How can you use LinkedIn to Grow your Business?

When you hear the word Linkedin, what comes to mind is a blue square logo with 'in' written in white letters. It is not a source of entertainment but also a medium where job seekers and providers meet.

It is not limited to any particular country or region, or tribe but is a professional networking site open to people all over the world. There are various options with work, internship, and career guide. Not only that but also you can use LinkedIn to grow your business.

For example, any organization can use LinkedIn to promote its brand logo, image, video, and offline events. Oh yes! But LinkedIn is not just limited to the virtual world. You can have face-to-face conversations with current influencers or creators.

This social media marketing platform has 900 million active users in more than 200 countries. Then you can understand how far it runs. In this article, we are going to describe how is LinkedIn for business growth used, how to start working here, how it works, what features are there, and how it can be used in business production, processing, and promotion.
 

Our Discussion

• Introduction.

• What is LinkedIn?

• How Does LinkedIn Work?

• Understanding LinkedIn for Business.

• Key features of LinkedIn for businesses.

• Differences between LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

• How to Build a Strong LinkedIn Profile.

• Developing LinkedIn Strategy.

• Generating Leads with LinkedIn.

• Engaging with Your LinkedIn Audience.

• The Bottom Line.

 

What is LinkedIn?

Linkedin is a social media marketing site where the job posting and recruiting process occur. And that data is stored. It is a registered site, so the chances of fraud are less. It is a professional site that helps to develop a career. It is an organized site with various tools.

Such as job search tools, internship query tools, and tools to make your CV attractive. And it is not only applicable to organizations but also to personal branding.

LinkedIn officially launched on May 5, 2003, but before that, it was first invented in the living room of co-founder Reed Hoffman in 2002. In December 2016, Microsoft, the world's leading cloud provider, and LinkedIn merged to make business networking even more powerful.

Its main goal is to create economic opportunities globally and to present all workplaces to people productively and successfully.

The United States has the highest number of users on LinkedIn, with approximately 111,455,003, followed by India and Brazil.

 

How Does LinkedIn Work?

LinkedIn is not only used for professional purposes but also for personal purposes. But it must be related to business, job, or education. If you have your own business and for it, LinkedIn helps you to screen and hire employees or vendors. Also, it helps to generate leads and market your company, promote it, and grow your business.

And if you are a professional, LinkedIn helps you find jobs, get jobs, learn about companies, and build relationships with them.

LinkedIn collects data from their user profiles, as they have registered profiles. LinkedIn supplies employers, workers, policymakers, and influencers to various workforces.

And to clarify a bit, let's say you are a student and a part-time freelancer. If you create your profile according to what you want to work on, thousands of related options will appear for you. You can connect and communicate with people not only from your area but also from abroad.

If you are a blogger and write quality content, you will see how many people in this field are reaching your profile visits and posts. And for this, no separate payment is required but organically.

 

Understanding LinkedIn for Business

So, we have come to know that LinkedIn is not a video, image, or comedy site but rather a professional platform. That highlights personal requirements professionally. Many things happen here in the medium of talent acquisition. Let's see how this platform connects with Direct Business-

• Create a separate page for the business and manage all the work through it.
   

• Build your network. Whose interests aligned with yours? They know that you will be familiar with it. You have to work with the known and unknown.
   

• Always try to share valuable content. That increases engagement on the page.
   

• Be connected with other groups to make yourself known.
   

• You can also promote your business using the ads option.
  
   

Key Features of LinkedIn for Businesses

LinkedIn is so serious about business that it has added various features to deal with business promotion and all business matters easier. They include:

• Limit the audiences who can view connections.
   

• Divide users by using the showcase page.
   

• List searches.
   

• Able to message without connection.
   

• Schedule the time of the meeting or interview.
   

• Use the poll option.
   

• Real-time engagement targeting through lives.
   

• Track your viewers.
   

• Post about vacancies or sales or any current news related to business.
  
   

Differences between LinkedIn and other social media platforms

Whether you are an employer or an employee LinkedIn is the unique medium for your professional life. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were used for job-related work till 2021, but they did not get the same response as it is going to LinkedIn.

Because all other mediums deal with entertainment more than business, LinkedIn is a medium that only deals with business. It has 720 million active users, and they're using Linkedin for business growth.

It works with all the details of the business globally. Know why LinkedIn is different from other social media platforms-
 

1. Only have professional networking.

2. Deal with business-related needs.

3. Advance job search.

4. Easy to view corporate profiles.

5. Help to build and promote business.

6. Less spam. 

7. More networking.
   
    

How to Build a Strong LinkedIn Profile

The LinkedIn profile presents you to others, who you are, what you do, your interests, or what you want to be associated with. A profile landing page is one way of personal branding.

