Leveraging LinkedIn: How to Get the Most for Your Business

by Jason Unger, Founder

Insights / Social Media / Leveraging LinkedIn: How to Get the Most for Your Business

If you’re in the B2B world, serving and selling products to other businesses, it’s likely that the best social network for your business is LinkedIn.

As we’ve discussed before, if you’re looking for building your brand with consumers, invest in Facebook. If you’re working to provide great customer service to a large audience, invest in Twitter. But if you’re looking to build your authority and display your expertise on topics related to your industry, invest in LinkedIn.

We’re big believers in the impact LinkedIn can have on your business. Digital Ink has generated a fair amount of business from our LinkedIn presence — (PS: follow our company page here) and know that it can do the same for yours. Let’s take a look at some of the LinkedIn tips we’ve used to find success, and share some from other business leaders posted across the web.

Keep Your Company Page Updated With Real Content

First off, if you haven’t created a company page yet, go do it. Then come back and read the rest of this.

Consider your LinkedIn company page to be another outlet to market the content you create and want to share; whether it’s the latest articles from your blog, links to stories in industry publications or research about your market, use it to inform your customers and help them make smarter decisions.

Remember, it’s about delivering content with value, so if you’re only sharing promotional news about your company, your audience will quickly tune out.

Add Your Services and Products

If you’re giving potential customers a reason to check out your LinkedIn page, be sure that you’ve added all of your Services and Products so they can see exactly what you offer. There’s a great targeting option, as well, where you create multiple versions of your Services and Products depending on who’s viewing it.

For example, if you offer different services to customers in different geographic markets, you can automatically display the appropriate offer to the potential customer if they’ve identified their geographic location. Pretty cool stuff.

After you’ve added your services and products, request recommendations from your current customers to add social validation. It’s a great way to prove to potential customers that yes, in fact, your products and services are worth considering.

Participate in Groups and Discussions

I don’t think I’ve ever received as many requests to connect on my personal LinkedIn profile from people I didn’t actually know until I weighed in on a trending discussion on the site. If you see that there’s an Influencer post or group discussion where you can add value (or chime in with a witty joke), take advantage of it. But again – remember – it’s about adding value.

Finding the right groups can generate some great potential customers and business partners; if you’ve got expertise to share and the ability to help, then get involved in group discussions. Answer some questions from people less experienced than you. Share a story about your business that can help someone else.

3 More Tips for Leveraging LinkedIn

There’s a lot to know about LinkedIn, so here’s some additional advice from around the web.

• Target Your Status Updates. “Targeted status updates can be an effective way for business owners to tailor the content in their status updates to specific types of company followers. This helps ensure the right people are reading the most relevant messages from you at the right time,” says Jason Fell in Entrepreneur.com.
• Advertise in Key Groups. Koyal Wholesale, which provides wedding and event supplies, is active in groups where its customers are, and through ads targeted at these networks, we are able to promote specific product lines and reach clients who had never heard about us before,” according to Elizabeth Harper, writing in the Sprout Social blog.
• Always Add Value First. This is key to everything. “To be successful on LinkedIn and in business overall you have to first think about WIIFT (What’s In It For Them) rather then WIIFU (What’s In It For You),” says Eric Holtzclaw in Inc.com.

Photo credit: DigitalTrends