Many may think of LinkedIn as another massive social media site with no other use than promoting one-self for finding work, but the uses of LinkedIn go far beyond that. With over 180 million professional users and an increment of another million per week, more and more companies are learning to use LinkedIn for business growth. The fact that LinkedIn is the number 1 professional and business platform makes it a very valuable tool for companies to use to their advantage in several ways.
Getting Started
First of all, and before implementing any of the following tips, we must create a company page on LinkedIn. With over 3 million company pages already on this platform, the importance of doing so is more than clear. If a group of administrators within the company can be assigned the part-time task of keeping the page up-to-date, even better. The company page must be correct, informative, consistent with your company branding, visible and SEO friendly by implementing keywords into your LinkedIn updates and making it visually appealing, i.e. by images or links. The idea is to gain global awareness and honorability for your company, and what a better way of doing so than by providing quality content and information for your followers, which will more than likely be shared and consequently increasing your supporters.
If you also have a company web site, what a better way to optimise it for search engines than by linking updates on your LinkedIn page to quality content from your website blog for example. These first will be considered quality inbound links to your site and will help to improve its ranking in search engines as well.
You can also help build followers of your company LinkedIn page, by adding a link to it on your website and even the email signatures of all your employees. Also, adding share and like buttons to all the content you publish on your website, will help facilitate the virility of the information you publish.
LinkedIn for Business
LinkedIn for business hiring is used more and more each day by companies present on this platform. LinkedIn serves as a showcase for recruiting all types of talent. With hundreds of millions of professionals using this network, all it takes is a job description keyword search and a company will automatically have a listing of the top professionals in that area with a wide range of experience, from recently graduated candidates to highly experienced ones. Seeking out employees has never been easier.
LinkedIn for Business Awareness, Visibility and Opportunities
Using LinkedIn for business awareness is also a way in which this platform may benefit new companies. If used right, LinkedIn can be used to gain awareness and recognition in many ways. For example, by participating in the question and answer categories of LinkedIn, companies can put their expertise knowledge to good use in answering user queries about topics relevant to their industry. If users feel more than satisfied with these answers, they can give your answer a “top rating” which will shortly appear on your company profile. The more recognition you receive, the more users will seek and recommend you for answers. Eventually, this will lead to generating deals and opportunities. Another way of using LinkedIn for business opportunities can be through their CPC or CPM advertising campaigns in which you are given two bidding options. Paying per click your add receives (CPC), which is mostly used if you are trying to create conversions on your website, or paying per one thousand impressions, or the number of times your ad is shown, independently of how many clicks it receives (CPM), which is a good way of building brand or product awareness.
LinkedIn for Business Networking
Companies can also use LinkedIn for business networking with companies similar to their own. Related companies connected with each other can share ideas and information relevant to the sector and help each other stay on top of the game. Creating a LinkedIn group for professionals or companies related to your industry can also help you generate important and related contacts, as well as establish your company´s dominance in the field. Through LinkedIn searches, companies can also directly contact senior managers of businesses in order to directly close deals, instead of having to deal with secretaries, receptionists or company directories unwilling to disclose information.
All in all, if implemented correctly, using LinkedIn for business leverage can result very rewarding for any company willing to dedicate time to learning all its options, because not only can it result more effective than many marketing campaigns, but also a lot cheaper.
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