Harnessing LinkedIn for Your Business

LinkedIn poses quite a social media challenge for businesses who are unsure of how to use it effectively. 

LinkedIn has grown dramatically, especially during these tough economic times during which individuals and businesses have turned to LinkedIn for networking options.  In order to use LinkedIn effectively you should build up your LinkedIn presence.

Start off by building a company profile, for which you must have a personal profile first.

Once you have set up your company profile you will be able to take advantage of the many pros that LinkedIn offers businesses, including:

• Increasing the exposure of your business
• Promoting your product and services
• Receiving information streams from your company or other businesses
• Connecting and networking with other businesses, professionals and potential customers
• Recruiting candidates
• Browsing online stats (like employee job function, educational degrees, years of experience, etc…)

Your LinkedIn company profile while show up in your company’s organic search engine results which means that users can be directed to your company profile page and can follow the company if they are also LinkedIn users.

Once you have set up your profile and have begun enjoying the benefits of LinkedIn you can increase your following by engaging users by providing relevant, current information using LinkedIn groups.  LinkedIn groups allow you to:

• Discuss a variety of topics with members including sharing stories, asking and answering questions and discussing trends
• Interconnect with other professionals on topics and provide focused networking opportunities
• Share your expertise in a particular area by helping members and expanding your professional following

LinkedIn also allows you to connect with existing users and contacts.  You can have LinkedIn recommend contacts based on your email contact lists and then choose whether you want to connect with these people.  You can also connect a Twitter connection with your individual profile (unfortunately as of yet you cannot do this with your company profile) and then tweet about your company profile to help build awareness and attract Twitter followers.

Promoting your company’s services is also a great advantage to using LinkedIn.  The service tab allows businesses to promote products or services by completing a questionnaire about the product and uploading a product image. 
Users within your network can also recommend your products and services and share them with other people.  In addition, LinkedIn can promote your company’s services through:

• Direct Ads
• Paid Advertisements – which are similar to search engine PPC advertising

Make sure that your involvement with LinkedIn is marketed in other places online, such as your website.  You can include links and logos that highlight your company’s social media activity.  A LinkedIn logo may be more appealing to users who will click on it to follow your business rather than spend the time to fill out a form with their personal information.

Ultimately LinkedIn offers a number of benefits to businesses.  When you plan your social media strategy you should definitely include a LinkedIn business profile in your plan in order to take advantage of the networking and promotional opportunities LinkedIn offers. 

WSI can help you with your social media strategy and online marketing campaign.  Attend one of our free monthly seminars to learn more about SEO, PPC campaigns and social media, or contact us to set up a free business consultation and let us help you harness the internet to increase sales and enhance business.

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