How to use LinkedIn to Promote Your Business
LinkedIn has grown beyond its original purpose of connecting professionals with potential clients and employers. While Facebook and Twitter can be (and definitely are) used for business, LinkedIn is specifically geared toward building valuable business connections. The professional social media site has also become a terrific business-to-business marketing tool. In addition, it’s likely that LinkedIn recommendations will be taken into account for search engine rankings in the future, similar to how Facebook Likes, Tweets and Google +1s are today. There are many benefits to building and using a LinkedIn company page, but it can be tricky trying to get started. A poorly planned LinkedIn company page is worse than no company page at all!
Start With Your Own Profile
Building an effective company page isn’t difficult, but it can be time consuming. Before you even consider promoting your company page, you need to beef up your own profile. This goes for everyone who works for your company, or is involved with the product you want to sell. Build your personal contacts, especially with professionals who may be interested in your company. Don’t be afraid to talk about or list non-work related interests on your profile. Social media isn’t just a group of people who are all marketing different products to each other. Sure, this happens quite a bit, but effective use of social media is for real networking: building valuable, lasting connections with other people.
By keeping this in mind, using your own LinkedIn profile to promote your business becomes easier. Try treating every contact as an existing customer. Before you post anything related to your business, ask yourself a few questions. Is this relevant, valuable or interesting to my contacts? Have I posted this or something nearly identical before? Promote your company page when something big happens: maybe you’ve rolled out a new product, or you have a great sale going on. You could even offer something extra to people who come to your company page through your own profile. By providing valuable information or making your contacts feel as though they’ve got an inside scoop, you’re more likely to turn these pretend customers into actual customers.
Promote Your Company Page, But Don’t Spam Your Contacts
Once you’ve built a network of professional contacts on your own profile, it’s time to start promoting your company page. If you’ve been posting content your contacts find valuable, your contacts are more likely to be interested when you post about your company. The key is to be genuine, instead of spamming links to your company page, or trolling your contacts to coerce them into following your company page. LinkedIn and other social networks aren’t just platforms for shoving links at the people foolish enough to have followed you in the first place. Building valuable relationships is how social media really works for business.
Talking about your company page on your own profile is a great way to promote your business. However, this shouldn’t be the entire scope of your promotional efforts! LinkedIn makes it easy to promote your company page on your company website or blog, by adding a simple line of code. You can post about your new LinkedIn company page on other social networks, and offer an incentive for customers to follow your company page. This incentive doesn’t have to be a new iPad, or anything extravagant. Offer something related to your brand that your customers would find valuable, like an ebook with tips.
The most effective use of any social media platform for business really comes down to one thing: treating people online with the same consideration and respect you’d treat them in real life. People will always respond better to valuable information and content than to an endless stream of advertising. We’re all after conversions, and you’re likelier to convert through social media by being human, not just another social spambot.
Author Bio
Tyler Moore lives and works as an SEO and marketing consultant in Indianapolis, IN. Tyler currently works for DocRaptor, an HTML to PDF API. DocRaptor converts HTML to PDF or Excel format with a simple HTTP POST request, and is easy to integrate with your own web applications.
I’ve been promoting my blogs through LinkedIn Groups. I was going to create a page, but wasn’t sure if I should create three, since I have three blogs, or one under a business name. I do have a business name, but I think I’d rather focus on branding for myself instead and if that’s the case, do I need a page if I already have a profile?
Probably over thinking this, right?
You might be overthinking it a bit, but I’d recommend having a single page with links to everything you’re doing. It’s good for cross promotion as well as not spreading your brand too thin.
Hey Kimberly,
According to me this way social marketing goes.
for Facebook and Twitter, the more you present , better for you but as far as Linked in is concern, less you present, more authentic you appear.So instead of creating your new page, use your own personal profile page, that will surely work according to me.
Regards
Dhaval Kaushik
Business Development Executive
CyberLobe Technologies
Artist here. Problem – Basically all Linkedin contacts are other artists.
Artists who are independent business people…competing with other artists.
How can Linkedin help when all the others in the Linkedin groups, contacts, etc are competing with each other???
This is a good question, Sandra. I think it’s worthwhile to network with other artists, but a good rule for competition is to offer something the other professionals in your field can’t offer.