Before using LinkedIn to grow your business, the first thing anyone should do as a newcomer is to create an attractive and professional profile. Other things are-

• Add multiple sections to your profile.
   

• Select a clear resolution and suitable profile photo and background photo.
   

• Put your summary.
   

• Highlight relevant skills.
   

• Spotlight the services you want to offer.
   

• List your passion for learning.
   

• Attach your achievements or certificates, or testimonials.
   

• Comment on other posts.
   

• Follow relevant personalities or groups.
   

• Turn on the creator mode.
   

These are discussed in detail below:
 

Usage of professional profile picture and header image

A profile picture and header image help to stand out from the crowd of visitors and act as an online reputation management system. Always try to give a current photo with a smile on your face. Not everyone here knows you.

You have to deal with many people who are strangers.

If you pose seriously, it conveys an air of arrogance, which sets you apart from others. Here are some tips for professional profile and header images that will help LinkedIn grow your business:
 

• Select an up-to-date photo using no filter.

• Pick a high-resolution image.

• The photo should cover 60% of your frame.

• Use a solo photo rather than a group photo.

• Avoid selfies and destructive backgrounds.

• Try to look professional.
   

Writing an effective headline and summary

A resume title is a combination of a candidate's experience and skills. Which helps with the job search. Where skill, experience, testimonials, and interest bullet points are summarized. By which others get an idea about you. But be careful that the headline should be organized, with fewer lines, and interesting enough. No pictures or emojis can be used here.

Some tips that can be useful in writing headlines and summaries-

• Use adjectives.

• Sum up your experiences.

• Edit your headline while changing fields.

• Make it short.

• Add some easy and understandable keywords.

• Avoid phrases.
   

Creating a company page

LinkedIn pages help you present your brand to LinkedIn users, use it to increase brand awareness, promote products and services or highlight job opportunities, do B2B marketing, and target high-value accounts. Below are some steps to create a company page-

Step-1: Open the Linkedin homepage and hit the work icon (located in the upper right corner).

Step-2: Select Create a company page option and type.

Step-3: Add the identity of the page and details.

Step-4: Complete the verification task (if you receive a red error sign, follow the help instructions).

Step-5: Finish by clicking the Start building your page button.
 

 

Importance of keywords for search engine optimization

Keywords play a vital role in establishing a brand. It indicates the online brand presence. A powerful keyword helps increase visibility in search engines like Google. And it enhances the visits to that page or profile.

Apart from that, the keywords needed for SEO are-

1. Help to trace the target.

2. Make content visible to users.

3. Put the appropriate content with enough information.

4. Helps to get online traffic.

5. Grab more audience.
   
    

Developing LinkedIn Strategy

A LinkedIn marketing strategy is an idea that helps LinkedIn reach specific marketing goals. And LinkedIn for business growth. It can cover everything from engaging your brand's top talent to communicating with successful creators. Here are more-

• Set a goal.

• Use the page entirely.

• Acknowledge customers.

• Trace achievements.

• Focus guidance.

• Communicate with your mates.
   

Identifying target audience

Customers are the key source of running any business. If your business cannot satisfy the user, you will not get any results from your work. LinkedIn has 720 million users. But they are not all the right users for your work.

Find your users or who you are running the business for. See how you can find your target audience-

• Extract the audience by categories like skills, industry, and interest.
   

• Use the Audience Expansion option to get additional audiences apart from targeting ones.
   

• The demographic option helps to gain data.
   

• Regularly perform A/B testing.
   

• Focus on your post views and comments.
   

Setting goals and objectives for your LinkedIn marketing efforts

If any business has defined objectives and goals, it can easily lead to business success. They know what to do and when to do it. But if you don't work with any objective or goal, your business networking will not succeed.

Below are some goals and objectives for your Linkedin marketing efforts.

Goals-

• Identify other marketing sites.

• Try to work with different tools.

• Respond to the LinkedIn community.

• Develop your Institution's site.

• Try to reach a larger audience.

Objectives-

• Create brand awareness.

• Enhance website visits.

• Control engagement.

• Focus on views.

• Grow lead generation.

• Make it easy to access.

• Work with B2B marketing.
   

Understanding the different types of content that can be shared on LinkedIn

Linkedin is the mixer of all the articles, blog posts, content writing, and other conductors. If you want to make articles or blog posts, you should write about 1500-2000 words with enough resources. Not only that, there's other content like-

• Catchy text-only post (no image, video, or pdf).

