How to use LinkedIn to promote your business

LinkedIn is ideal for reaching an engaged B2B audience.

As a social network specifically used by professionals, LinkedIn is a highly targeted social media that can reach a specific audience through organic posts. A lot of companies use LinkedIn as a means of promotion, and with your competitors also on the platform, it would be foolish not to have a presence for your brand.

Some LinkedIn usage statistics:

• 45% of LinkedIn users are in upper management and are therefore decision-makers.
• 91% of executives rate LinkedIn as their first choice for professionally relevant content.
• 30 million companies have LinkedIn profiles.
• 80% of B2B leads generated on social media come from LinkedIn.

Optimise Your Company Profile

As LinkedIn is primarily a social media platform for businesses, you will need to optimise your page. This is similar to a personal page, except it represents only your business. This is the face of your brand, what the world will see of your company. If your page isn’t optimised it will reflect badly on your entire company. There are plenty of things you can do to optimise your LinkedIn company page:

• Complete your about section, giving an overview of your business.
• Add your company website.
• Ask your employees to list your company as their place of work. People will then be able to search for your employees and it gives members a better idea of how many people work at your business, allowing them the opportunity to link with them.
• Put your physical location so that people know how and where to find you.
• Use the company logo as your profile picture. Make sure the logo is easy to distinguish and if there is any text, that it can be read clearly.
• Add a cover photo that reflects your company culture or values, for example, this could be an image of your team, the workspace or the products you sell.

Regularly Post Updates

Arguably posting organic content regularly on social media can be more effective than paid ads. Your organic content may not be seen by as many people but it will give people an authentic view of your company. Potential clients, employees, and competitors will be expecting updates on how your company is doing, and why wouldn’t you want to shout about your wins?

You can use a wide variety of content depending on how you want to position your company. Just because LinkedIn is a B2B social media platform doesn’t mean that you have to keep it entirely professional 100% of the time. In terms of your business you’ll want to post results, client wins, new projects and finished projects. However, also make it personal. Post about a charity event your team participated in, a new team member or a social outing that your business went to.

LinkedIn is great for longer content. Unlike Twitter, where people are looking for a quick titbit of news or information, people on LinkedIn are more likely to spend time reading articles and long-form posts. You can also utilise hashtags to reach a larger audience with specific interests.

Post Job Opportunities

What better place to find new talent than people who are already engaged in progressing in their careers? LinkedIn is unique in that, unlike usual job boards, you already have a multitude of professionals who are ambitious and engaging in the business world. Posting jobs not only lets people know that you’re active on LinkedIn and growing your business but also increasing your brand awareness.

Comment on Trending Posts

A trending post on LinkedIn is a post that has picked up enough traction for LinkedIn to recommend it to you. They are chosen depending on the hashtags you interact with and have displayed on your company profile. The platform will often send you notifications asking if you want to respond to these posts. Sometimes the posts they recommend are incredibly useful and insightful. This means that responding with your own titbit of useful advice will get you more visibility in the LinkedIn world.

Consider LinkedIn Paid Ads

If you really want to get your message out to the people who aren’t in your direct LinkedIn community a great way of reaching out is to run paid ads. Advertising on LinkedIn is very similar to advertising on Facebook, however, you’re already reaching a niche audience and you can target even more specifically. You can choose your objective, for example website visits or engagement, and target people more specifically using characteristics including location, age, gender and industry. Some types of LinkedIn advertisements include:

• Sponsored posts – A promoted post from your company page such as an update or article.
• Sponsored InMail – An advertisement that comes through a LinkedIn member’s inbox under the guise of direct mail. These must be sent through a personal account.
• Text ads – Relatively small text-only ads that appear around the edges of a LinkedIn dashboard.
• Video ads – Appearing in your feed video ads are a great way of capturing the engagement of your chosen audience.