What Is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is billed as the world’s largest professional network. The easiest way to remember it is to think of the platform as social media for professionals, whether you’re a business owner or tasked with helping market your company. Launched in 2003, LinkedIn states it has more than 433 million members across 200 countries and territories, although 106 million accounts were active as of March 2016.
Much like other social media networks, users create a profile then connect with others they may know personally or professionally for virtual professional network building. Businesses, however, set up what is called a company page. These pages are geared toward a company and industry, rather than individuals like a personal LinkedIn page. However, the premise is still the same – to network with others and expand your professional reach. Company pages are used as yet another platform to share the company activities, products, news, insights and more but on a professional level. Basic information shared on a company page includes specialties, company size, website, and industry. Some companies list job opportunities on their page, but it is purely a personal decision to do or not do so.
Why It’s Important for Businesses?
We could go on and on for days about how LinkedIn is important for businesses. But to start with, it’s a great resource to attract talent to your company, without the wine and dine expense. A larger company with a human resources department can seek out potential employees based on their LinkedIn profiles. Through an advanced search, recruiters can search based on keywords, locations, and much more for potential employees – and vice versa.
LinkedIn is also another outlet to share your brand. With the ability to share company information and content, a LinkedIn company page can help you establish your brand in your industry. A presence is also another page to return in search engine result pages and give your SEO a friendly boost. Unlike Facebook, there is no algorithm filtering out your posts in LinkedIn, however, it does require more frequent posting for your audience to be reached. LinkedIn advises companies to plan on posting 20 times each month to reach 60 percent of its individual audience.
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How Your Business Can Benefit from LinkedIn
Obviously, networking is the top reason for how LinkedIn can help your business. Whether it’s industry peers, vendors, suppliers, or customers, you can build a network as large as you would like to build. But with the intention of connecting people with like backgrounds and interests, LinkedIn helps you build your network more quickly.
LinkedIn can be used as another channel to promote new products and services. While your overall goal with these new items will be to reach current and potential customers, showing off what you’ve created to your professional peers isn’t a bad thing. Perhaps those peers will give a shout out or two to your company on their page, expanding the reach you have for the new product or service.
In their 2015 State of Marketing report, Salesforce found that LinkedIn was the third most common social network for business owners. The same report found it was more important than Facebook for business-to-business (B2B) marketers. Anyone in both of those positions knows how crucial networking is and having another way to reach out to industry peers is always welcomed.
But Remember to Mind Your Manners
Now that you’ve taken the time to understand and learn why having a company page can benefit your business, now isn’t the time to slack on filling out as much of the company page as you can. Not only will this make your company easier to find if there are companies with a similar name or in the same industry, but it will also boost your SEO. However, there are two main etiquette tips we want to impress upon anyone using LinkedIn.
First and foremost, keep it professional. As a business page, this is a representation of your company as a whole, even if the person managing the page is in a different office or across the country. What could be considered appropriate to post on Facebook or Twitter may not be on LinkedIn. When in doubt, don’t share or publish the content to your company page. Remember to proofread all content before it’s published and before then, hand it off to someone with a fresh set of eyes to do the same.
They say it takes three weeks of repetitive action before something becomes a habit. The same can be said for keeping your company page active. Regularly publishing content, whether articles, infographics, or videos from inside the office, will let your followers know you’re in the loop. Having an active presence will also encourage others to begin following your company. Another way to get your company into the minds of others is by joining LinkedIn groups related to your industry or areas you serve. In these groups, you’ll have many opportunities to contribute to discussions, giving your company credibility in your industry and as a thought leader or influencer.
Elevare Can Give You a Nudge
It could be easy to think of creating a LinkedIn page as simply another social media presence you or someone else in your office needs to keep up. With so many platforms boasting their importance to businesses, we understand how that thought can occur. Elevare has the social media expertise to help manage your posts, campaigns, and networking on all platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and more!
Let Us Help You Build Your Social Media Presence. Get a FREE 30 Minute Consultation!
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