LinkedIn is famous for connecting professionals all over the world. Many people associate it with finding new positions and advancing one’s career, but LinkedIn can also be a valuable space for expanding the network for many types of businesses.
Professional freelancers, digital creatives, recently established companies and even performing artists can use LinkedIn to promote their services to a different audience than is available on other social networks. The key is to take a smart strategy in approaching it.
Here are 10 great tips to help you get more traction on LinkedIn:
1. Create a Company Page
Unlike personal profiles, LinkedIn company pages are set up to better represent a brand or organisation. Even if you run a small operation, using a company page and connecting it with your own profile is a good move. It allows you to post updates and add information that comes across much better from a brand name than from an individual.
2. Highlight Your Business on Your Own Profile
Personal profiles are still a powerful tool on LinkedIn. They give you the opportunity to present yourself as the individual behind the brand and build a professional reputation. Make sure your profile details the activities of your business and links to all the important pages: your business website, professional Twitter account and so forth.
3. Update Frequently
Through your company page, you can post news and update your professional community on the recent developments of your company. It’s important to use this option frequently and strategically. Relevant updates that you should consider include recently completed projects, new cooperation’s, news coverage, creative tips, new features or products and anything that shows your business as an active and serious operation.
4. Use Great Visuals
Every type of visual content that you upload to LinkedIn should be high quality – from the company logo to your own profile image. LinkedIn is not a very visual network, so it’s important that the little freedom you have with images is taken advantage of cleverly. For instance, when you post updates, you can actually edit the images that are shown with it.
5. Start a Group
A great social feature on LinkedIn is the ability to start a group that revolves around a specific interest. If you can connect your business to a general topic that engages people, you can set up a group, stir a discussion and make sure members know about your business.
6. Participate in Other Groups
Creating your own community is not enough in the social media world. You need to be active in existing communities and interact with other users. The idea here is not to spam groups with posts about your business activity, but to engage in an actual conversation that creates real ties.
7. Get Employees and Partners on Board
If you work in a team environment or cooperate often with other professionals, you can get a lot more attention by involving these people in your LinkedIn activities. If strangers see that your company page is followed by professionals with skills and experience, your credibility immediately becomes more solid.
8. Write Smart
Think of the content you post on LinkedIn just as you would treat your company website or blog. The texts you add to your company summary section, to news updates or to your own personal profile need to be targeted and optimised. Two important points here are using keywords that emphasise your speciality, and writing clever and brief content that shows you’re an expert in your field.
9. Interact
Despite the more professional focus, LinkedIn is still a social network. To succeed here you need to be a social player that engages with people. The good thing about LinkedIn is that it helps you interact with the right people by showing you circles of connectivity. Browse through profiles of your connections and see who they’re involved with. You might discover a valuable lead.
10. Take LinkedIn Seriously
Like any other marketing channel, LinkedIn will work well for you if you take it seriously and put in the effort to understand how it can best work for you. Because it’s not a network “for the masses,” many people tend to use LinkedIn haphazardly. If you want to see real results, you should incorporate LinkedIn into your broader social media marketing strategy. Stay up to date on LinkedIn news, learn about the features and tools, and browse through company pages and personal profiles to see how others put LinkedIn to good use.
