LinkedIn is the most popular global service focused on professional networking and business promotion. It gives you a variety of ways to promote your company: by building a network of contacts, creating a company profile, participating in discussions on your own or others’ discussion groups or publishing your own articles (coming soon!). How to use all these possibilities to improve your brand’s presence on social media? That’s what you’re about to find out.
Why not Facebook or Twitter, but LinkedIn?
I’m not saying that you should ignore such social media portals as Facebook,Twitter or Pinterest in order to focus on LinkedIn totally. Nevertheless, this site has something special to it. This thing makes it worth considering when you plan your social media marketing strategy. I’m going to introduce 6 ways that will help you promote your brand on LinkedIn and understand how it can bring you closer to success.
1. Your profile
When you fill your company profile with content, think about it as an extended business card. It will build brand awareness and should draw attention of the target group you’re trying to reach.
No matter if users come across your profile by coincidence or after a thorough search for your offer, the first impression is what counts in both cases. Make sure you make it good. Invite them to find out more about your products or services.
To make the most of LinkedIn as a marketing tool, remember to take care of your personal profile as well. The first step to take while building your profile is fill all the profile fields, describe the offer and fill the keywords that represent your brand – this makes your business easier to find and increases the chance that your profile will appear higher if anyone searches for a business offer like yours.
Another necessary element is connecting the profile with your company website and remaining social media profiles you are using as a brand (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.). This way, you can grow traffic to particular websites and plan the communication in such a way that users will feel more encouraged to leave their contact information, including email.
Next thing is to show what makes you different from competitive brands by adding such elements as endorsement, recommendations, publications, presentations or product descriptions in the company profile. Make sure that the information you include is constantly updated. A good thing is to encourage other businesses you cooperated with to leave their opinion about you on the profile. Nothing makes a brand look more trustworthy than a positive recommendation.
All these steps bring you closer to build the viewers’ interest and encourage them to select your offer among the available options.
2. Publications
Until now, the feature of publishing articles available for contacts outside your network has been limited. But recently, LinkedIn introduced an exciting update – soon, all user will have the opportunity to become content creators and publish their work.
Thanks to this feature, anyone joining LinkedIn will be able to read your publications, no matter if you are connected or not. This means that if your content appeals to readers, it can reach a broader audience than ever before.
Writing about topics related to your business, you can get users interested with your brand, build trust and positive brand image. You also have a chance to present yourself as an expert and someone to cooperate with in future projects.
Become an influencer in your field of interest to make people count with your opinion. When it comes to choose a business to cooperate with, you’ll be a leap ahead on the list!
3. Groups
If you read my list building articles, you must be familiar with the idea of groups on LinkedIn. They are an endless source of insights about your target groups and the industry itself.
LinkedIn groups can become:
- a source of information on what’s important for your target group and what problems they approach,
- space for knowledge and opinion exchange that creates trust and engagement,
- a place where you can approach your potential customers directly – sending them a private message is all it takes!
Let’s get it started – join the groups related to your business and be an active participant. Dont’ be afraid to ask questions and answer the topics referring to important aspects of your industry. Remember to send relevant updates to your potential customers.
4. Advanced search
LinkedIn’s advanced search makes it quick and easy to find potential business partners, target group representatives or competitive brands you could track to stay ahead in the game.
All you need to do is type keywords, industry or a company name you wish to find out about. In seconds, you get a list of users to reach out to. After a proper search among groups, you can send a private message or ask to be introduced by the contacts that connect you. It’s incredibly fast and convenient. Just make sure that you approach the users who can be interested in your offer.
5. LinkedIn Ads
Apart from all its free features, LinkedIn offers paid advertisements that will help you not only find new employees, but also gain new customers.
LinkedIn Ads give you the opportunity to draw up a completely new promotion or extend the reach of updates you have already shared with your viewers. While promoting your offer, you can choose the business branch your ads will be displayed to, the company size or the viewers’ professional position.
Advertising on LinkedIn is a great solution primarily for B2B businesses. They can effectively reach a large group of potential clients and cooperators around the globe.
Conclusion
Just like other social media networks, LinkedIn holds a choice of useful features to be used both by just-started businesses and experienced companies with a well-developed brand identity.
I would recommend it especially to B2Bs, but individual users or B2C companies can also take LinkedIn under consideration when considering online promotion.
If you were wondering whether this was a network to be for your brand – don’t hesitate and get it started!