LinkedIn also makes it easy to promote your own portfolio, which is the best way to stay competitive.
Hi Sandra,
One of the strategies for more powerful networking (whether on social media or not) is to meet an network with people who are different from you. Think creatively about who your potential clients would be, what groups could they be members of, etc. Then go and meet them. Do you know anything about the people who would like to buy your art? Not knowing what your art is it’s hard for me to make a suggestion, but the idea would be if you make paintings of sea scapes you might want to find people who own vacation homes or boats. There’s probably a LinkedIn group for that. You might be able to search for people who list “Boating” or “Beaches” as an interest.
The other strategy I suggest is not to rely on your closest contacts as customers. Instead cultivate them to refer people to you. Like it or not your friends are more likely to refer someone to you than they are to buy from you. That’s ok.
Good luck.
Larry
I recently have started using Linkedin and know almost nothing about it. This post has been very helpful for me.
Thanks for sharing.
-Tyler
Hey Tyler! Glad to hear you found this post interesting.
You can also leverage your LinkedIn contacts by starting a weekly/monthly email newsletter specific to your industry. Download your LinkedIn contacts and make them the base of your email list.
Great idea, Joe! My only concern would be sending email to people who didn’t specifically sign up to receive that email. Posting a request for people who may be interested to sign up prior to creating the newsletter would be a better way to start.
I hate receiving newsletters, except those coming from my kids. But these, unlike the others, are few and far between 🙁
Therefore following Christ rule not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated, I would not send out newsletters
Tyler. I have found that including a brief explanation of why a LinkedIn contact is receiving an email, and a clear ‘unsubscribe’ button at the top eliminates the risks associated with emailing the wrong people. LinkedIn contacts are a powerful resource but are often shied away from by the very people who might benefit the most from those contacts.
This is a good solution, Joe.
Thanks for Informative sharing, The status update field on the profile to make company announcements, offer special deals, give tips and share links really helps a lots.
Linkedin has served me well in terms of contacting old friend from my college and high school days. I have not found it to be vaulable for promoting my business.
At http://ray-tapajna-info.net or http://tapsearch.com , you have unimited free ways to let the world know who you are and what you do. You can promote any site including your linked-in pages. Enjoy the best in free submitters and promotion tools .
To say that your post is eye opening would be an undertatement. My business has evolved to where 100% of my launches and promotions are carried out online. The access to a variety of platforms most of which come with little or no cost sets up an interesting set of choices for those looking to boot strap a launch.
What you have shared here is a method which comes with more cost, but I also would assume the speed at which you see the results and eventually the scale and profitability of the launch is much greater as well. I also like that everyone of these tactics are scaleable.
I am a couple of weeks from publishing my first infographic, so I was glad to see this new media make the list as well.
Great post and wonderful overall content on your blog!
Thanks for this one
cat mario online
hi everybody! We have a business page in linkedin.We sharing updates from time to time. Can anybody tell us how can we promote our page properly? Our page is https://www.linkedin.com/company/bigumbrellla
This information, is rely very informative. I also found a nice article here http://linkedinuk.blogspot.com/2015/04/linkedin-jobs-uk-london-linkedin-recruiter-linkedin-jobs-search.html it explained in details how one can secure his dreamed job in just a few tricks
Great article!It’s very informative!
I wanna share my opinion about Not sure whether should use LinkedIn to promote business or not
You can read it at link:
https://www.simicart.com/blog/use-linkedin-to-promote-business/
Nice Article..!! Thank for sharing the article on How to use LinkedIn to Promote Your Business…I really enjoyed reading the article!
Nice Article..!! Thank for sharing the article on How to use LinkedIn to Promote Your Business…Enjoyed reading the article!
Linkedin Paid Marketing
That’s a very nice article. I think when we think about building social profiles, all that comes to our minds is Facebook or Twitter. LinkedIn often goes ignored and I think you have made a good point here that LinkedIn profiles can help you build a good authority within the community.
most of the people think that LinkedIn is just a finding a job site. but it is more than that. nowadays social media platform becomes a powerful platform to grow your business. LinkedIn is one of those platforms. where we can share our thoughts and promote our blog. and these are great information for us.thanx and share more about linkedin.which can be helpful for us.