“ One out of every 3 professionals on the planet is on LinkedIn”
Networking is not about just connecting people, it’s about connecting people with people, people with ideas, and people with opportunities.
LinkedIn is the biggest business-oriented professional network that may help you to grab any opportunities through your ability.
Did you know LinkedIn is a professional social networking platform and that has been around longer than Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram?
From the very beginning to now, It’s a very effective platform for browsing strong relationships and hooking into your contact’s network.
Why?
Because it hosts more than 760 million professional profiles, which means nearly an unlimited supply of network connections and business opportunities.
So, Should LinkedIn need to be a part of your business?
In my opinion, If you want to maintain your business digitally it always needs to be on your priority list.
Now as a beginner your question may arise How to use LinkedIn for business? How using LinkedIn for business will benefit you? Why LinkedIn for small businesses a must?
Here are some effective LinkedIn tips and tricks that will show you the best ways to use LinkedIn and why it’s beneficial for business marketing.
Best Ways To Use LinkedIn If You Have A Small Or Startup Business
Create A Complete LinkedIn Business Page
your personal LinkedIn profile is a great fit for sharing your own resume, searching for new job opportunities, and promoting your personal brand.
At the same time, companies can create a LinkedIn business page to promote their product/ service, post job opportunities, and more.
So, what do you actually need for your business before starting everything when you think about interacting with people through LinkedIn?
No doubt! First, you have to open a complete LinkedIn business profile/page.
When you’re heading to a sign-up account, use the appropriate name of your business everywhere, there you will get access to showcase your product, describe if it’s a small, medium, or a large business, and other essential information that will be view of the LinkedIn community.
My suggestion will be for you to read their official article How to create a LinkedIn page for your business that will help you in your total ‘open account’ journey in Linkedin.
Design & Branding Your LinkedIn Page
Your brand will reflect on the LinkedIn community when you complete your information and then organize everything uniquely.
The more you express your branding the more you will get attention.
Pages with complete information get 30% more weekly views. So you have to keep your page extraordinary which will express how unique your brand is!
Here’s what you can fill out beyond the compare-
Your business logo and cover image, Organization info, call-to-action button, include an outstanding image in your post, and many more.
Optimize Your Page For Search
Using LinkedIn for business possibly can make a vital change.
But when it’s a turn about growing your business, it’s quite hard to maintain.
Lots of businesses or startups fails because of imperfect optimization. Some businesses never used these platforms properly after opening an account.
But optimization is key to maintain all business strategies.
You don’t need a costly plan from LinkedIn to be successful on the platform but it isn’t a must to optimize a LinkedIn profile if you have one.
So what are the ways you can do to optimize a LinkedIn profile?
- Create a shorten and custom URL
- When you are optimizing a LinkedIn profile, it is very important to use SEO best practices
- Choose creative, specific, entice and to the point headlines are important
- Post and introduction video about yourself
- Put projects and inbound links sections of your LinkedIn profile can be used to show others all the projects and outside things you have worked on.
- Request Recommendations
- Make sure your contact info is easy to find
- Keep track of LinkedIn profile analytics
Join An Industry Group
As a small business owner, you want to continually be growing yourself, your team, and your business.
And one of the best ways to do that? Join an industry association.
While some business owners may think that industry associations are for professionals at the beginning of their careers, the truth is, these organizations offer a huge variety of benefits.
But the question is what exactly, do industry associations have to offer established business owners—and how can they help your business?
The benefits that you can get from joining these associations will depend on your career or company goals and objectives.
Here are some of the major benefits you can get once you join a specific association:
- Networking and enhancing your connection
- Expand your knowledge
- Training opportunities
- Improve business reputation and trust
- Quality standard
Create Your Own LinkedIn Group
Why should you manage your own LinkedIn group?
When you’re starting your own LinkedIn group it can be a great way to increase your familiarity and highly attract a targeted group of people if you leverage it the right way.
And Do you want to know the special thing?
Making your own LinkedIn group will be controlled by yourself.
Groups are accessible and discoverable from the LinkedIn home page and relevant group conversations will appear in the main feed, keeping you top of mind with your target market.
It will significantly increase the size of the LinkedIn network, making it easier to find by your target audience or market.
Now, how can you create a successful LinkedIn group?
