If you could choose only one social media network to focus your business marketing efforts on, which network would you choose? Hands down, we would choose LinkedIn. While other networks such as the ever-popular Facebook and Twitter are chock full of great features, none of them come close to LinkedIn when it comes to making powerful connections with influencers and other business executives.

 

LinkedIn Users Are Professional

When you log on to sites like Facebook and Twitter, do you ever notice how scattered and casual the news feeds are? There’s everything from photos of what someone ate for breakfast to people posting drool-worthy vacation photos. If someone in your network DOES mention work, it’s usually a complaint or brag post that gets little to no attention. When you log on to LinkedIn however, you’ll notice that the conversations here are purely about professional development. Everyone puts their best foot forward on LinkedIn because they know it’s a network to talk business, whether for recruitment, networking, or marketing purposes.

Now that we’ve established why LinkedIn is important, let’s talk about the best practices for marketing your business on LinkedIn.

1. Fill out and optimize your profile.

Before you do anything on LinkedIn, focus on your profile. Think of LinkedIn as your online resume and business card. In fact, if you do a Google search for your full name, your LinkedIn profile is among the top search results that come up. As a result, you want to make sure all of your information here is as accurate and as detailed as possible. Be honest about your full name and work experience, and make sure you get a customized public profile URL to make your profile easy to find and share with others.

2. Optimize your profile to appear high in search rankings.

One of the key ways that people are discovered and connections are made is through LinkedIn search. It’s very similar to Google search, meaning you ideally need to optimize your profile with the best keywords and phrases relating to your expertise. There are five key parts of your profile that should be full of rich keywords for search: your headline, current work experience, past work experience, summary, and specialties. No matter where these sections appear on your profile, these are the parts that LinkedIn search places the most value in, so make sure these parts are properly optimized!

3. Join targeted LinkedIn groups.

The best and easiest way to build credibility and make new connections is to use LinkedIn Groups. There are over 1.5 million groups on LinkedIn, so no matter what your business interest or industry, it’s more than likely you’ll be able to find a group that caters to your needs. Finding groups to join is incredibly easy thanks to LinkedIn’s group search feature. Simply search for a key term relating to your industry or interest and filter your results until you find the ideal group for you. Join as many groups as you like, but keep in mind you can only join up to 50 groups on LinkedIn.

4. Participate in LinkedIn groups on a regular basis.

After you join the ideal groups, it’s time to start engaging with your new communities! However, before you start posting away, it’s important to pause and craft a well thought out plan. It’s generally not a good practice to simply drop into a group and start auto-posting or promoting your content out of the blue. Many of these groups are moderated heavily and you could get reported by the moderator for posting irrelevant content. Remember that the whole point of the group is to share meaningful and helpful content and start discussions relating to the topic at hand. Get started by putting your best foot forward and scanning the current group feed to see what people are talking about. If there are questions being asked that you have a brilliant, helpful answer for, comment away. Ask provocative questions to start new discussions. Respond to any comments or questions that group members direct to you. When it’s appropriate, find ways to slip links to your business in, but only do so when it fits the discussion at hand.

If it’s not already apparent, using LinkedIn to get the best possible business marketing results means regular dedication to your LinkedIn presence. It’s not enough to simply update your profile and let it sit for others to find you. The best approach is to use LinkedIn to be proactive and make daily connections with new people using LinkedIn search and LinkedIn groups. Doing this is not an easy task in addition to your regular work, which is why Vonazon is now offering targeted LinkedIn services for business customers. Don’t have time to engage in groups and be proactive on LinkedIn? Give us a call!