It’s interesting that although we live in an age of abundant technology, the average person knows little about leveraging its amazing power to make improvements in their lives.
For business owners and professionals, LinkedIn falls right into this category of tools that can be used in facilitating business, work, and also in building professional networks. It is an excellent resource for seasoned sharks who have mastered the art of using it to their advantage. For the inexperienced, however, navigating the platform feels like floating in the middle of the ocean on a simple raft with nothing but endless water in sight.
This article would highlight to you 5 Basic tips on how to leverage LinkedIn for your business. Interested? Read on!
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How to leverage LinkedIn for your business
Design your Profile
Your profile is your introduction, your appearance, and your first impression or presentation. It plays a significant role in deciding how your LinkedIn network is going to regard you — from who you are, as well as your effectiveness as a professional – out of your profile.
You need a professional photograph, one that represents you in the best possible light. On LinkedIn, you stand to gain by as much as 14 times in regards to the profile views and connections when you upload a decent and presentable headshot.
Aside from that, to leverage LinkedIn for your business, you have to update your profile headline. The profile headline allows you to describe your occupation as well as the network you are looking to build on the platform. You can provide a brief and concise summary of what it is that you offer. LinkedIn now offers a ‘Providing Services’ field, which can be used to highlight your corporate offerings. Always remember, that company accounts must link to your website.
Decide on what your strategy would be
Today’s technologies offer so many features which in itself can leave one overwhelmed if you don’t know how to ‘play’ with them. This is why it is always best to know how you intend to make a piece of technology or a platform work to your business’ advantage.
With its wide range of features, you need to plot how you are going to leverage LinkedIn for your business. Whatever the focus may be — whether to promote yourself as a professional, promote your business, or do both — you have to determine whether the overall end of your strategy would generate sales for your business.
Aside from sales, a different strategy might be to build your professional network on LinkedIn instead. Entrepreneurs greatly benefit from the opportunity of building a network for partnerships.
A third strategy might be to nurture what is termed as referral partnerships. This involves sharing clients with fellow professionals and businesses with which you share a similar target market but are differentiated in the goods and the services you provide, such that rather than competing, gain by complementing each other’s efforts.
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Increase engagement by using rich media
Most humans are visually stimulated. And the fact that images garner six-and-a-half times more engagement compared to text-only content gives credence to that. In your quest to enhance your online visibility on LinkedIn, you simply cannot ignore those statistics.
According to usability expert Jakob Nielsen, the average reader reads at most 20 to 28 per cent of words during an average visit to a web page. Considering that, you must determine the best blend of text and media to optimise engagement for your posts and ads on LinkedIn.
Data from LinkedIn Marketing Solutions establishes that live video generates 24 times more comments than the regular video does on LinkedIn. The same can be said for tweets and Facebook posts. The bottom line is this: visuals are memorable and effective because they help people process, understand, and retain information much quicker and better. Video is considered highly in LinkedIn’s algorithm, and 87% of LinkedIn marketers say video has proven an effective channel for them.
A point worth noting – when posting video content on LinkedIn – is that it is necessary to optimize your video for mobile viewing. To leverage LinkedIn for your business, it is equally important to keep the video short, as the attention span of humans is gradually beginning to bend towards that of a goldfish. Of the average length of 3 minutes 48 seconds for a Facebook video in 2017, only ten seconds of the video was watched on average.
It is, therefore, necessary that for videos to make the maximum impact and help leverage LinkedIn for your business, you keep the first few sentences of the video compelling and concise. Ensure that your videos link back to your previous videos and keep your content professional.
Post insightful content
To hold the attention of your network and leverage LinkedIn for your business, you need to put up insightful posts with remarkable consistency. You market yourself best by making it evident that you are abreast with developments and progress in your industry. That, in itself, is a hallmark of professionalism.
Of equal importance, is the kind of medium by which you decide to convey your message in your posts.
What medium of communicating best appeals to your connections? Is it by text? Images and videos? Or would carousels do the needed magic? You should be able to determine the topics and medium of communication resonates with your network best.
If you want to leverage LinkedIn for your business, your posts should not smack of desperation to push sales. Those will only act to put your connections off, eventually. Gauge the issues and topics in the industries that overlap with yours. Problems that pose the most significant challenges to your connections or concerns that are recent and urgent and tailor your posts to address them, contributing insight and solutions where you can and empathising where it is called for.
You’d be able to leverage LinkedIn for your business when your connections deem you as a regular source of added value. The feeling this will inspire in your connections is that if you can be relied upon to share industry resources and knowledge, then you can equally be relied on as a team player and business partner. It makes contacts and connections more likely to seek you out in the event that they require paid input.
Optimize your page for search
It is critical that your account is optimised for search if you intend to gain visibility among your target audience to leverage LinkedIn for your business. Seeing as there are whole digital marketing companies built around generating leads for potential clients on LinkedIn, it is crucial that as a professional, you endeavour to make your page visible in order to leverage LinkedIn for your business.
The ‘About’ tab overview, meant to give an indication in the briefest statement possible of who you are, must incorporate keywords and phrases that might occur first to potential customers or potential business partners when out searching for your line of products or services.
A list of keywords related to one’s business can be included in the personal LinkedIn URL, heading and text areas. They can equally be used in your URL as well to brand your name or business.
Links can also contribute a great deal to enhancing your search ranking. The most effective way to go about this that easily comes to mind is generating a link from your page to your website.
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