Is your business using LinkedIn?
There is a common misconception that LinkedIn is a place just for job seekers or for corporate companies to showcase their brand. SMEs and microbusinesses take note, a LinkedIn presence is essential for all businesses irrespective of size. It’s a fabulous tool you can use to your competitive advantage, no matter which sector you operate in. Read on to find out how you can leverage LinkedIn as a powerful marketing tool and reap the rewards for your business.
LinkedIn is a social network for professionals and businesses with 33 million UK Linked In members. Millennials make up over 60% of Linked In’s user base, with many in decision-making positions and influential roles.
10 reasons to get LinkedIn:
1. Boost your credibility and demonstrate expertise
Having an official company page and presence adds legitimacy to your business and the more visible you are, the more likely customers are to trust your business. LinkedIn gives you another channel to promote your company culture and your values, so ensure job titles and descriptions are in sync to project the right image. You can showcase the skills, experiences, and accomplishments of your business and your team, so ensure all key members of staff are listed and have optimised and up-to-date LinkedIn profiles. These link straight from your company page so the likelihood is, prospective customers that visit your company page will also then view staff profiles.
2. Grow your connections to drive new business
Adding a LinkedIn profile for your business is a highly valuable marketing tool where you can improve visibility and build relationships with potential customers. It is a great source of leads for the smaller business, especially when starting out. You can send a personalised connection request to prospective clients and business partners without sounding too salesy.
It is best to be proactive and engage in conversations, comment on profiles or a post prospective customers have shared. Equally, LinkedIn’s messaging function is highly popular and allows you to send a personalised message to an individual without having their email address. Open rates for InMail messages (those sent through LinkedIn Mail) are three times higher than email open rates, so if you have a prospect connecting via LinkedIn ensure, you nurture this lead well.
3. Content marketing tool
LinkedIn is ideal for sharing thought leadership content in the form of blogs, videos, and white papers helping to position your business as an expert in your field. This explains why it is the number one channel for distributing content among B2B marketers due to its effectiveness. Professionals come to LinkedIn to connect with like-minded individuals and brands and to find relevant and useful information, such as expert advice, industry news, insights and recommendations, and opinions. By posting content on LinkedIn you engage with your connections and can drive traffic to your blogs and websites. Your employees can help share content you post on LinkedIn too, acting as brand ambassadors.
4. SEO value
LinkedIn can form a valuable part of your SEO strategy, so it’s important to use your keywords when posting articles and content. Google and other search engines rank LinkedIn company pages and posts highly in search engine results pages, so adding updates to your company page will help boost your search engine visibility. Growing your connections and also encouraging your connections to like and comment on your posts will thus improve your SEO. LinkedIn also helps you to improve your link building.
5. Insight and research tool
LinkedIn is a valuable source of business and competitor information. Use it as a search engine to stay up to date with industry trends, research your competitors and develop insights that inform your marketing strategy. You can search and follow hashtags related to your industry and post content that ties in with trending hashtags. These will appear amongst the top search results on LinkedIn as well as other search engine results, improving business visibility. LinkedIn provides audience insights so you can see who is viewing your content, where they live, their job title, and where they work.
6. Industry Networking
Traditional face-to-face networking has long been popular in the business world. LinkedIn makes the networking process easier and seamless. LinkedIn Groups are a highly effective way to connect with potential customers and align your business within your industry. InMail messages sent to members of LinkedIn group members have above-average response rates too so they are more likely to be opened.
7. Build an organic presence at no cost
The beauty of LinkedIn is that there are limited marketing costs involved. There is no fee to join and use the business network. Time is required to create a LinkedIn page, create posts and write content, but with a proper content marketing strategy in place, this can be managed efficiently.
8. Embrace Linked In Ads
As on Facebook, LinkedIn Ads and sponsored posts can also be leveraged for a more targeted approach. Dynamic Ads are available, alongside content sponsorship in LinkedIn feeds and InMail Message Ads. These can be highly effective ways to drive traffic to your LinkedIn page and website.
9. LinkedIn Blogging
LinkedIn gives you blogging tools to write long-form articles you can share with your connections, a great way to demonstrate your thought leadership and share trends and advice. This goes a stage further than your company blog posts. LinkedIn prefers you to stay on the platform and blog posts created in the platform will help to increase brand visibility maximising your organic reach. LinkedIn will notify your connections each time you publish a post.
10. Aid recruitment
And lastly, Linked In is a great recruitment tool. You can post jobs for free and easily find candidates or freelancers to help grow your business.
LinkedIn is a powerful asset for all types of business, but particularly for SMEs and microbusinesses. Don’t ignore this valuable marketing channel. Time spent building your business page and developing content to share on LinkedIn will pay off.
To capitalise on using LinkedIn and other social media networks as part of your broader marketing strategy, please get in touch and arrange your complimentary 30-minute call.