LinkedIn is the perfect place for business professionals to come together for networking and resource sharing. It is the perfect social network for anybody involved in the business world to get together with potential customers, clients, and partners to advance their reach, knowledge, and careers.
What Is LinkedIn?
In contrast to other social networks such as Facebook or Instagram whose focus is on connecting friends and family, LinkedIn’s focus is on connecting business and career professionals. With its focus on connecting and networking people, the connections you make on LinkedIn are more about quality over quantity — it even stops displaying your number of connections when you reach 500.
The site hosts over 600 million users from 200 countries across the world and every industry you can imagine. Its members include CEO’s of huge multi-national corporations right down to individual freelancers.
Starting by connecting to your current network of colleagues and associates, you can grow your connections out to form new relationships with their connections, and their connections connections, so on and so forth.
How Can LinkedIn Work For Business?
It may be starting to sound like LinkedIn is all about individual networking and if so it may be hard to see what it can offer your business and brand. While it’s true that LinkedIn may not be the best primary social network for all brands, it still pays to maintain a presence.
The B2B King
When it comes to B2B products and services, LinkedIn is by far the best social network you can use. According to research, over 40% of B2B marketers say they prefer LinkedIn to any other social network for getting the brand known.
Getting the Word Out
LinkedIn is a great avenue to announce your latest product or service to the world. With a dedicated network of business owners, media members, bloggers, and consumers, it’s no surprise that LinkedIn is favoured by 81% of B2B businesses when making product launches and announcements.
Talent Search
Seeking out the best new talent to recruit to your company used to involve making a posting on a job board and waiting for applicants, but research shows that is changing. LinkedIn offers a variety of headhunting and recruitment-based tools for businesses to take advantage of, and with its career profiles, there’s never been a better way to find the ideal match for your next hire.
Search Ranking
Personal branding is important as people will generally Google you before doing business with you. Ranking well for your own name is crucial for driving new business and maintaining your reputation online. The more information about the company and brand Google has to work on, the better it will likely rank, and a well-crafted LinkedIn profile can help with that.
Lead Generation
Research shows that LinkedIn has one of, if not the highest conversion rates for lead generation out of all the social media sites. Obviously, this will depend slightly on your businesses area and target market, but regardless it can be a great source to generate new contacts and leads.
How to Use LinkedIn to Your Advantage
Managing your companies LinkedIn presence is much easier than it may seem. As with most social networks, developing and maintaining a long-term plan is crucial to your success, but here are some tips to get you started.
The Individual Company
LinkedIn isn’t just about the company and brand. A well-crafted brand page is, of course, a great starting point, but it’s also a good idea to encourage key members of the company (CEO, founders, etc) to maintain an active page with interesting postings. HootSuite, the social media management platform, for instance, has a few hundred thousand followers on their companies profile, but over a million on their CEOs.
Linkedin Groups
LinkedIn Groups are a feature that allows you to come together with other people and companies that share something in common. They can be a great way to network with people from outside your direct circle, helping to draw new attention to your brand.
Insightful Content
With its strong focus on business-to-business networking and relationships, the content you post on LinkedIn should be created with that in mind. Content that is interesting and insightful about not only your company and brand but your industry and methodologies that may be of interest to others in your industry is particularly well suited to LinkedIn’s format.
Final Thoughts
LinkedIn may not be the ideal social network for every brand, but even if your products and services are outside the B2B sphere, it can still be an invaluable tool. From increased search rankings to talent recruitment and lead generation opportunities through networking, to leave LinkedIn out of your social media marketing strategy would be a fatal mistake.
Interested to see how LinkedIn Marketing can work for your business? Give us a call to see what we can do for you!