How LinkedIn can benefit your business

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn aims to improve the productivity of companies and increase their chances of success, through forging real professional relationships online. Its main goal is to connect like-minded business professionals, who can share their own experiences and company updates – by growing their own personal network, it provides the opportunity to learn from others, upskill and stay ‘in-the-know’.

Today, people will not only expect you to have a robust LinkedIn profile, your business must be well-represented too. It can be damaging for your reputation if your organisation does not have a LinkedIn presence. New business prospects, or even new employees could get the wrong idea about your company. That’s why, LinkedIn should be considered as part of your social media strategy, whether it is speaking directly to your customers, or utilised to build your employer brand.

Why should you use LinkedIn for your business?

Increase brand awareness and website traffic

With LinkedIn, you have an opportunity to increase your brand visibility online and tell your brand story. Start off by creating a well-optimised company page, this is your brand’s shop window on the LinkedIn platform – it’s free to create and means you can start to build an audience, where you can deliver interesting updates and insightful content about your business. With a strong company page, you can also win in terms of search visibility. It is also important to ensure you have optimised your profile with keywords and links to your website to have a positive effect on your SEO efforts, helping to increase traffic to your website.

LinkedIn depends on personal connections – your employees are representatives of your brand and should be used as such. Drive organic reach by utilising your employer base as brand ambassadors, they can amplify your messages and share their own experiences about working for your company, helping increase your brand awareness and reach new audiences. By having an engaged workforce on LinkedIn you will improve engagement, reach new people and increase traffic to your website.

And finally do not forget the importance of regularly sharing relevant, enticing content in order to drive clicks to your website. Once you have driven a new user to your company page, or gained a new follower, you must continue to add value in order to keep them engaged and drive them through to your site.

Increase the opportunity for conversion, by demonstrating your expertise

This is the ideal platform to tell your brand story, highlight your knowledge and professional success. As a business-oriented social media channel, highlighting your expertise within your field lends itself perfectly to this platform. On LinkedIn, you will find a more qualified and attentive audience, but they are also less receptive to traditional marketing, which is why you need to educate and inform your audience, rather than sell. It is fundamental that you are adding value in order to keep your users interested. You will gain visibility by sharing as much news as possible about your company and its sector of activity, this will help your contacts to get to know your business better. Consider sharing videos, graphics, white papers, events, blog posts and articles for added impact.

The expertise also lies within your people. Do not be afraid to bring the faces behind the brand into the foreground. Encourage your employees to become the spokespeople of your brand by publishing long-form content pieces on your industry/subject matter – this provides a huge opportunity to showcase your expertise and humanise your business further. This can bring real credibility to your brand and increase the opportunity for conversion online. You can then share this knowledge, which is extremely valuable to your industry, followers and future prospects.

Stay aware of what’s happening in your industry

LinkedIn is a substantive source of information, meaning you can stay up to date on the latest news about your sector of activity. Thanks to your company page, your followers are able to stay informed of your progress, people and everything that’s going on in your company.

But this also provides huge value for your business – use LinkedIn to inform your own business strategy and obtain useful insights on your industry, contacts and competitors. Following the news and events of the competition will allow you to stay on top of your game and ensure you’re always aware of what’s happening in your industry. LinkedIn also is home to a huge amount of thought-leadership and educational content, which can enrich you and your employees. Therefore, it is a significant tool to help you develop your own marketing strategy and increase your knowledge of changes or developments in your sector.

Use LinkedIn to identify prospects and open new sales opportunities

LinkedIn is also a powerful tool for B2B sales professionals. It can be used to open the door to new opportunities – your employees can now effortlessly find, connect with, comprehend and nurture sales prospect. With intelligent and advanced search functionalities, it has never been easier to identify key business decision-makers and engage with them. Tools such as ‘Sales Navigator’ also makes this even easier, providing a robust solution to search for and manage any leads you generate through the platform.

Those who use this platform to identify potential business prospects are often more likely to form a stronger relationship and understanding of their prospects’ needs. While your company page must reflect your brand and direct users to your website, ultimately it is the people on the ground who can start real conversations on LinkedIn. With half of LinkedIn users being more likely to buy from a company who they engage with on LinkedIn, nurturing these real relationships is crucial. From a brand perspective, you (and your ambassadors) can continue to nurture your followers by interacting with those who leave comments or share any content from your company page. It is important to remember to treat each engagement as you would in real life in order to boost your business perception and gain results.

Attract future employees

Your LinkedIn profile can also reflect your brand personality as an employer. A strong talent brand can make all the difference in today’s competitive jobs market place when looking to find the top talent in your industry. Generate content which is highly social and incorporate what your workforce feels and thinks about your business as a place of work. Again, encourage your team to be a part of the brand story and produce quality content to empower them. Make your culture shine and show future employees what they will be missing if they don’t come to work for you!

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LinkedIn is a network full of professional opportunities, by creating a strong profile for your business, you can see real results. Need to start using LinkedIn for your company? If so, call our digital marketing team who can make the most of this powerful business network. Call us on 01603 252555 or fill in a contact form.