- Pick a topic that your customers care about
- Inviting your connections and grow your group
- Start the discussion and be active
- Moderate all posts and remove spam
- Create your own LinkedIn group following proper rules and policy
Answering Questions
Another great area to create authority within your business is in the LinkedIn answer.
It has become the most powerful business intelligence where you can share and gather major information.
An incredible way to connect people, and showcasing your expertise through answering other queries. This lets you demonstrate your expertise to millions of LinkedIn members and, even better, to billions of Google searchers who may be searching for similar queries in your field.
LinkedIn Answers, with a summary of your profile, appear in Google search results, giving you lots of exposure.
How could answering help your business?
Whenever someone seeks help and you answer a question it sometimes shows others that you are an expert in this field and they will search your company to see your business purpose and others. And thus you are getting more attention on LinkedIn.
Linkedin has another expert badge for those who answer more questions and will be able to get the “This Week’s Top Experts” badge. This section is reserved for the people that answer the most questions and have the most answers voted as the best answers.
Engage with Your Targeted Connection
Linkedin is a great platform whether you’re looking to grow your business profile or expand your personal network.
This Platform can help you raise brand awareness and boost traffic when used well, but unfortunately, most people are using Linkedin wrong.
A strong up-to-date profile is important to impress the audience inside LinkedIn.
Before you can engage with your audience, you need to attract and make them follow your page.
Every time you connect to a user you potentially increase your influence and how far your content will be spread – not just to your new connection but anyone they might share it with.
So which can immediately try out to expand your network and get more engagement with your target audience on LinkedIn?
When you personalized your business introduction, update and create writings, share a thoughtful and high-quality post, in fact when you comment on others’ posts that can get your profile seen by others and encourage people to read and comment.
Send a customized invitation. Even though you’re limited to 150 characters, add as much of your voice and personality as you can to the invitation to new connections.
Ask for an introduction. Sometimes, emailing or phoning a shared contact is the best way to ask for an introduction.
However, you can also click the Introduction link on your prospect’s profile.
Search your connections’ connections. Find people your connections know, like, and trust.
Go to a connection and click on the blue number of connections in their bio section to see their network.
(If the number is black, your connection has this service blocked.) Click on the little magnifying glass to expand it into a search box.
Now, do a search on a keyword or title.
Invite a connection’s connection. When you send a request to someone with whom you have a mutual friend, be sure to reference that person.
A simple “Hello (name), I see that we share (your mutual connection) in common.
I would like to add you as a connection in my network” can make a great engagement with your target connections.
Ask for Recommendations
Having LinkedIn recommendations for your work is important for several reasons.
A LinkedIn recommendation can reveal another connection that you might have in common and that can boost your chances of consideration.
You gain more visibility by appearing on their LinkedIn profile as well when they recommend you, assuming they’ve chosen to allow their recommendations to be displayed publicly.
Most importantly, make sure that you trust the person you’re asking to give a positive, thoughtful review.
The more in-depth and descriptive a recommendation can be, the more value it will offer to the reader. So consider whether the person you’re asking is likely to go into the specifics of the good work you have performed, or if they’ll just post something foggy and beat out the bash.
How do you ask for a recommendation?
This is the big question – asking people about how good you are can feel like an awkward request.
But there is nothing wrong with asking professionally, politely and at the right time for a recommendation.
And you will more than likely find that people are far more willing than you expect to help you out when you ask.
Once you have your recommendations in place and your business profile’s looking more professional and more appealing now you will find the authentication in your business whether it’s small or big.
Share Optimize Relevant Content That Shows You As An Expert
Your Audience Dictates Your Profile and Content.
In any platform, people search for content that has their interest. Think about what people care about that shows that you understand their needs, their experience.
It’s more important to be clear on who your audience is and what message they can relate to.
To write your experience, credentials, and service offer that can solve their problem takes a change in your mindset.
Engaging content goes a long path in reaching the right audience, so make your content stand out with multimedia, add hashtags and others can easily find your content in search.
Using a hashtag will ensure that when members are looking for information on a certain topic or timely event, your article will come up as one of the options.
You can also boost your visibility by writing long-form articles.
Posting regular updates also help optimize your LinkedIn profile.
