceos to boost your charities reputation provide thought leadership on your cause steward and thank companies prospects and partners provide visibility to your corpor
ate prospects and partners to ensure that they get the recognition that they deserve for the investment in your organization you can be visible to contacts that you want to reach out to in the future so they get to know you in advance of a call and you can strengthen connections within your community finally getting familiar with what is going on with those companies by reading the company post and your contacts posts will also really help you be aware of what's going on what's important to them
and that will be important as you figure out alignment hooks and outreach and while you're doing all of this just being there and being active demonstrates that you understand the value of this tool to companies and understanding its value means that you'll have good ideas about how you can show up in the tool in linkedin for your companies so that alone is why it's worth being there companies will representatives will always be looking for further exposure for their initiatives and what is imp
ortant to them you yourself your ceo and your organization can all play a role on in this and so when you're considering partnerships with your organization being aligned in a way that would allow you to speak about them in linkedin is one of the good tests to know that that's going to be a corporate partnership that you're really excited about showing companies visibly on your organization's page is also useful for showing that you're corporate friendly i often talk about being open for busines
s and that is you know a visible demonstration of a company's relationship with your organization and doing that in linkedin in a business to business or in a way that shows up for their employees is a great way to get started all of this is especially important to consider as you're building relationships virtually these days building relationships virtually means that you want people to get to know you in different mediums in different ways and linkedin is an easy tool to use that extends beyo
nd the phone call and beyond the zoom meeting virtual is here to stay and having more and more tactics to help you in this way is a really useful way to be thinking of linkedin so in this video i'm now going to share with you how to get started in linkedin both in building up your page to make it make sense as well as to do the outreach so that you can find the company as of your dreams without feeling overwhelmed so as you start let's just get the basics down i want you to start with the three
areas of your profile that are the most important your headline your summary and your banner these three pieces are the first thing people see it's your first impression so first let's talk about your headline this is where you can express your role and it's more than just the title it's an opportunity to communicate what you do make sure you include keywords leader collaborator manager corporate partnerships marketing really give a little bit of a feel for who you are in this in this space make
it relevant and it ideally also explains what your organization is as well as your role within it then take a look at your summary see if that needs a little bit of updating write a paragraph or a series of bullets that explain what you are what you are all about you can of course focus partially on your professional role here but it's also helpful to put in some values passions volunteer work educational background in here to give the person a little bit more of a holistic sense of who you are
i love it when people end their summary section with a wrap up or that says something like i love talking about this or i love sharing ideas about that something that gives a reason to connect with you beyond just the obvious of your role it gives you a little bit of personality so i encourage you to think about a sentence like that in your summary and finally your banner this is the visual and in an ideal world you would create a visual that reflects something meaningful for you that reflects
your professional values and your work in canva it is not a hard tool to use but if you do need some help reach out to people around you lots of people love working in canva for fun if you really can't do that then fall back on the templates that exist in linkedin but i encourage you to think about putting a visible representation of who you are in the banner okay once you've done that your page is ready it's in a state where if someone pops over to their their that it will reflect your corporat
e partnership role your fundraising role and you will look professional that's all we need now it's time to do some reaching out in order to really see impact on linkedin you have to take action you have to make sure you are connecting with companies they're senior leaders and being seen as the leader you are how do you do that well i'm going to give you four key actions that i know that you can do today number one reach out to all your current contacts and corporate partners your staff team and
your board and make sure you you're connected to all those key people always connect with a new contact when you have a meeting with them or at after a conference if you've met them at a conference in both of these cases really close to the meeting is the perfect time to make sure you're connected right before someone meets with you you know if you've already checked their linkedin instead of going on anonymous show them that you've looked at their profile and make a quick comment that just sho
ws you're getting prepared and doing your research reach out to the main companies that you want the main contact at companies you want to have a meeting with as well if you aren't comfortable yet with um doing that as a one-on-one many senior leaders have a follow option so you can follow them in advance of reaching out through a dm but if you are feeling like you have good alignment and you want to see it and talk to them at a virtual conference or workshop you want to make sure that they noti
ce you then it can be a good strategy to reach out in advance with a very specific reason why you're reaching out and tell them you're about to be at a conference or about to listen to them somewhere where you might meet them best practice is building the connection by being personal so whenever possible provide them with a specific reason why you're connecting and that will really help increase the likelihood of their acceptance keep it short and focused on the commonality that you're trying to
create wherever possible name another person or a specific next step that will make a further connection but as i said if you're not there yet many senior leaders have a follow option and if for now that's where you're at follow them but then you can also maintain a higher level of engagement by writing comments on their posts and liking what they put out there okay so now we're starting to get some action you've got a great page you've started to follow your contacts follow your networks follo
w people that you're meeting with now as i said start liking and commenting amplify the message that they're putting out in the world you can do this on the company page and on these individuals pages often they will provide professional updates about their organizations and putting a quick comment that says how much you like it or how it aligns with what your organization is doing or how it makes sense that um that that they are being receiving an accolade for something that they're really inve
sted in as a company this will really help you they will see it i always say that algorithms work for you if you are showing up on their company page and on their page by putting positivity out in the world they will notice you can start really simple it does not have to be a big deal to put a nice comment on a thought leader's posts and you don't need to limit this there's nowhere in linkedin that it shows out how many times you're doing that or at least no one's checking that i also encourage
you to share a regular post on your page share a post of what's going on with you or with your organization ideally you do this weekly but even if you do it once a month i would consider that a win there are so many great examples out there so look at a couple of pages that you admire and see what kind of posts they put this will give you some ideas that you can build on and emulate when you put your longer posts out and your longer posts don't have to be in articles they could be right in the c
ontent with a picture as ideal or a link to an article we just want to get to know you a little bit in linkedin you can also for your own content reshare posts from your organization from companies that you like or from art from publications that you like it's an easy way to amplify somebody else's message within your organization or within your cause and show that you're paying attention in linkedin so you're reading an article and you're highlighting a key point this is how you begin to establ
ish yourself as a thought leader in the sector by amplifying others and adding a thoughtful comment to what they have to say and doing more than just putting it within the post but also resharing it on your own page the more experience you get the more comfortable you will get at really writing new messages of thought leadership and more messages of amplification but at the beginning just getting out there is good enough it shows that you're active it shows that you're networking and it shows th
at you understand the value of the tool and at this stage that's really what we want once you've taken the steps you are truly active in linkedin you will start to see the positive repercussions of this tool i have met with many um organizations who have connected through linkedin and that has helped them in their meeting it helps them has helped them get to know the organization and it has helped that contact get to know them as well and their organization one extra piece of homework if you'd l
ike to connect with me on linkedin i'd love to be connected with you and if you want me to give one of your posts a like or a comment don't hesitate to dm me that post i'll see it and i will definitely interact with it that's a good way for you to get started now if this video was helpful for you please give it a like and if you enjoyed what you're learning here and are invested in corporate partnerships i i do share regular contact i encourage you to subscribe i look forward to being connected
with you here and on linkedin best of luck with your corporate partnerships
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