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With about 80% of its members taking part in crucial company decisions, learning how to use LinkedIn for business is a growth hack that more companies need to leverage. As the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn lets you build credibility for your company. It’s also a great platform to find potential customers, investors, and even employees.
Sadly, a large percentage of brands still struggle to enjoy these benefits, even after creating LinkedIn pages. Most times, this is because they haven’t figured out how to use the platform strategically. In this article, we’ll show you proven hacks to effectively use it for your business.
Key Takeaways
- Your LinkedIn business growth journey begins with a well-optimized company profile.
- Employees’ posts about their companies gain up to 8x more engagement than content published directly from company pages.
- Brands positioned as thought leaders consistently generate the best-performing LinkedIn content.
- LinkedIn’s high purchase intent audience makes it one of the most effective platforms for B2B lead generation.
How LinkedIn Grows Your Business
The average business does not include building a LinkedIn presence in its marketing strategy. However, the platform is a powerful tool for driving expansion, as it helps with the following:
- Get in Front of the Right People: Based on its design, the LinkedIn algorithm shares your company profile and content with people who are most likely to be interested in your brand. This includes potential customers, partners, and employees.
- Earn Trust Before You Even Pitch: Having a LinkedIn company page is one sign of credibility that many people look for. The more you post, the stronger this brand image becomes, even without directly pitching your services.
- Turn Visibility Into Real Results: LinkedIn is one social platform where being visible can land you real-life opportunities, like collaborations and sponsorships. It is also well known for its high conversion rates compared to other social media apps.
- Show Up in Google Too: Search engines like Google often include LinkedIn profiles in their search results. By creating a company page, your business becomes much easier to find, even by people outside the site.
Start with a Strong LinkedIn Company Page
People learn about your brand by viewing your company’s LinkedIn profile, so you should start there by following these steps:
1. Create a Company Page That Works for Your Business
To create a LinkedIn business page, you must log in to your personal profile. Click on “For Business” and “Create a Company Page” then pick your preferred page type.
Since LinkedIn features over 71 million company pages, optimize yours by providing your logo, website, and a keyword-rich overview. Also, aim for a complete company page, as it gets you 30% more weekly views.
HubSpot is a great example to follow with its well-optimized company page, featuring its logo and a keyword-rich bio.
2. Promote Your Company Page to Get Your First Followers
After setting up your company page, actively promote it through long-form posts, sponsored content and ads, influencer posts to gain followers. However, remember to completely fill out your company details first, since completed pages are viewed 1.3x more on average.
Another way to grow your LinkedIn page is to encourage employees to post often about your company on their personal accounts. This is called employee advocacy, and it clearly works, as content on an employee’s personal LinkedIn profile can generate up to 8x more engagement.
3. Know Exactly Who You Are Trying to Reach
When you can point out who your target audience is, you can begin to draft your LinkedIn posts and ads in a way that appeals to them.
Note that every company on LinkedIn has three main audiences. These are the people that you can buy from, those who can tell others about your products or services, and those you can work with. Consider which of them is your specific audience before sending out any post or ad.
Market Your Business With the Right Content
Even though a strong company page can get you noticed, you need to fill it with valuable content to really connect with your target audience. Here are some helpful tips:
1. Build a LinkedIn Content Strategy
You can’t grow your business on LinkedIn using random posts. Top-performing posts include value-adding content, posts to build relationships, and direct sales content. However, none of these are effective without consistency.
One way to hack this is to create a content calendar and schedule your posts. Also, your LinkedIn marketing strategy must include hashtags that are relevant to your audience.
Take Microsoft as an example, a top brand and company that posts consistently, despite having one of the most-followed LinkedIn company pages.
2. Become a LinkedIn Thought Leader
LinkedIn members trust brands that build thought leadership through expert insights more than those that only try to sell them products. Work to become a thought leader by making posts about your industry experience and taking a firm stand on trending issues.
As more people recognize you as a respected voice, your company will earn new clients and partners, as well as speaking engagements.
Look at Salesforce, for instance. It achieved thought leadership in B2B and CRM matters by providing deep industry insights.
