LINKEDIN FOR BUSINESS: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO DOING BUSINESS

LinkedIn is the largest professional social network currently in existence. It currently has more than 400 million active professionals. It is a social network of professionals who, acting on their own behalf - independent professionals - or on behalf of the company of which they are part, establish connections with other professionals with the aim of establishing synergies: new clients, collaborators, business alliances , job search, personnel selection.

In this article we are going to see what are the main strategies to generate business through this social network . For this, it is key to know what our objectives are and what we are going to do to achieve them.

TIPS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR COMPANY'S PRESENCE ON LINKEDIN

LinkedIn for businessTo generate business through Linkedin , in the first place, it will be key for the entire team to get involved . To do this, we must ensure that everyone knows how to take advantage of their personal profile on LinkedIn . These, in their own name but on behalf of our company, will network with the aim of establishing professional contacts. And second, we must achieve the highest visibility of our company among our target audience .

HOW TO NETWORK WITH OTHER PROFESSIONALS?

With networking we mean establishing a professional network of contacts that allows us to get to know ourselves and our business, listen and learn from others, find potential collaborators, partners or investors. (Business and Networking).

Some actions that we can carry out for this on LinkedIn are:

Actively participating in discussion groups related to our professional profile. Answer the questions of other users, contribute your point of view, open discussion topics ...

Requesting contact to those who, due to their professional career, we can help or may interest us professionally. Similarly, let's accept those who add value to our network.

Frequently posting valuable content on our professional LinkedIn profile, own, from other sources or the content of our company page.

Interacting with other users' posts constructively.

Showing interest in the professional activity of other users. Recommend your publications, validate your skills, etc.

Showing an active predisposition to help others.

Be careful, we do not fall into one of the most frequent mistakes that are usually made. Become spam, annoying for our contacts. We do not endeavor to send commercial information about our company to someone who has not requested it.

Recently, a possibly fake professional profile, as soon as I accepted your contact request, sent me an email with all the rates of the services offered by your company. After indicating that he had not requested such information, he made me ugly, replying that, in his opinion, "that's what LinkedIn was for . " I quickly deleted it from my network of contacts. The only thing these practices are going to achieve is to generate a negative image of ourselves and our company.

HOW CAN I IMPROVE THE VISIBILITY OF YOUR COMPANY ON LINKEDIN?

Not only through our team we can generate business in this professional social network. This offers us a series of tools that will also help us to do this: company pages and advertising campaigns on LinkedIn .

CREATING A COMPANY PAGE

Any company, public entity or training center can be present on this professional social network through its company page. To create it, it is only necessary that the person who is going to do it has authorization for it. That is, you must link a corporate email account of the company in your profile.

It is important to edit all the possible information about the company : description, year of creation, number of employees, sector, specialties of the company ... and let's add the logo and a cover image.

It is possible to edit the page in multiple languages, but only one will be the preset. In addition to this, we can also create our own products page .

Once created, it is convenient to invite our contacts to join it. For this we can choose different ways: sharing a link to it in our professional profile, sending an email to our contacts through InMail, promoting it through advertising on LinkedIn or through other means of dissemination: web icon or corporate blog with link, adding a link in the signature of emails, on corporate cards, communicating it on other social networks, etc. PUBLISHING VALUABLE CONTENT.

The company page is not a tab with contact details. It is a virtual space where, as in other social networks, generating a community around our company and its activity.

For this, we must publish frequently - between 3 to 5 times a week - valuable content, own or from other sources, that is of interest to followers and positions the company as an entity committed to its community and that provides content of interest linked to your activity.

This can be a good showcase to publicize the company's corporate blog posts or the personal blogs of its management team, as long as they are alienated in the company's digital marketing Services in India.

LINKEDIN PAGE STATISTICS

Thanks to the statistical data that the LinkedIn pages offer us, we will be able to know which content works best based on the interactions achieved and the number of users reached, in order to know which content works best.

ENCOURAGING THE TEAM TO SHARE THE CONTENT.

A team well trained in the management of LinkedIn will help us achieve our goals. They, through their social profiles, will be the voice of the company in this network, they will announce the activity of the company or other content of interest to their network of contacts.

It is essential that all employees, not just commercial departments, see this social network as yet another communication tool, both for networking, finding potential collaborators and potential clients, sharing knowledge, being informed of the activity of their contacts or others companies and publicize the activity of the company itself.

In addition to the aforementioned, it will be key that they themselves are the first to know the publication of a new post on the company page, and in this way, they can share it, thus making known the activity of the company or other information that positions the same as an expert in its activity.

PLANNING ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS ON LINKEDIN.

LinkedIn allows us through its advertising system to publicize our company or its services to the target audience we are targeting.

With any personal account it is possible to create one or more advertising accounts . In case you want to manage several for different advertisers, we must create an account for each one. These will be independent of each other, so that each will have its ad groups, can be managed by different people and the billing data will be different for each account.

SEGMENTATION POSSIBILITIES

One of the advantages of advertising on LinkedIn is the B2B targeting options. It is possible to segment by job titles and functions, by age and size of the company, sector and country.

SETTING THE BUDGET

As for the budget setting, the minimum daily amount is 10 euros, and the minimum cost per click is 2 euros. But we will only be billed per click achieved, so that if one day no more than 2 clicks are reached, we will only be charged 4 euros.

FORMATS ACCORDING TO OBJECTIVES

Depending on our objectives (generating traffic to our website, increasing the number of followers of our company page or promoting a publication) we have two advertising formats: sponsored publications and advertisement texts. The latter is the one that will allow us to generate traffic to our website or increase the recognition of our brand.

Note that the "ad copy" format, in my opinion, is quite poor. It hardly allows us to add a small image, a headline and a fairly brief description. In this way, creativity can hardly have a place.

INVITED YOUR CONTACTS TO FOLLOW THE PAGE

In June 2019, LinkedIn activated the option to invite administrators' contacts to follow the page. This is possibly rapidly increasing the number of followers. But to create a community of value, it is advisable to invite only those users who are potential customers or may have a real interest in the company.