LinkedIn® is the world’s largest professional network. It also serves as a great platform to grow your business, as it can help connect you with other professionals.
It’s a highly valuable business network that can help you grow your network of contacts, generate new leads and accelerate your go-to-market opportunities.
How to develop your LinkedIn® profile
By building a presence on LinkedIn®, you can drive engagement to your business. It could be your next step towards continued growth. Follow these steps to develop your profile:
- Create your page. Known as a LinkedIn® Company Page, it will give you the opportunity to tell your business’s story, drive word-of-mouth and share career opportunities.
- Entice followers. Engage with potential customers and spread the word about what your business does. Connect with your employees and network contacts so they can ‘like’, comment and share your business updates. Link to your other marketing channels like your emails, newsletter and blog.
- Share useful content that’s fresh and interesting, such as industry articles and thought leadership items. Provide regular updates about your business and its goods or services.
- Track your business’s analytics, such as how engaging your posts are, how quickly your followers are growing and any relevant trends.
Complete your profile
Before you can reap the benefits of LinkedIn®, it’s vital you progress through all the steps of completing your profile.
Fill in your company’s details (an overview and description of your business) and upload a logo and banner image. This will help bring your business to life on LinkedIn®, as your logo will be visible in search and it will also appear on your employees’ profiles.
Get started creating your company page by watching this short LinkedIn® video.
Begin posting updates about your business
Schedule a content plan along with product or service updates that will be useful to your potential customers. When posting, keep the following points in mind:
- Think about your business’s page as more of a forum than an advertising platform.
- Focus on discussing your industry and creating thought leadership content.
- Post helpful advice and resources that can offer practical value to your customers.
- Engage with your followers and aim to help solve their problems. This may encourage them to share your content.
Promote your page to gain more potential customers
Encourage your staff members to add your business to their personal profiles, and to post content or updates regularly. If potential followers notice that professionals with related skills and experience follow your company page, you might enhance your business’s credibility.
Think about adding a link to your email signature to promote your page through blogs and newsletters. Add a ‘follow’ button to your company page to make it easy for people to track your business.
LinkedIn® strategies
Try some successful LinkedIn® promotional strategies, such as:
- Utilizing visual content. LinkedIn® isn’t a very visual network, so it’s important to try to make your business stand out where possible. Your company logo and profile image are two avenues for achieving this.
- Writing expert content. Use keywords that highlight the uniqueness and experience of your business, with the aim of portraying you and your staff as experts in your industry.
- Interacting. LinkedIn® is a social network and to successfully grow your business, you’ll have to engage with people. Browse the profiles of your connections and see who they’re linked to. You might just come across some valuable leads.
Design showcase pages for your goods or services
Showcase pages can tailor messages to different segments of your audience while highlighting certain brands or product lines. Your followers will be able to see this content in their news feeds if they’re interested in it, meaning it’s more focused and relevant to them.
Find out how to add showcase pages to your company page.
Harness the power of LinkedIn® Groups
For a small business owner, LinkedIn® Groups represents a powerful strategy to build your business network by communicating regularly with colleagues, industry leaders, suppliers, and prospects.
You can use LinkedIn® Groups to share content, ask questions and find answers, view job opportunities and make contacts. Learn more about how LinkedIn® Groups can help grow your business.
Consider paid LinkedIn® services
It could be useful to look into the costs and benefits of upgrading to LinkedIn®’s premium services.
For example, InMail messages can be sent to anyone on LinkedIn® without needing their contact information. It’s a professional outreach service that can put your business’s LinkedIn® profile in front of potential customers.
LinkedIn® is a registered trademark of the LinkedIn Corporation.