8 LinkedIn for Business Strategies to Transform Your Marketing Efforts

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, has become one of the most valuable B2B marketing tools today. Have you harnessed LinkedIn for business? Do you know how to elevate your LinkedIn status? Follow along and learn how to use LinkedIn to maximize your marketing.

Create and Maintain a Personal Profile AND Company Page: Rock your personal profile and keep it up to date. Ensure you have completed all relevant sections of your profile.

At a minimum, you need:

• A headline that serves as your value proposition (remember to include valuable keywords)
• A professional-looking (and current!) profile photo
• Contact information
• Detailed experience-including work, education and volunteer experience
  A personalized URL

In addition to an outstanding personal profile, create a stand-out LinkedIn Company Page. As with your personal profile, ensure you have completed all the relevant sections and make it compelling, engaging and useful.

Tip: Remember many sections on LinkedIn include character limits, so craft messages wisely.

Personal Profiles
Headline: 120 Characters
Summary: 2,000 Characters
Recommendation 3,000 Characters
Company Pages
Company Name: 100 Characters
Company Update: 700 Characters
Company About Us: 2,000 Characters

Make Connections: Now you have both a personal profile and a business profile on LinkedIn, work to gain and establish strong connections on the platform. Cultivate connections for both your personal profile and on your business profile-and share them between the two where appropriate.

New client? Connect. New neighbor who works in your industry? Connect. New colleague? Connect? Networks become more powerful with more people involved, use the LinkedIn network to your advantage by constantly looking to expand it.

Tip: Wondering who to connect with? This Inc. article offers great advice on who you should (and who you should not) make a connection.

Join Groups: Essential to growing your business with LinkedIn is to find and join relevant LinkedIn groups. Groups allow you to network, gain insight and add value to others in-or interested in-your industry or area of expertise. Group membership lets you share content, ask and find answers, post and view open jobs, create new contacts and establish yourself as an expert in your field.

What’s important here is to see how you might add value-and think differently. For example, I belong to a table manners group, and we talk about all things etiquette. I often bring up issues around mobile phone use at the table, and the other group members understand that I bring a different-yet valuable-talent and insights to the table. See how that works?

Tip: You are allowed to join up to 50 groups through your personal LinkedIn profile. Company Pages, however, can add up to three groups so be selective with those three!

Write Messages to Connections: Reach out to connections to catch up, share news, ask questions, recommend a colleague or highlight your business or service. When sending business development messages for business via LinkedIn, ensure they are friendly, concise, compelling and have a clear call to action.

Tips:

• Messaging isn’t available via Company Pages, thus the importance of maintaining personal profiles
• Note the character limit on a message of 2,000 characters
• Check out Social Media Examiner’s article on engaging prospects via LinkedIn

Send InMail to Non-Connections: LinkedIn offers InMail as a way to communicate directly to another, unconnected LinkedIn member. Like when messaging connections, ensure your message is concise, targeted and compelling. And, always include a clear call to action.

Tips:

• You must upgrade to a Premium account to use InMail
• LinkedIn offers Tips for Writing InMails to Increase Your Response Rates
• InMail messages must contain a subject line, may have up to 200 characters in the subject line and up to 2,000 characters in the body (but, we don’t recommend sending long messages that may not be read because they’re too wordy!)

Publish and Share Articles: LinkedIn has moved far beyond just a place to share your resume. With the addition of LinkedIn Pulse, it is now a publishing platform to share self-published content. Consider writing content specifically for LinkedIn on important news, information and happenings in your industry and publish it through LinkedIn Pulse. Also, on both your business profile and personal profile, share all your original, professional blog posts and other news articles that aren’t published directly on the LinkedIn platform. Finally, don’t forget to cross promote content-original or just industry relevant-between your LinkedIn business profile and your personal profile. Encourage employees and colleagues to do the same to amplify your message.

Tip: Check out this HuffPo article on How to Use LinkedIn Pulse for Your Business.

Use ProFinder: As we wrote in a social media strategy blog post for a LinkedIn business content last year, finding trusted lead sources ranks as imperative for growing and sustaining a business. LinkedIn ProFinder serves as an excellent lead source. ProFinder is a professional services marketplace that helps connect businesses with freelance or independent professionals. Personally speaking, we’ve answered many interesting and legitimate proposals from ProFinder. Many of those proposals have turned into great clients!

Tip: Check out LinkedIn’s keys to a successful ProFinder profile.

Consider Ads: Still not getting noticed as you’d like? LinkedIn ads are another avenue to boost your business. Check out all the options available on the LinkedIn business marketing site. You can boost content, send sponsored InMail or create text ads. What are you waiting for?

Tip: Text ads include a picture and studies show that photos of people improve effectiveness.

Ready to explore and engage in all the benefits of LinkedIn for your business? We know you’ll find value when you execute on these tips. And, if you don’t have time, we do! Contact us; we can help boost your business’ LinkedIn presence, capture mindshare and build prospects.