The Story of LinkedIn, well, my LinkedIn profile page. Stefan Lindberg-Jones

So in 2011, I wanted to broadcast the fact that I was starting a company and to show-off what great content my new company was producing in film, animation, and photography.

I looked at my options that were around in 2011. I could go the traditional route of advertising in the national press or create a story that would interest the local reporter in the community section, but that would be short-lived. The newspaper would be trash the next day.
I looked at Facebook, here I had to create a business page where I could pay for advertising to get the message out, to build my following, or advertise my services, but that was money I didn’t have at the start. The other option was to connect with all my friends. I’ve none in the past and subtly release material to show off what we were doing. Still, I was sure they would tire of my endless posts about my company, as they would prefer to see clips of cuddly kittens and funny clips of the family.

Twitter, I felt, wasn’t right for our brand and content; it was more for the written word.

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I felt LinkedIn was my go-to place, where I could reach out directly to marketing managers and CEO’s and request to connect.

I can hear you say, \”but you didn’t know them, and still you reached out to connect\”?
Yes, I ignored the LinkedIn message that popped up saying \”do you know this person\” and just requested to connect.
It was my way of cold calling, but instead of giving them the whole spiel of who I was and what I do, and how I might be able to help, all they got was a request to connect based on my picture profile, my title, and my basic work history.
Yes, I would be stopped by LinkedIn now and again for spam connecting to people, as some people would click the \”I Don’t Know This Person,\” but over-all most people accepted my request to connect.

Over time I built up a connection base of 15,000 people; this connection base I used to advertise everything Ginger Camel was up to, straight into the feed of my 15,000 connections;
Through that, I would get referrals, requests to connect, invited to networking events.

You could say it was target marketing with content that showed what we were good at what we did without the hard sell and no more cold calling.

The downside was that I would be asked for referrals or introductions to my LinkedIn connections, as people thought I had a personal/business relationship with all my contacts. I had to explain to them that I had no relationship with my contacts.

I also realized that even though we were contacts on LinkedIn, many of my contacts were not willing to have a face to face meeting.
They also didn’t visit their linked-in page frequently, and it would be months and months before they would reply, and then it would be some excuse for not meeting up due to being very busy, etc.

Eight years down the line, I decided enough was enough, and I wanted a more meaningful relationship with my LinkedIn connections. I initially started to delete all the contacts that had reached out just looking for work. I deleted all the contacts that just wanted to sell their services to me, Ummm sounds familiar, yeh, but I didn’t hound my connections with adverts, and please use us; these are our services type messages.
After that, I still had 11,000 connections to go through, that was going to be a mammoth task, and I didn’t have the time.

So I found a website that would go through my LinkedIn account and delete connections that I specified. Well, I decided to start again and so deleted all my 11,000 contacts, which took a couple of hours to complete.

I felt reborn, ready to build my LinkedIn family again. This time it was going to be on a personal level, one that I could reach out to all those that I was connected to and make introductions. I could connect to people by giving proper introductions and requesting to meet before ever going for that connect button.
Anyone who wanted to connect with me I would reply, thanking them for their request to connect, but before I accepted, maybe you could introduce yourself and tell me why you want to connect.
Most of the time, they would not reply, and thus their request to connect would be denied, allowing me to focus on my genuine connections. For the ones who did reply, I would request a meeting or a Zoom call to get to know that person and see how we could help each other with future business.

I am sure the way I use LinkedIn will change as the platform changes and develops, but it’s a handy tool in reaching out and making good genuine connections.

Please feel free to reach out to me, but please include a message to say why you want to connect. Check out my profile because now I offer a lot more than just film production, and don’t worry, there’s not a long CV of all the jobs I’ve done in the past since kindergarten. My profile is relevant to what I am involved with now.

Yes, I did this all in Qatar. Before I came to Qatar I was in the UK working for Sky TV
Yes sounds good – a brand new beginning. Let’s see what the future holds!
Can you link my new podcast to the article?
http://stefanlindberg-jonesworkrestandplaypodcast.libsyn.com/website