Along with Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is at the top-tier of social networks. It’s global (200 countries) and has a respectable user-base (over 100 million). This makes it a prime target for marketing, but it is often overlooked.
It’s a great tool for candidate searches, job seekers, and finding out about mutual connections and interests of potential associates. But there are many other ways you can use LinkedIn:
- Promote your business,
- Promote your products and services
- Get business advice from experts
- Connect with your customers
- Get competitive information
LinkedIn itself is a huge search engine with massive Google authority. This means your LinkedIn profile will likely show up when someone searches your name or business.
Specifically, here are some strategies to get the most out of LinkedIn:
LinkedIn Strategy #1
Claim your Name – Register an account in your name and register your business name. At the very least, this will prevent imposters or others with a similar name from using your brand.
LinkedIn Strategy #2
Check out the Competition – Do a search on your competitors. More than 150,000 companies have profiles on LinkedIn. These pages contain invaluable information about your competition, including recent employee movements.
LinkedIn Strategy #3
Find your Connections – LinkedIn can look through your email contact list and automatically invite your associates and customers. Chances are they are already on LinkedIn. This is a good start.
There are two strategies for making connections on LinkedIn. One is the “Open Networker” approach where your goal is to have a large number of business connections. This lets you cast a wide net, but the water is shallow. It’s more common with Twitter. The other is the “Trusted Partner” approach, where your contacts are fewer, but deeper. In most cases the latter approach works better, but it really depends on your business goals.
LinkedIn Strategy #4
Recommendations – They are a unique feature of LinkedIn. But how do you get them? You can ask your customers, associates, or vendors. But actually, a better strategy is to write recommendations of others first. People will reciprocate.
Recommendations will appear in search results. They’re important because they give you credibility. Here are some tips on writing good LinkedIn recommendations.
LinkedIn Strategy #5
Find Groups to Join – LinkedIn has many special interest groups you can join including those built around specific industries and business topics. LinkedIn will recommend groups for you to join, but you may be better off looking at the profiles of your associates and competitors to see which groups they’ve joined.
If you can’t find a group, you can start one. This gives you access to member emails and lets you engage with the group as it gets bigger.
Get involved in discussions and comment on posts. Answering questions in your industry can win you business and let you soft-pitch your products. You can also get answers to your difficult business questions here and take advantage of industry experts.
LinkedIn Strategy #6
Boost you SEO – Be sure to enter your website and blog URL links in your LinkedIn Profile, but use your keywords as Anchor Text. In your profile, under websites, you can enter three URLs. On the left drop-down box, don’t choose “Blog” or “Website”, choose “Other”. Then enter your keywords. For example, for my blog, I used “Digital Marketing”. You can enter the same website in all three places with different keywords if you like.
LinkedIn Strategy #7
Get your Blog Promoted – If you have a blog, LinkedIn is an excellent marketing channel. There are two applications you can add which will let others see a summary of your posts right on LinkedIn. If you use WordPress, add the LinkedIn WordPress App. If you use another blogging platform, install the Blog Link App. It supports TypePad, Movable Type, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Blogger, LiveJournal and others.
LinkedIn Strategy #8
Try a LinkedIn Ad Campaign – It turns out that, like Facebook, LinkedIn has it’s own Ad platform. The difference is that you can advertise to business professionals not just random users. You pay per click or impression and you can budget the total amount.
LinkedIn Strategy #9
Promote your Events – There’s a LinkedIn App called “Events” that lets you create events if you attending or hosting. You can then invite customers and meet them in-person. It’s an excellent way to organize upcoming events.
LinkedIn Strategy #10
Sync LinkedIn to FaceBook and Twitter – Why write separate updates? Send posts to all three places at once.
Summary
If you’ve overlooked LinkedIn as a marketing platform in the past, you now have an opportunity to address a huge user base and further engage customers, vendors and associates. and promote your business.
If you’d like to add any LinkedIn strategies that have worked for your business, please leave a comment below.