When it comes to using social media for business, LinkedIn is a beautiful thing; geared primarily toward the business community, from small startups to gargantuan corporations, LinkedIn has built a fantastic reputation for itself by catering to business owners who would like to network and showcase their products and services to other business owners.
LinkedIn is a vital marketing tool for many businesses that are focused on effective ways to generate leads, advertise to their target demographic, showcase their venture and build a dynamic and robust community following.
LinkedIn Statistics
With over 660 million registered users, (303 million of them being active on a monthly basis), 90 million of these users are senior-level influencers, and 63 million are in decision-making positions!
LinkedIn Groups is a unique and valuable feature with over 2.1 million groups having been formed as of March 2013 (DMR, 2014) and an estimated 200 conversations taking place in LinkedIn Groups per minute; with an average of 8000 groups established weekly and the average user joining 7 groups, LinkedIn groups is one of the most interactive social media experiences a user can have.
Building Your Company Page
Whether you’re using LinkedIn for advertising, lead generation or building your company into an industry influencer, your company page must be built for success; we’ve put together a few best practice tips around putting together and maintaining an impressive company page for your venture:
- Be Compelling: When building your company page, be sure to keep it professional yet compelling with a engaging brand story that helps build up the personality of your brand, to your mission and vision statements and anything else that represents the spirit of your venture; by showing off the unique personality of your business you’ll help clients feel more connected.
- Be Dynamic: By building your page with creativity and keeping it updated and informative, you’ll keep your customers engaged; from featured blog posts to special events, there are a variety of things you can use to keep both potential and existing clients interested and coming back for more.
- Use your Spotlight: Your LinkedIn company page is a great place to feature your employees, customers, case studies and services; help your visitors make a human connection by using interesting images to tell your stories and be make it easy for people to identify with your brand.
- Show ‘Em What You’ve Got: Your LinkedIn Company page presents a unique opportunity for you to feature your products and services in a highly targeted way; by highlighting your offerings based on your target market, you’ll be sure to attract a great deal of qualified interest that can easily be converted to sales.
- Implement SEO: Social media platforms are an enormously useful tool for SEO, so be sure to implement SEO indexing in order to ensure that your brand comes up in relevant searches; remember to choose your keywords carefully and don’t overdo it, always remember that your human audience comes first.
Building a Robust LinkedIn Group
There’s nothing better for showcasing your business than building an industry-oriented community based on your knowledge and encouraging others to join with you in the discussion; LinkedIn Groups is the perfect platform for enabling business leaders to become top influencers in their niche and building a strong group will go a long way toward increasing your visibility.
If you’re considering starting your own LinkedIn Group, consider the following best-practice points:
- Keep It Clear: A great name is essential for communicating the function of your group; keep it short and simple and remember to use keywords in order to help with search functions.
- Create a Professional Profile: It’s vital to put your best foot forward by creating an amazing profile for your business, highlighting your website, social media activity and any other resources that will help you look like the business superhero you are!
- Build Your Community: LinkedIn Groups boasts fantastic flexibility as far as moderation settings, which mean you can take control and shape your membership according to your own specific criteria; a focused group means a highly targeted audience and that’s always a good thing.
- Be Professional: No matter what the situation, always remember represent your brand in a competent and professional manner; if you’re running the group, behave with style and build a firm rapport, if appointing a moderator, be sure you can rely on them to keep things friendly yet business-like.
Lead Generation
LinkedIn is a vital resource for lead generation for businesses of all sizes; whether creating your own LinkedIn group and becoming a thought leader in your industry or joining an established group and participating in the conversation, LinkedIn is a source of lead generation that businesses can’t afford to miss out on.
From simply connecting with other members to creating polls to identify areas of interest that your business can benefit from catering to, messaging other members of your groups to start conversations and gain insight into their business concerns, LinkedIn is a wealth of lead generation information.
Really want to establish yourself as an expert in your niche?
Take the time to put together some in-depth information in response to a LinkedIn question and watch your influence grow; you can also reach out to the community with free consultations, special offers and/or webinars and other promotional events you’re putting together.
Above all, lead generation is the result of positive engagement and interaction and LinkedIn offers more opportunities to connect and engage with a wide range of professionals who can help you build your exposure and therefore your business than any other platform.
Advertising
LinkedIn Advertising is a wonderful thing; not only is the platform very straightforward and simple to use, it’s extremely depth-oriented which brings the power of highly targeted advertising to your business.
From specifications as broad as industry and location to considerations as targeted as age, gender and job title, there is a wide range of criteria that you can choose to work with or exclude, which means you’re not wasting a dime of your advertising budget.
Budget is another plus when considering advertising on LinkedIn; the platform is priced very reasonably, meaning that you can get superbly targeted advertising that’s highly cost-effective, and that’s an asset for any business.
Using LinkedIn to build and nurture your business is an amazing opportunity that all business owners should be taking advantage of; from amazing targeting capabilities to the chance to really connect with your community and establish yourself as a leading influencer in your industry, if you’re not using LinkedIn to promote your business you need to get started today!
