How to Use Linkedin for Business

LinkedIn is a social network for entrepreneurs with 722 million users. This site is known as one of the most popular job search sites. Personal profiles look like resumes with data on education, skills, work experience.

But looking for a job is only a tiny part of the platform's potential. There are 15 times fewer job advertisements than professional content, and an organization's business profile provides three significant benefits:

- Leads, that is, potential customers. These are the people who responded to the marketing communication and left you with contact information: they subscribed to the newsletter, gave a phone number, or sent a personal message. Research shows that 80 percent B2B leads come from LinkedIn, and 79 percent of marketers find the platform an effective source of leads.

- Networking. Find employees, experts, business partners. Many of them are already registered on the social network. Join groups, participate in discussions, and make a name for yourself.

- Recognition. 94 percent of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute professional content. Useful articles, links to research, discussion of business ideas increase the visibility and authority of the company. An additional advantage is the platform's narrow specialization: unlike Facebook or Instagram, business content here does not compete with videos about animals or travel photos.

How to create and fill out an account?

To get started on social media, you need to create a business profile. Here is a simple step-by-step instruction on how to create it:

1. Go to the section for creating accounts for companies. Choose the type of business: small, medium, or large, brand page (an additional tool for those who already have a business account), educational institution.

2. Fill in the basic information: name and URL that match the name of the organization. If the address is busy, add a word or number to make it unique. In this section, you can also place a link to the site.

3. Add information about the company: industry, number of employees, type of business.

4. Upload your profile photo. Experts advise using a logo as an avatar - this increases page traffic six times. Recommended file parameters: size 300x300 pixels, formats JPG, JPEG, and PNG. You can create a logo adapted to the LinkedIn format in a couple of clicks on the Logaster website.

5. Add a subtitle - a short description, for example, "consulting service for business". This phrase will be visible under the company name in the profile.

6. Check the box confirming that you represent the organization and click Create Page.

7. Start filling out the profile with a description: tell us about your products, history, goals, mission. Keep in mind that LinkedIn pages appear in Google search results: use keywords that potential customers can search for you.

8. Upload a cover photo to complement your business impression. Optimal size: 1584 × 396 pixels.

9. Indicate the location if you are doing business offline. You can add one or more office or store addresses.

10. Enter the hashtags by which the platform audience can find you: as a rule, these are the names of the industries.

11. Add a call to action button, such as "visit site", "contact us" or "learn more". Specify the address to which people should go by clicking the button and add a UTM-tag to analyze traffic channels.

How to effectively promote your business on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn provides many tools to suit any type of organization. So, how to find leads, network, and build brand awareness?

Advertise your account

- Share the account with all employees, ask them to subscribe to the account, and add it to their profiles as a place of work.

- Import contacts from email. To do this, select "Add contacts" and enter your email.

-Place the LinkedIn icon on your website, blog, business card, share your account on other social networks.

Plan your content

To reach your target audience, remember: your priority should be honest communication, not direct advertising. What to publish:

- About the company: add information about the story of the business, case studies and lessons learned, employee stories, behind-the-scenes workflow, product announcements (with a focus on how they add value).

- About the industry: add notes from events you attend, re-posts of useful articles or publications of opinion leaders, relevant news for entrepreneurs, your opinion on professional topics.

Illustrate your posts

As in any other social networks, posts containing photos and videos give many times more engagement:

- Posts with images get 98% more comments than posts without images. This rule works well for authentic photographs (from conferences you've attended, from your store or office). Avoid standard stock photos that don't make any sense.

- Videos on the platform attract five times more users than any other type of content. Keep in mind that videos start playing automatically when users scroll through the feed, so start with the most interesting shots.

- The most effective social media visual tool is live streaming, which engages 24 times more people than regular posts. LinkedIn Live offers interviews, webinars, virtual events, Q&A sessions, and more. Notify the live stream in advance and try to get as many people as possible to know about it.

Join groups or create your own group

Groups are one of the most popular ways of networking on LinkedIn. Participation in them will help to demonstrate expertise, increase awareness, and find new business contacts.

There are two ways to use groups:

- Join several professional communities or create your own group.

- Share useful content, comment on the posts of other members, argue your opinion in discussions.

Create a showcase page

A showcase page contains the individual accounts of brands or products that allow you to expand your presence on the social network. These pages focus on a flagship product, a social initiative, a specific line of business.

The showcase page strengthens the main business account, allows you to address a narrow segment of the target audience, create a personalized experience for it, and expand the network of contacts. Remember that people who are not subscribed to the main account can subscribe to the secondary account.

Analyze

LinkedIn Analytics shows where your readers are coming from, how much reach your posts get, how old, and from what countries your audience is. By selecting Companies to Track, you can see how your page is performing in comparison to your competitors' accounts. Track analytics on a regular basis to eliminate non-working tools and optimize your marketing strategy.