LinkedIn is a powerful tool for promoting one’s business, and even though it has an ad-placement option like any other social platform, paid advertising is not the only (and by far not the most effective) strategy for business promotion on LinkedIn. This is a site for professional interaction in all sorts of industries, and most regular LinkedIn users appreciate effort and expertise way more than they value your ad budget or creativity in creating flashy content. Not that there is anything wrong with attention-grabbing content, but LinkedIn is about building trust and relations — which is a slow but eventually more rewarding process when growing an audience for a company page. With this in mind, which business promotion practices work on LinkedIn? It usually goes down to ten major strategies below.
Create a detailed business page
This may sound obvious, but there are plenty of things people can forget about when they create a company page on LinkedIn. The goal is to make the most of what this platform offers, which includes crafting a detailed, keyword-optimized description for your business, including a company logo, and customizing the colors on your page. The way a LinkedIn company page looks in terms of design and color choice is as important as your official website design. A company is a brand, and this brand image should be consistent on every online channel you use.
LinkedIn offers another useful option many businesses forget about — customizing one’s page URL. Yes, you can create a short and memorable LinkedIn URL address with your company name (or a very close equivalent). This strategy is not just for aesthetic appeal — it actually strengthens your SEO and shows a LinkedIn business profile in Google search.
Target your prospects smartly
Any business is about targeting, so when you start promoting your company on LinkedIn, reach out to audiences that make the most sense. Who those people and businesses are going to be is up to you to decide based on your company specifics, of course. The good news here is that LinkedIn offers plenty of advanced search options, and as far as social platforms go, it has one of the best targeting tools that help business owners reach carefully-specified audiences.
Join groups and engage in discussions
Once you have figured out your targeted interaction circle on LinkedIn, join groups and discussion threads that work best for your business promotion. This is the best chance for you to shine and showcase your expertise and business value. Do not just be a silent wallflower — engage in discussions, give advice, and take your chance to make new connections. Obviously, you should never give advice for the sake of a comment — remember, your company image is at stake, so make sure you offer something of value.
Add new connections to your email marketing database
The main point of engaging in LinkedIn groups is to build a base of new connections. This is an opportunity to grow your marketing database, so make sure you add new leads you find in these groups into relevant email marketing lists. Keep in mind that email remains the most effective means of business promotion, and it still has the highest ROI compared to other marketing strategies.
There are two ways to add a new LinkedIn contact to your email database. The easiest and most straightforward one is to go to that prospect’s profile and see if they have made their email address public. If not, option number two is to use a LinkedIn email address finder — a simple browser plugin that extracts a person’s contact info in a click.
Nurture trust with new connections
As your LinkedIn connections list grows, it is important to interact with the established audience regularly. It does not mean that you should message everyone on your list without any good reason, quite on the contrary — you should find more unobtrusive ways to build trust. Since many active LinkedIn users post regularly, the easiest way to nourish relationships with your connections is to react to their posts, commenting and reposting whenever possible.
Invest in quality content
Another way to build trust and boost your professional reputation is to post quality content tailored to your audience’s needs. Once again, the actual ideas will largely depend on your business specifics and your target audience, but the golden rule is to offer something of value. LinkedIn is a very rewarding platform when content forms are concerned — anything from infographics to lengthy white papers works here as long as you cater to the target audience’s actual needs.
Ensure a consistent LinkedIn presence
This is a universal suggestion that works for any promotional activity, but on LinkedIn it makes more sense than on any other social platform. There is no precise math in timing the frequency of your posts, but the emphasis on value, quality, and consistency is an absolute must. Follow your industry updates and post about anything you find relevant and important to your audience, react to their posts, and engage in group discussions regularly — do not just go missing for days.
Engage your employees whenever possible
Since you are managing a company profile and not a personal brand, it makes sense to engage your team members in this, too. Make sure as many of your employees as possible have active profiles on LinkedIn and encourage them to participate in groups and discussions, too. This way, you get to leverage their connections as well — not to mention that many active staff members make your company image even more trustworthy.
Create your group whenever you’re ready
This is an optional step you should consider when your connections base is large enough and only if you feel that you could regularly contribute valuable content to the group you manage. Once again — LinkedIn is about the constant presence and quality content. If you feel that you or your team members are up to the task of managing your own company group, you should certainly create one.
Use paid ads but avoid hard-selling
We already mentioned that paid advertising is not the most effective strategy on LinkedIn, but it does not necessarily mean that you should avoid paid marketing altogether. In fact, paid campaigns can bring tangible results if you target them right. Here, the main trick is to avoid aggressive advertising because that will certainly not score you any points among professionals who are savvy in marketing and promotions themselves. But if you target your ads wisely and offer audiences something of value, a paid ad campaign can be very fruitful.
If you follow these steps consistently, your business audience and client base will keep growing steadily. And the best part about a steady growth process is that the more effort you invest at the early stages, the more awards you will reap by the time your followers base has reached enough numbers to ensure a more or less ‘self-sustained’ word-of-mouth promotion.
Bottom line, LinkedIn might come off as a bit inert compared to other social networks. But it’s this inertia exactly that results in quality, long-standing relationships with your prospects. Unlike more robust entertaining platforms, where audiences forget who you are in roughly ten seconds after seeing each post, LinkedIn offers a chance to play a long game.
