LinkedIn provides a valuable opportunity to connect with business leaders, decision makers, and high-income earners.
LinkedIn should definitely be a part of your business’ social media marketing mix.
Discover five ways to use LinkedIn for business.
1. Use LinkedIn as a Networking Tool
LinkedIn is an amazing networking tool.
To take full advantage of LinkedIn’s networking capabilities, you need to do three things:
- Connect with people
- Build an all-star profile
- Interact with others
Connect with People
Connect with colleagues and friends you know, right along with other people you don’t know.
There’s no limit to who you should connect with.
Follow someone’s blog? Connect with them on LinkedIn.
Have a dream company you want to work for? Start connecting (and interacting) with people from that company.
Looking for new job opportunities or want to generate leads? Accept any and all new connect requests.
Keep your profile set to public, and always be open to connecting – you never know what opportunities your LinkedIn network will generate.
Build an All-Star Personal Profile and/or Business Page
It’s not enough just to connect.
You also should also invest time in building your personal profile and/or business page.
Practically, that means:
- Write a concise, jargon-free introduction that distinguishes you or your business.
- Use a professional-looking headshot for your personal profile photo and a legible logo for your business page.
- If you use a header photo, keep it sized properly and the imagery clean.
- Fill out every applicable field.
- Attach media, including blog posts, white papers, videos, infographics, etc.
Build a robust profile that gives readers a clear understanding of who you are, complete with contact information and next steps (such as leading the reader to your website).
Interact with Other People’s Content
It’s not enough to use LinkedIn as a publishing platform alone – it’s essential to interact with others and build meaningful connections if you want to take full advantage of LinkedIn’s networking potential.
In addition to sharing your own content, thoughtfully comment on other people’s content. When you post your own content, make sure to respond to comments.
Ask questions and spark discussions.
Give recommendations. Ask for recommendations.
Participate in LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your business.
2. Use LinkedIn as a Publishing Platform
LinkedIn is an excellent resource for content creators.
Not only can you post status updates and link back to content on your site, you can also use LinkedIn as a native publishing platform and create exclusive content for your LinkedIn audience.
LinkedIn is the only social media network that you can use as a publishing platform for articles.
You might be wondering: why publish on LinkedIn instead of publishing directly to my blog or website?
Good question.
Publishing an article on LinkedIn is about driving social engagement on LinkedIn and creating brand awareness, rather than driving traffic to your site specifically.
Whenever you publish an article on LinkedIn, all of your connections are notified – that’s a huge advantage.
There’s also this to consider: 45% of LinkedIn article readers are in upper-level positions (managers, VPs, directors, C-suite).
LinkedIn also provides analytics for all the articles you create, so it’s easy to determine which articles are getting the most traction.
3. Use LinkedIn for Online Reputation Management
The first rule of online reputation management is to have control over all the results that come on Google’s first page of search results when someone searches for your business name.
Obviously you want content from your site to rank, but it’s also a best practice to claim all the social profiles you can in your business’ name – even if you don’t plan to be extremely active on them.
This is because social media profiles, including a LinkedIn profile, almost always show up on the first page of search engine results for a business’ (or individual’s) name.
To that end, make sure to create a business page for your company, if only to claim that valuable spot on the SERP.
The more real estate you can gather on the SERP, the better.
That way, if you ever have any bad publicity, your website and social media profiles will potentially push anything negative onto page two.
4. Generate Leads, Drive Conversions
Whether your business is B2B or B2C, you can generate leads and drive conversions on LinkedIn.
Consider the following:
- LinkedIn users have buying power: 44% earn more than $75,000 in a year.
If you have a product to sell, you’ll find people who can buy on LinkedIn.
You can find new clients via LinkedIn: 40 million LinkedIn users are in decision-making positions, and therefore have the authority to hire your agency, license your software or make a company-wide order of your product. - You can form strategic partnerships: 61 million LinkedIn users are considered senior-level influencers.
You can do this organically, of course, or you can upgrade to a Sales Navigator plan.
With a Sales Navigator plan, you get:
- Insights into your current leads (including company growth, job changes and more).
- Advanced search functionality that lets you zero in on decision makers.
- Get automatic lead recommendations.
5. Use LinkedIn to Find New Talent
LinkedIn offers premium subscriptions that make it easy to find talent.
With a Recruiter Lite plan, you can:
- Post job openings.
- Send 30 direct LinkedIn messages to talent you’re interested in.
- Use advanced search options to find exactly what you’re looking for.
- Sort and manage your candidate pool.
- Easily track candidates and open roles.
Recruiter Lite can be a great solution if you’re just starting to scale your business and don’t have a hiring manager or HR department yet.
Even if you do have a hiring manager, Recruiter Lite can be a useful tool to help them vet candidates.
It can also save thousands of dollars if you currently use an employment agency to help with your hiring needs.
Conclusion
Whether you’re looking to grow your network, manage your online reputation, scale your business, drive valuable social traffic to your site, or find and nurture leads, LinkedIn is an extremely useful tool for your business.
Even if you invest more time in other social networks, you should create a LinkedIn page for your business and start exploring these opportunities.
Every business’s audience is unique – you just might find you have tremendous engagement on LinkedIn.
The only way to find out is to start spending more time there.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita