Most business people today have a LinkedIn profile, and many utilise it to promote their skills and experience with their next job in mind. Far fewer use it to effectively promote and grow their own business, or the company they work for, which is a missed opportunity with so many decision makers using this social network on a daily basis.
Here are a few tips to help you use LinkedIn to promote your business.
- LinkedIn is great for people and businesses wishing to build stronger brands. You can associate your personal profile with your company page and share images, videos, links and presentations, to make the pages more interesting and informative. Ensure that your personal profile contains a professional headshot and including your company logo will help to build visual awareness of your brand and what it stands for.
You can also post informative articles, which can be seen by other users, helping you to engage in conversations around your areas of expertise and further strengthen your brand and its proposition. - Clear, well written, LinkedIn profiles that concisely describe your skills, expertise, and the value proposition of your business are important to give viewers that all-important first impression. Clear calls to action and contact details are equally important to ensure that interested people are easily able to reach you.
The summary section is particularly important as it allows you to speak directly to your audience and tell them about you, your skills and your company.
The use of keywords in profiles helps you rank higher in search results, making it more likely that you will be found by prospective clients or employers! - LinkedIn groups. Many people join groups related to the same industry or job discipline that they are in. This can be useful to join in discussions with like-minded professionals and to keep abreast of developments and events. However, joining groups which your target clients belong to is very valuable, as you can initiate discussions which demonstrate your expertise and how you may be able to help them, and add useful posts to the groups. You may also want to consider local groups if you are targeting clients in a specific geography.
These activities can directly create new business leads but another benefit of joining groups is that you can send messages to the members free of charge. This allows you to invite group members to connect and you can then start building business relationships with them. - LinkedIn is a professional network so make sure that the posts, comments and likes that you make are consistent with this. Most professional contacts are unlikely to be interested in your holiday photos, pets or new shoes – so keep these discussions for other, more appropriate social networks!
Birch Marketing provides flexible, part-time marketing services. To discuss how we can help you with LinkedIn, please get in touch. You can call Julie on 07833 227975 or contact us.