Sharing a Small Business Success Story on LinkedIn

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As a small business owner, whether you are a for profit or a nonprofit, what do you do when you want to scale your business? How do you get help?

By Lynne Williams

As a small business owner, whether you are a for-profit or a nonprofit, what do you do when you want to scale your business? How do you get help?

First, let’s define what scaling means. According to SCORE, “Scaling a business means setting the stage to enable and support growth in your company. It means having the ability to grow without being hampered. It requires planning, some funding, and the right systems, staff, processes, technology, and partners.”

SCORE provides further details for these five steps to accomplish scaling:

  1. Evaluate and Plan
  2. Find the Money
  3. Secure the Sales
  4. Invest in Technology
  5. Find Staff or Strategically Outsource

Let’s add a few more challenges. Let’s say you are a nonprofit and have little to no money, you just built a website to begin to monetize, are volunteer-based with no employees (yet), and have emotional attachments to what you do. Now what?

How do you get out of your own way and get a fresh set of eyes to have someone review your business? How do you get helpful advice and recommendations?

Contact SCORE, of course! There are chapters across the country, so you can find a chapter near you to get help and request FREE mentoring sessions!

Although I volunteer for more than one SCORE chapter, there is one particular SCORE chapter I want to highlight today, which is Chester & Delaware County SCORE.

Why? Not only have I been a SCORE volunteer on the SCORE speaker’s bureau since April 2013, but I reached out to SCORE to request a mentor as a small business owner.

I got great ideas from my mentor, Frank Millheim, that I shared with my Board of Directors and steering committee to scale. Our success story and others written about this 10th-anniversary awards celebration will be added to this Google doc.

The annual celebration for the small business award winners is on Thursday, September 24, 2020, from 12 to 1 PM, and it’s virtual, so register here.

Thank you to Citadel Credit Union for sponsoring this 2020 event and honoring me with the 2019 Community Hero Award.

To let my network know about this award and ceremony, I will be leveraging LinkedIn and will also be driving traffic to my website. Could you do the same for your business with your story?

Here are four tips of what you can do on LinkedIn, even with a free account:

  1. Publish a full article on LinkedIn or write an enticing first paragraph on LinkedIn that makes people want to click your read more link that leads them to your blog, which drives traffic to your website. Or include your BIO with website links in the article.
  2. Share short posts with a link to your article or blog on the feed on your homepage. It’s best to post on your company page and then share that company page link (three dots at the top right) on your home page. LinkedIn’s algorithm likes it when people stay on the platform longer, which is a way of accomplishing that.
  3. Share short posts in groups following the same technique as above, but sharing the link from your company page.
  4. Include a native video in your post (rather than take people off LinkedIn to Youtube or Vimeo), so they remain on LinkedIn longer. Again, the algorithm will like it more if people stay on the platform longer. Speaking of video, watch the 3-minute video about my SCORE story on our home page or our Youtube channel.

Next week’s article will include a step by step with visuals on exactly how to set up and leverage your company page, but first, you have to have a personal profile page.

Need to learn more about LinkedIn? Register with the Chester County Library for the Saturday, September 19th, LinkedIn Part 1 of 3 series starting up again. Can’t beat three hours of FREE training as a library patron! I am celebrating my seventh year at the Chester County Library this month as their LinkedIn instructor!

Missed the previous LinkedIn article on The Self-Employed, Consultant, or Solopreneur on LinkedIn? Click here!

>>> If you have an interest in attending a workshop on Sat Oct 3rd and 10th, 8:30 AM – 12 PM, on Racism & Sexism in Society and the Workplace, please send an email to lynne@aroundtheclockexecs.com as I have a workshop presenter committed to those dates and space is limited.

Upcoming September Online Zoom Events

Register as noted on the events tab on the website and join our meetup (see step one of this Google doc). To attend the speaker meetings for free for a year, become a Bronze or BENG member. Your membership or sponsorship supports our nonprofit to help job seekers in career transition and self-employed and employed with career management. That’s one of the ways we monetize, as I described above. If YOU don’t need help with job search right now, there are other job seekers that do, so be a sponsor and help pay it forward!

  • 9/18 Interviewing Techniques with The Interview Doctor
  • 9/19 LinkedIn Part 1 of 3 Three Hour Workshop
  • 9/21 Career Success Group Networking Meeting
  • 9/21 Virtual Job Seeker Support Meeting
  • 9/21 Business Executives Networking Group (BENG)
  • 9/22 Quick Start Guide to Designing the Life (and career) You Love
  • 9/22 Business Executives Networking Group (BENG)
  • 9/23 PowerThinking Resiliency Building Call
  • 9/23 The Inquirer | Monster Virtual Career Fair
  • 9/23 Business Executives Networking Group (BENG)
  • 9/24 Career Success Group Meeting
  • 9/24 Chester & Delaware County SCORE 2020 Annual Awards Virtual Celebration
  • 9/24 Business Executives Networking Group (BENG)
  • 9/24 Job Hunting is a Numbers Game
  • 9/25 Interviewing Techniques with The Interview Doctor
  • 9/28 Your Career: The Role of a Positive Mindset in Challenging Times
  • 9/28 Becoming a Subject Matter Expert: How to Position Yourself as an Industry Leader to Potential Employers
  • 9/29 Your 2020 Career – becoming a VictOR Rather Than a VictIM
  • 9/30 PowerThinking Resiliency Building Call

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lynne Williams, Ed.D. Candidate (she/her/hers) is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Area Great Careers Group, a nonprofit with over 6300 members and alumni. Contact Lynne by phone at 484-393-2951, email at director@greatcareersphl.org, on social media @GreatCareersPHL and #GreatCareersPHL and connect on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/lynnewilliams. Read our SCORE Success Story as a 2020 Small Business Achievement Award Winner!

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