If you’ve used LinkedIn in the past, you may not realize that it has changed. It was traditionally used as a social network to help professionals expand their business contacts and make connections, but it has evolved into a powerful platform for publishing and distributing content. In fact, if you’re not using LinkedIn to grow your business, you may be missing out on precious opportunities.
Let’s take a look at five ways you can use LinkedIn to support your digital marketing strategy.
1. Create a Company Page
Setting up your own LinkedIn company page is free and easy to do. Once you’ve established your company page, you can link it to your personal profile, and all of your employees can link to it as well. This instantly improves your reach, but that’s just the beginning.
Your company page gives you a chance to display your brand vision and mission statement, engage with followers, enable your followers to join in discussions and debates, and segment company services into different geographic locations. Best of all, it gives you a place to publish content that can be connected to your website and other social media accounts.
2. Use SlideShare
SlideShare is a very useful feature on LinkedIn. It allows users to upload files like PowerPoints, PDFs, and Keynote documents that can then be viewed easily on LinkedIn. After you give a presentation to your company or at a conference, let that presentation do double duty. When you post it on LinkedIn, others can see your knowledge and expertise, and this can help to form your professional public identity.
3. Regularly Post Shareable Content
According to LinkedIn, you will reach more of your audience when you post on a regular basis. In fact, companies that post 20 times in a month reach 60% of their followers with 1 or more update. Just think about how much this could extend your company’s reach! As with any content, publish authentic, original content that will encourage people to like it, share it, and comment on it.
4. Introduce New Products, Services, and Sales!
Using LinkedIn to grow your business has many facets. One of them is in the way you introduce new innovations. Make announcements on LinkedIn about your newest products and services. The buzz you generate on LinkedIn can create new contacts and new interest, especially if your content is shared. You can encourage sharing on LinkedIn by creating promotions or offering discounts on your new products and services.
5. Create a LinkedIn Group
LinkedIn groups are groups that discuss industry news, insights, and ideas. When you create your own LinkedIn group you have a great opportunity to be seen as an expert and to influence the conversation in your industry. Here are a few tips for creating your own LinkedIn group:
- Establish a moderator/administrator to oversee your page. This doesn’t have to be you, but it should be a trusted person within your organization who hast he time to monitor and promptly respond to questions.
- Post at least once a week. When you post, your messages are delivered to your group members’ inboxes, so you’ll stay top of mind. Gold!
- Follow the 80/20 rule. Talk about industry-related topics about 80 percent of the time, and spend only about 20 percent of the time talking about your own business.
As you can see, using LinkedIn to grow your business can be a highly effective way to interact with current and potential customers. LinkedIn is continually adding new features, so stay up-to-date on the many ways you can use it to reach your business goals. If you wan to learn how to convert website traffic into customers with out new blog post. For a free consultation, call us at Park Slope Softworks, an inbound marketing company in Brooklyn. If you would like to know more about your site’s SEO, check out a Free SEO analysis for your site.