3. Use LinkedIn Newsletters
Despite having over 1.3 million daily readers, LinkedIn newsletters are massively underused. Content like business FAQs or stories about your company culture is delivered straight to your subscribers and helps you stay on their minds.
To create yours, click on “Publish As” after typing a post, choose your company page, and hit “Manage”. Next, choose “Create a Newsletter” and provide details like the newsletter title and frequency.
Connect With the Right People
As impressive as it seems, having a large following on social media platforms like LinkedIn is only a start. Your goal should be to gather the relevant audience, and here’s how to find them:
1. Encourage Employees to Post
Your workers are the biggest drivers of engagement for your company. In fact, employees are 14x more likely to share company-related posts. Improve the odds for your brand by inviting yours to follow your company page and consistently engage with your content.
Also, create systems to get more LinkedIn employee posts by providing training and rewards. If this is well-executed, it can markedly improve your brand’s visibility since posts from an employee’s personal LinkedIn account tend to reach more people than brand-shared content.
2. Join and Create a LinkedIn Group
LinkedIn has many active groups where you can find professionals in your industry to connect with. Join LinkedIn groups related to your company’s goals and interests and begin to regularly participate in key discussions. It will make people notice you and become curious about your company.
You don’t have to stop there, though. You can also create a LinkedIn group to establish yourself as a community leader in your niche. Invite other colleagues to join this LinkedIn group and lead valuable conversations.
3. Build Your LinkedIn Business Network
If you have a solid LinkedIn network, your business content is likely to travel far on the platform. Send personalized connection requests to clients, partners, and industry professionals whom you’d like to engage regularly while anticipating connection requests from other members.
Note that it’s not enough to simply build your network on LinkedIn; you have to nurture the relationships that you form on the social media app through regular interactions. This is how you can find new and exciting opportunities and collaborations.
4. Recruit Top Talent on LinkedIn
Business growth, even outside LinkedIn, becomes easier when you find the right people to work with. The good thing about the site is that you can easily find and recruit qualified candidates right there with features like Career Pages.
Get them by posting openings on your company page using LinkedIn Jobs and encourage current employees to share them with their networks. Your page will also attract qualified LinkedIn members organically if you keep it well-optimized and set up Career Pages.
Turn LinkedIn Into a Revenue Machine
There’s more to LinkedIn than building connections and growing visibility. Your company can also begin to generate revenue through the social media platform by using these tips:
1. Grow Your LinkedIn Page Followers
A large follower base often means better content reach and more leads, and you can grow yours by posting and interacting regularly. Also, create LinkedIn Showcase pages for your services and update your Life Tab to earn trust. If you want a quicker and more effective result, you can buy LinkedIn followers. This helps you boost engagement and build your credibility without spending so much time trying to grow your audience from scratch.
2. Generate Leads
No platform beats LinkedIn when it comes to B2B lead generation due to its audience’s high buyer intent. Features like the Sales Navigator advanced search and connection requests can land you qualified leads relatively easily. Even a well-optimized company page posting relevant content consistently can naturally attract inbound leads from the right audience.
3. Run Targeted LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn ads let you show your products or services to a specific audience, targeting them based on job title, industry, company size, or location. These ads may be sponsored content, sponsored messaging, or display ads. They’re best suited for B2B companies focused on decision-makers, as they significantly boost purchase intent.
Track Your LinkedIn Profile Performance
While implementing different strategies to increase engagement on LinkedIn, you should track your performance to see if they’re working. Monitor your post impressions, engagement rate, follower growth, and page views using LinkedIn Analytics. Insights from this data will help you to adjust your strategy and focus on the most effective options.
Conclusion
If you want to effectively use LinkedIn for business today, you must build a strong company page, create the right content strategy, and work towards ensuring consistent engagement. Begin this process right away by applying the tips covered in this step-by-step guide, and you will start to see results in no time.
Remember, there’s a world of opportunities out there for your brand, waiting for you to make a move. Take advantage of them today by making LinkedIn work for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is LinkedIn Good for Small Businesses?
Yes, it is. Putting your business on LinkedIn increases its visibility. It can also help you to find high-value employees.
2. How Often Should a Business Post on LinkedIn?
A company should post content at least twice a week to maintain an active and visible profile.