Always write in the first person, allow your personality to come through in your writing, and let people know your values and passions.
Always write so you’re speaking directly to the type of person with whom you want to do business.
Post at The Right Time
LinkedIn targets a more specific audience than other social networks.
You are able to find a more relevant target audience from this social platform and the best content marketer knows the right time to post on LinkedIn.
According to my findings, the best days to post content on LinkedIn are between Tuesday and Thursday, either early in the morning, lunchtime, or early evening, with an additional, bonus sweet spot between 10 am and 11 am on Tuesday.
And if you want to know when your relevant audience is free and it’s the right time to post, then you should check LinkedIn analytics to know when your targeted audience is free.
If you need to target a set of audiences to get more connections and if your products are lifestyle and shopping-related, target a time when people are free and maximum people are searching for this type of product in their free time.
Similarly, when it’s about official service, job post, office product-related post make sure you are posting something when it’s office time.
Basically, you just need to play LinkedIn analytics smartly to find your appropriate audience.
Pro Tips For LinkedIn Outreach Message
“ Great things in business start with effective communication”
Why is adding a message to marketing important in your business?
People want to interact with the business via messaging, 89% of consumers would like to use messaging with businesses, but only 48% of businesses use it to engage with prospects and customers.
The maximum time you need to reach people through messages within the shortest time because at a time sending messages to thousands of people is quite impossible!
On the other side, you need more connection with your audience.
So, what do you need to do to outreach your message to a million audiences?
It’s not easy to send your message one by one, then you will spend a month on this.
That’s a waste!
But in today’s business industry, there are lots of automation tools that help you send those messages manually. Now it’s up to you which automation tools you will prefer for your business in LinkedIn!
Now, sending a message to your audience will never make them respond immediately.
The percent of response from your audience will be 0 if your text never carries a beneficial side.
So what can you do then?
I discussed in my previous blog how you can feel your audience special? How you can impress your audience and clients
Give some incentives, special discounts, or perks in your message, Wish them on their personal events and special day, make it readable, short, and direct.
Always include a strong closing statement.
Use Linkedin Automation Tools
LinkedIn automation tools are more than software that can be more effective to make connections with people on this platform faster and easier.
Who want to run end-to-end social media marketing and social selling campaigns on LinkedIn, there are lots of tools that help to publish any content for the right audience at the right time and maximize your reach in no time, helping to gain upper edge opportunities.
Not all of the automation tools for LinkedIn will generate leads for you but also provide features that make following up a prospect or features that enable you to quickly refresh your prior communication with them before taking any action.
So, here I’m sharing 5 best LinkedIn automation tools that all digital entrepreneur needs to use –
- Linked Helper
- LeadFuze
- Discover.ly
- Socialpilot
- Zopto
We suggest you automate LinkedIn automation tools for marketing your business.
At a pocket-friendly price, you can easily get started with content marketing customized for your LinkedIn audience.
Start with an easy to use tool that eases content planning and publishing, get you complete engagement insights, and helps you manage all your marketing efforts on LinkedIn will ensure that the channel wins you the kind of engagement you are hoping for.
Use LinkedIn Live Video Opportunity
LinkedIn isn’t the first platform for ‘live streaming’, there’s a lot like- youtube, twitch even Facebook has the same feature for live.
But LinkedIn live streaming can be one of the most effective ways to market your services.
Sometimes people love to watch more than read anything.
It’s because of the presentation strategy!
Audiences always search for preferable content and you will find some people only search video content to learn more easily. So, it could be a bonus for your business!!!
You should also be prepared to interact with viewers on LinkedIn since that’s one of the main benefits of live streaming in general.
So, how can a LinkedIn live video can be helpful for your business?
Here are 8 content to use LinkedIn live video that may help to reach more audience there-
- Answer question
- Showcase special event
- Introduce team member
- show off workplace culture
- Announce new product or services
- Demonstrate products or services
- Share tips or tutorials
- Discuss industry issues
Create a Product & Service Showcase Page
Are you satisfied with your goal of targeting more people in your business?
Or still, you’re poor to reach your targeted audience!
Creating a LinkedIn account is not enough. You always need to maintain the quality and should update everything properly.
Now after creating an account your audience makes a connection with you. Is it enough for your business?
No! It’s the beginning of your business on LinkedIn.
