Wendy Glavin, Founder & CEO, Wendy Glavin Agency

Every day, I receive LinkedIn notifications about the number of views I receive. Typically, it’s 300 per day. Three-hundred per day times 365 days is 109,500 views per year. That’s a lot of opportunities with 562 million users in more than 200 countries worldwide.

These numbers are important data points to use for identifying hiring and recruiting activity, the most in-demand skills, new clients, prospects, thought leaders, and journalists. You can learn what people are thinking about and industry trends to generate new business ideas or new career directions.Like me, I’m sure a lot of you struggle with whether you should connect with people. On the one hand, I want to help others. On the other hand, it wastes time reading InMails from people who are trying to sell you a product or service you already use, don’t need, is too costly or has an unclear value proposition.

How to Use LinkedIn to Learn New Industry Trends

As the owner of a marketing, PR, and social media agency, I obtain clients in a broad range of B2B2C sectors. Since my job is to become the voice of the company, I must be educated and skilled about the people and industries in which I work. Whether I’m being interviewed, attend an event or meeting, or am approached by a new prospect, or potential business partner, I research them on LinkedIn. I read through their profiles, articles, previous positions, schools they’ve attended, communities they serve and their interests.It’s important to be prepared before you speak with someone. Always create a strategy before connecting with people, including reading their articles, blogs, and watching CEO and company videos. Broaden your knowledge by finding new pages, publications, groups, experts and leaders.For example, I’m working with a financial technology (FinTech) and artificial intelligence (AI) client that focuses on financial services. With daily research, I discovered the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute that explores the current and future potential of AI, machine learning (ML), deep learning and cognitive computing in marketing.

A B2B Case Study: How to Schedule 15 Meetings Per Month on LinkedIn

One large business consulting company hires 50 college graduates each year whose job is meet a quota of scheduling 15 meetings per month with C-Suite executives. If a hiree only sets-up ten, his or her quota is raised to twenty the next month. Of the 50 hires, only two students went over quota, were promoted and taught the next incoming team how to meet or exceed quota. Yearly, the company has at minimum 180 meetings per year.But, what if you don’t have a young staff of 50 people whose job it is to schedule meetings? What if you’re a small-to-medium sized business, a startup, a boutique agency, or a small consulting firm. You’re probably thinking, who has time to send 100 InMails per day and what would I even say?