For small businesses LinkedIn is more than a social network, it is an online networking platform that can help you build connections, showcase expertise, attract prospective employees and grow your business.
LinkedIn is one of, if not the most trusted professional networks that is available online.
Within LinkedIn, however, lies a series of tools and features tailored to help small businesses establish credibility, reach their target audience and drive growth.
In this article we’ll take a look at five of these tools and how they can benefit any business, regardless of the industry that you may operate in:
LinkedIn Company Pages
Most of us will have the humble LinkedIn Profile, some of us will probably of set this up when we joined LinkedIn to look for potential work.
However, small businesses can also have their very own LinkedIn Company Page which will help you establish your brand presence online. This tool allows you to share updates, showcase products, services and post relevant news.
The benefits of having a company page to the business include:
- Brand Awareness: By having a company LinkedIn page you will enable your business to be searchable online, allowing potential partners and clients to find you and engage with your brand or content.
- Audience Engagement: Regular posting on your company page leads to audience engagement, positing consistently and over time you will begin to build a loyal follower base who regard you as an authority within your industry.
- Driving traffic to your website: By setting up a company LinkedIn page you are able to direct traffic to your website and resources to help convert those followers into loyal customers.
LinkedIn Articles & Posts
LinkedIn contains 2 very unique types of textual content, the first is the humble post, typically this is a short post and may include an activity you performed or perhaps a meeting with a client.
The other is an article, this is typically long form and is perfect for businesses to showcase their knowledge and position on certain industry topics as well as establishing themselves as thought leaders.
Using LinkedIn Articles and posts has several benefits including:
- Showcase your knowledge: Long-form articles are perfect for sharing industry insights, how-to guides or perhaps even how you started out doing what you are doing. By creating articles you are making your brand a trusted source in the industry.
- Increases your reach: Like most social networks, engagement is a major factor and LinkedIn’s algorithm boosts engaging content. So posts and articles that resonate with your audience will appear in more feeds, exposing you and your business to more new followers and prospective clients.
LinkedIn Ads and Sponsored Content
Organic reach, most of us will know is on the decline, platforms are quickly realising that sponsored content generates revenue for the platform. LinkedIn has a powerful advertising tool that enables businesses to reach their target audience.
LinkedIn’s advertising options allows small businesses to run campaigns tailored to specific demographics such as job titles, industries and companies, this ensures small businesses are able to reach the most relevant people.
Ads and sponsored content helps businesses in a couple of ways:
- Specific targeting: You can get very detailed in terms of the person or businesses you want to target. Unlike other social platforms, LinkedIn enables businesses to advertise directly to key stakeholders and professionals within your chosen field or those who have an interest in your industry.
- Lead generation forms: Some social networks offer a lead generation form when you create an advert, LinkedIn however, have done it from the off, providing businesses with high-quality leads without users ever having to leave LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn has a whole host of groups for users to join and once part of you can take part in discussions and share knowledge. By joining and actively taking part in groups business owners are able to network with other industry professionals in the same group.
Some of the benefits of joining a group on LinkedIn include:
- Community building: By getting involved with a group on LinkedIn you will be visible to all members within the group. This helps with boosting brand awareness and positioning your business as a valued member of the community.
- New connections: As one might expect, you will notice the more you engage within a community, your connections are going to start to increase. This opens you up to new opportunities including prospective work from new clients.
LinkedIn Analytics
Of course all of the above would be useless if we weren’t able to track how well our posts, pages and other digital assets were performing on the social networking platform.
LinkedIn Analytics provides a deep insight into how your posts on both your Company Page and also on your personal profile are performing. This will give you an insight in terms of what content is resonating with your audience and where possible what improvements can be made.
Uncovering meaning within the data is essential and by doing so you will be able to:
- Understand your audience: LinkedIn provides highly detailed demographical information such as job title, locations and company sizes of your followers. This enables you to tailor your content to better serve those businesses.
- Performance: You can see how well your posts are performing. Data metrics such as views, engagement rates and follower growth allow you to measure the effectiveness of your LinkedIn strategy. By looking at the numbers, you can focus on delivering more of the content that resonates with your audience and improve your approach for maximum impact.
Reviewing your numbers should be a monthly or even weekly task, allowing you to adapt your LinkedIn strategy to suit your business goals and needs.
