How to Leverage LinkedIn for Your Business

“It’s better to be the best connected than the most connected.” –Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder

Is your company taking advantage of a LinkedIn business page, or are you mainly focusing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? Although it still isn’t as trafficked as the other major platforms, LinkedIn has become a major business network and discussion hub for users of all generations. It’s certainly worthy of your valuable time and energy, as it can really help reinforce your business’ position as an industry leader.

Why LinkedIn? Platform Demographics and Statistics

On average, LinkedIn users tend to have a higher annual income than users on Facebook or Instagram, which is valuable information for creating a targeted social media marketing campaign. If you’re considering content marketing as part of your strategy, LinkedIn is the place to go. This network is at the forefront of content marketing due to its use of top influencers, infographics, videos and blog posts to share knowledge and start conversations about almost every industry. Here are some fascinating statistics about the platform.

• LinkedIn has 500 million active users, up from 271 million in 2014, making it a great place to reach a huge audience.
• 50 percent of vendors reported guaranteed sales from meeting customers via the site.
• LinkedIn is popular among Millennials, college graduates and those in professional industries.
• Active users spend an average of 17 minutes per month on the site.
• Of social media users over age 50, LinkedIn has the largest share. 100 million users are in this age range, so if your audience is an older demographic, LinkedIn is the place to reach them.
• More than 60 percent of LinkedIn users reported an average income of $75,000+.
• 13 percent of people are active on the site every day.
• Marketers reported finding 43 percent of customers via LinkedIn.
• There are two new LinkedIn users signing up on the platform per second.
• A large majority of users report using LinkedIn as a supplement to other sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

When you’re ready to hop on LinkedIn and start a page for your business, keep the following advice in mind.

4 Must-Haves for Creating Your LinkedIn Business Page

Having a complete and useful business page can raise your company’s visibility and help customers and clients reach you for questions, solicit assistance, or even purchase your product or service. To set up a business page on LinkedIn, there are several things you can do to make your page really pop. Here are four things you should include:

1. Pay Attention to Consistent Branding: Keeping your brand consistent is important for all messaging, not just on LinkedIn or other social media platforms. To do this, make sure your cover images and profile pictures are the same across all networks, and keep your keywords and hashtags the same. It’s essential for SEO to portray a uniform presence, rather than present many different personalities.

   Another important item to note is on LinkedIn, there are two options for logos: the one at the top of the business page and a picture used in the News Feed. These images should be the same.

2. Aim for Simplicity: While you should state relevant, helpful and interesting information about your business on your LinkedIn page, be sure that it’s simple enough for anyone to understand. If your page is too complicated or you provide too much information, users viewing your page won’t click to your website or stay very long. Try to avoid bogging them down with paragraphs of history about the company or industry jargon.
3. Make it Searchable: You page should be easy to find in the vast amount of social noise on LinkedIn; to do this, include relevant keywords your customers can search for to find you and fully fill out the information on your profile.
4. Cultivate A Loyal Following: Once you’ve built your LinkedIn company page, it’s important to attract some loyal followers. Start by letting all of your employees know about the page and asking them to follow it and spread the word.

Want to Increase Your LinkedIn Reach? 3 Tips

Are you looking for ways to make your LinkedIn page more successful? To boost your reach, you can post updates, join groups and share helpful information; this will establish your credibility and help reinforce your position as an industry leader. Taking steps to increase the reach of your content can help you achieve a wider audience and greater brand awareness. Rather than shouting your message from the rooftops, allow your fans to help your message soar by using these three tips.

1. Cross-Promote: Let Your Fans Know Where You Are

To increase your reach across multiple platforms, it can be helpful to cross-promote yourself on each profile. Your Facebook followers may also be browsing Twitter and have never thought to look for you, so it can be helpful to share the news of your LinkedIn profile on your other accounts. Another way to boost awareness is to encourage fans to receive notifications of your messages. On most major platforms, there’s a simple button followers can push to get alerts every time you post new content. Want to see results quickly? Try running a giveaway for those who like and follow your page!

2. Encourage Community Involvement: Host Contests

Social users love contests, especially those with a seasonal twist. Come up with a fun game that allows your fans to feel like a part of your brand and encourages them to engage with other users. A good example of a contest is asking users to help name a new company mascot or to fill in the blank of a sentence. For bonus points, try holding a caption contest since photos are more likely to catch the eyes of your target audience. If you hold a contest, be sure to offer a small prize like a t-shirt or company coupons.

3. Know the Algorithms: Maximize Your Organic Reach

One of the best ways to ensure a successful social media strategy is to pay attention to algorithms, which helps you organic reach. Studies show posts which include videos and images, particularly with people in them, are prioritized by social channels and receive a larger organic audience than posts including text only. Creating content designed to capture fans’ attention should help you see good results.

On the topic of algorithms, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is important to pay attention to when creating content to increase the visibility of your site on search engines. With ever-changing algorithms that incorporate social presence into search ranking, optimizing social profiles with SEO in mind is important. Here are three tips to make the most of your LinkedIn business page.

3 Tips for Improving SEO with LinkedIn

1. Update Your Profile Often

Think outside the box with profile updates! Blogging regularly helps boost your search engine ranking, and updating social media channels often can help just as much. Publishing high-quality, shareable content is a great way to reach your fans and spread your message. Use LinkedIn’s Publishing platform to push your blog posts and stay at the top of your consumers’ minds. Keep your posts relevant, use keywords if possible and share content of a positive nature for best results.

2. Try to Attract High Quality Followers

While you may want large amounts of followers on social media, it isn’t always about numbers. It’s better to have 500 highly engaged, active followers who interact with you often, than a half million absent online avatars. Attracting a LinkedIn following that is high quality, relevant to your industry and willing to spread the news about you is essential, and is a great way of improving SEO in the process.

3. Increase Your “Social Authority”

Want to know where your business’ LinkedIn profile stands? Social Authority refers to how much weight you carry in the online community. Search engines like Bing and Google give a significant ranking push to users who have lots of followers, likes, links and interactions online. A great way to improve yours is to interact as often as possible on your social channels and make sure to respond quickly to fan engagement. If you want to measure your social authority, sites like Klout can help you conglomerate your profiles and rank how much impact you have online.

LinkedIn’s total user goal is 3 billion, and it’s clear the company is making excellent strides toward attracting that many active users. LinkedIn is sure to have a bright future, and marketers should jump on the platform to take advantage of the diverse, well-connected audience. Does your company have a business page on LinkedIn? What success have you seen from having one?

If you aren’t yet on the platform, but are ready to take advantage of the amazing benefits it can offer you, contact the Three Girls Media team today! In the meantime, you might be interested in these other fascinating blog posts on social media marketing:

How to Use Social Media to Boost Customer Service Satisfaction

[Social Media Marketing] 4 Tips for Turning Fans into Customers

4 Networking Mistakes Business Owners Should Avoid