Now you should attach your product or service page there for audience view so that people will know what types of service or product your company provides.
LinkedIn showcase pages are a smart place to highlight all aspects of your brand’s products and services.
It’s easy to build a dedicated community on LinkedIn and start an ongoing conversation about that product, service, or brand.
Showcase Page followers know to expect news about your product or service – in fact, they’re looking forward to it! And since Showcase Page updates work just like company updates, they offer all of the benefits detailed above.
All of us know the brand IKEA?
IKEA is a global home furnishing brand that lives in the hearts of many people.
IKEA has a showcase page just for its Italian audience.
Not only IKEA, but there’s also lots of business they established their business strategies more effectively using LinkedIn showcase pages to attract more audience.
More than 90% of professional brands rank LinkedIn as their platform of choice for professionally relevant content.
So, if you don’t have a product or service showcase page, don’t sit and relax!!!
It can be a big loss!
Create a product and service showcasing page and make it attractive in such a way that people will love to make more connections with your business.
LinkedIn DirectAds
LinkedIn is the world’s largest fantastic place for business and it has an effective feature named LinkedIn Direct Ads, a place to an online product designed for LinkedIn members who want to market their business, product, or service to other members.
DirectAds lets LinkedIn members purchase audience-targeted text advertising on the site for their businesses of any size.
For example, maybe you’re a tax accounting firm looking to reach young professionals, or you’re a design agency looking to find potential new clients in key industries, or maybe you’ve just written a new book on a career or business topic.
You can use DirectAds to get the word out to your target customers
Using DirectAds, members can specify the audience that will see their ads, write targeted messaging for their products, and pay by credit card.
The whole process takes just a few minutes.
Company Buzz
In general, sometimes, people love to listen to others!
Suppose your friend or classmate brought a brand new watch and when they start talking about this, you will get information such as what’s the brand name, what feature does it have, what’s the price and many more.
Now tell me what were the benefits when you learn from them?
Without a whole day of research, you just got many more information about this watch and the brand as well.
Similarly, when you start talking about your business and company, interested people will love to make a connection with your brand.
Make them feel interset with your details, describe product or service details, show them the beneficial sight of your product or service has.
The gossip can make a turning point for your business.
It allows the business to focus on enhancing the product or service itself and not on the promotional campaign. It helps the business gain a targeted audience and a positive reputation.
Generate Leads, Drive Conversions
You’re connecting yourself to different social platforms for the welfare of your own or others.
But when it’s about building a successful business, I think you connect yourself to these platforms for your business growth, reach more people, and want to build your business as a brand worldwide.
Now, LinkedIn is the underdog for social connection.
The more you develop your profile, product, or service page, showcase your product or service, describe the benefits, and most importantly describe every pinch of your business, brand, and service to reach people.
Connecting yourself to social platforms like LinkedIn can generate more leads and drive more conversion for your business.
And I believe you already understand the best ways to use LinkedIn for your business.
Use LinkedIn Analytics to Understand Your Follower
Social platforms are all about networking, connection, engagement with people.
No business got their goals within the day they created!
When you buy groceries you buy those with measuring perfectly.
Measuring your followers, engaged followers are the same. For your business growth, you
should measure every step of business growth.
LinkedIn has the feature to measure where your visitor spends more time, the number of people interested for relevant interest, compare the number of followers accrued through sponsored content.
Nevertheless, It has follower highlights which can measure who followed since your business is created, follower demography that shows your follower’s location, job function, industry, company size, and others.
In general, LinkedIn analytics will give you a better insight into total followers, new followers, engagement rate, and the number of updates that make an easy vision for your business.
Final Verdict
Are you still puzzled to understand “What’s the point of using LinkedIn for your business?”
Above all discussion, remember that LinkedIn is a must-have and professional social platform for your business, no matter your business is small, startup, or large.
If you don’t use it properly, you will never get the wholehearted flavor of the success of your business.
So, don’t waste your time just thinking I’ll create a proper Linkedin profile later!
Later is an excuse!!!! Make it now!
Highlighting your business, brand, product, and services through this strong platform will make your business longer.
The importance of communication skills for entrepreneurs is a game. If you don’t use it to reach people, you’re no longer become a digital entrepreneur in this digital span.
