Founded in 2002, LinkedIn helps businesses and nonprofits connect with a growing audience of professionals. From a free company profile to targeted advertising, LinkedIn is a platform to consider for organizations of all types and sizes.
Creating a Company Page
Does your business have a company page? If so, check with your team to identify current page admins and request to be invited to the page’s managers. Otherwise, creating a page is free and easy. Currently located under the Work icon in desktop’s upper-right corner, you’ll be prompted to complete a brief setup of your business information and can add additional team members to co-manage the new page.
Optimizing Your Page
Like any business page on social media, you should present a great first impression to visitors, provide them with the information they’re seeking, and be easily found for your organization type and industry. Whether your page is new or established, ensure you’re leveraging all available fields such as uploading quality profile and cover images as well as completing all applicable Edit Page sections such as adding contact information, a company description, and the prominent call to action button.
To maximize your visibility, carefully consider the industry you associate with your page and the specialties available from the Edit Page setting. LinkedIn also allows you to easily invite connections of your personal profile to bolster your company page’s following.
Publishing Content
Like all social media platforms, you should publish content at regular intervals on LinkedIn. Avoid what’s known as “binge posting” by posting several updates in a short period of time and then failing to post again for a while, creating an appearance of inactivity.
Also, keep your followers in mind when publishing content. People don’t enjoy “salesy” content, especially if it’s all a page seems to post. Publish primarily educational and entertaining content, and when you post sales-oriented content, frame it in a way that helps to solve your customers’ problems.
Utilize Hashtags
Popularized by Twitter, other social platforms including LinkedIn have adopted hashtags to help categorize posts by topic. By adding relevant and popular hashtags to your content, you’ll boost your page’s reach to users who may not be following you yet.
Targeted Advertising
Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn offers advertising on its platform to targeted audiences of potential customers. You can select a campaign spend within your marketing budget and choose groups of users to target with ads based on their characteristics such as location and job title. The ads dashboard then provides transparent performance data for evaluating the effectiveness of your ads.
Free Resources
Many great tools are available to grow your LinkedIn presence and lessen the effort involved with publishing great content. For images, you can utilize a high-quality stock photo website such as Pexels with libraries of royalty-free images. For organizing your content, Google Drive’s tools offer free software for planning and collaborating with team members. Lastly, social media management tools such as Buffer offer the ability to post to multiple social media platforms simultaneously and to schedule your posts in advance.
Summary
LinkedIn is among the top social media platforms to consider for your business, especially if your target audience includes professionals. Connect with potential customers by optimizing a company page, developing a follower base, and regularly publishing quality content. LinkedIn advertising allows you to boost that reach to target audiences and encourage action, all with an efficient budget.