• Newsletters.

• Question polls.

• Native Linkedin videos.

• Carousel posts.

• Live events.

• e-Books.

• Third-party content.

• Research.
   

Importance of consistency in posting and engagement

Consistency in any work is what people love to do and watch with interest. The same is true for LinkedIn. If you don't post or respond regularly, customers will lose interest. Consistency is needed. Because-

• Enhance brand awareness and visibility.

• Increase the chance of a higher SEO ranking.

• Keep keeping to date.

• Retain customer interest.

• Make opportunities to team up with other brands.

• Raise the conversational side.

• Easy to solve the problems of customers.

• Get an idea about the best time to post.
  
   

Generating Leads with LinkedIn

Lead generation is a form of activities and strategies that help attract your target users. That is a kind of customer satisfaction issue. Below are some details on how to generate leads through LinkedIn-

1. Make a visible LinkedIn presence.

2. Establish a stable business page.

3. Work with relevant topics and keep updating these.

4. Active in other groups.

5. Use paid tools for better reach.

6. Maintain consistency.

7. Optimize your own profile.
    

Overview of lead generation on LinkedIn

Lead generation is a matter of customer satisfaction and attraction. Business companies adopt many different strategies and ways to gain the trust and satisfaction of their target audience. For this, the business determines the ad, technique, and cost.

Lead generation is essential - for audience and topic targeting, ad promotion, increased content reach, and an in-depth review of the topic to attract the audience to the middle of the page in the showcase.
 

Using LinkedIn groups to reach your target audience

LinkedIn is not all about you. If you only have your profile or own group, it's hard to reach the target audience. It's not always about personal branding. First, you need to increase your contacts. Business networking is possible through interaction. That can easily do through other groups. For example-

• Join some large and engaging groups.

• Ask anything through the discussion subject line.

• Active on the posts.

• Be with at least three groups.

• Try group features.

• The group enhances the 19% reach rate.
   

Best practices for using LinkedIn sponsored content and advertisements

Through sponsored content and advertisements, LinkedIn can build deeper relationships with users and increase reach. All that can be done are

• Use videos or images for the campaign.

• Put headlines and notes.

• Use high-resolution visual content.

• Add triggering caption.

• Ignore hyper-targeting.

• Monitor the total feedback.
   

Utilizing LinkedIn InMail and Sales Navigator

InMail is a feature of LinkedIn that enables you to send personalized messages to specific contacts. You can use InMail to sell your products or services and build relationships with potential clients. LinkedIn InMail is an effective way to reach potential customers. 

Sales Navigator is a valuable tool that can help you improve your targeting and increase your efficiency when using InMail.

Combining these two resources, you can increase your chances of reaching your target audience and closing more sales.

 

Engaging with Your LinkedIn Audience

Customer satisfaction affects LinkedIn as much as anything else. So the smart thing is to create a good relationship with the audience from the beginning. Keep the audience engaged in your business. Add a 2-3 line eye-catching caption at the start of a post, or attract attention with any image.

Or give light hints about your business through short videos. Also, the audience can engage in any way or for any reason.
 

Importance of building relationships with your followers

Building a good relationship with users is the perfect way to create attraction and interest in your business. because-

• They will promote your brand without any payment.
   

• Feedback will be given through which you will know what is lacking in your business.
   

• You can understand your mistakes by criticizing users.
   

• If users satisfy with your service, they will come to your brand even if they get the same thing from someone else. Because you have earned trust.
   

Strategies for engaging with other users on LinkedIn

Don't focus on your target audience only. Pay attention to other users. And you can do it through your daily activities. That helps to engage your target audience and other audiences as well. The things are-

• Add a nice caption to your post that is visible to everyone.
   

• Arrange some question-and-answer segments so that everyone can participate.
   

• Dealing with polls.
   

• Have some live sessions.
   

• Conduct various workshops, which helps to increase familiarity.
   

Best practices for responding to comments and messages

Interaction can create a better relationship between the sender and the creator. But since LinkedIn is a social media marketing platform. So, there is no way of face-to-face interaction here. You have to interact well through messages and comments.

It can be a thank you index with a sentence, business name, or keyword, try to adopt CTA, and deal with creating a different own brand voice.

 

The Bottom Line

What we found out about LinkedIn is - how, why, and in what medium we can use LinkedIn for business. And some actual discussion was done. What helps you to grow and advance your business on this platform? Apart from this, if you learn something more, it's time to put them into practice. Then feel free to let us know.