Women networking — biggest link-up

The close of this year will see a bid for the biggest business women networking event in history. Using the power of LinkedIn, the 2014 One Million Woman Link Up plans to set a Guinness World Record for networking. The event will take place on New Years Eve, with the aim of linking up a million women around the globe. It is being mounted by WomenPartner.org, whose representative Jerrilyn B Thomas shared some insights about the event with The Business Woman Media.

What is the 1 Million Women Link Up?  

The 2014 One Million Woman Link Up is a movement launched by WomenPartner,org to provide women with the motivation they need to monetize their LinkedIn membership.  There are millions of women who joined LinkedIn only to let their membership gather dust because they didn’t have a mentor to help them understand how to use the site to their advantage.  LinkedIn has a learning curve but it’s worth it to learn how to use it.

Why LinkedIn?  

80% of my business comes from LinkedIn.  When I discovered that LinkedIn had 300,000,000 members of which 46% are female (138,000,000), I knew that I needed to focus even more of my attention on it.  LinkedIn is B2B whereas Facebook is B2C with a big heaping helping of family and friends.  There are millions of B2B companies wasting countless hours and money trying to make Facebook produce results because they still believe the “Facebook is for Business” hype that was rampant years ago.

How will it benefit women?  They will receive support to set up their LinkedIn Company Page, assistance with cross pollinating their LinkedIn connections (utilizing the connections of other LinkedIn members in exchange for commissions, advertising, discounts, etc.), and PR for their businesses.

What sparked the initial idea?  

I set up my LinkedIn Company Page and let it languish because I was unsure what to do with it and was more comfortable with Facebook Pages.  On the day that I reached the breaking point with my Facebook Page due to the algorithm change dramatically reducing the reach of my posts, I came across a blog post about LinkedIn adding Showcase Pages to their Company Pages.  It motivated me to begin using my LinkedIn Company Page.  But there was just one problem — only 3% of  LinkedIn members had a LinkedIn Company Page.

Only one out of every ten people I asked to follow my LinkedIn Company Page knew what one was so it was tough to get followers.  They thought a LinkedIn member profile was a Company Page.  I had to do several follow ups to explain it to them.  It totally blew their minds. There weren’t discussion threads on LinkedIn groups to educate members about LinkedIn Company Pages much less help them get followers.

I started researching LinkedIn Company Pages to pinpoint their history and why more people didn’t know about them.  The details were very sketchy but I did learn that a LinkedIn Company Page can have 2.8 million followers and that only a few companies had broken the 1,000,000 mark.  I wanted to accomplish that milestone too.  As a result, I came up with the 2014 One Million Woman Link Up to get followers, educate women about the B2B advantages of having a LinkedIn Company Page versus a Facebook Page and grow my female client base and advantages of women networking.

Do you predict there will be a roll-on effect from this?

Most definitely!  We will continue to grow the movement and help women utilize LinkedIn to target women owned companies.  There will be business books featuring participants, networking events both online and offline, joint interviews, discount buyer club for select products and services and opportunities for live conferences in addition to offering women micro-loans through peer to peer lending programs.

For more information, go to http://womenpartner.org/one-million-woman-link-up/