Using LinkedIn For Your Business

Why use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is an extremely powerful platform when it comes to business. There are over 500,000,000 members of LinkedIn worldwide and more importantly, out of this number, 4/5 members drive business decisions through the website.

Having a strong personal profile and company profile is critical for success when marketing yourself on social media. This guide is here to help you on a journey to success through LinkedIn.

Setting up your profile

First things first, you will need to set up your own profile. This is key for communicating with others and there is a lot more to it than it seems.

Choosing the right picture:

To maintain a professional image via LinkedIn you need to have a strong profile image of yourself. Profile pictures attract 21 more times more users, and a professional headshot attracts 14 times more views.

  • Professional headshot where your face takes up half the frame
  • Clear background
  • Only 1 person should be in the image
  • High resolution photo
  • You should have open body language and look happy

Building your description

An important factor to consider whilst creating a strong, impressionable description of yourself/business on LinkedIn is that in your bio, only the 2 sentences are shown. After this there is a see more button.

This means that you need to make these 2 sentences count and hook your reader in, capturing their attention.

An easy to follow formula whilst creating your description:

  • Start with why
  • Share what you offer
  • Say how to get in touch

Recommendations

To create authenticity and build trust with others on LinkedIn, you should use social proof to your advantage.

LinkedIn gives you the option to include testimonials on your profile, by getting a client or co-worker you will position yourself much more trustworthy.

Video

Video is a much more effective method of communication to your audience than text. For this reason, we recommend you use video on your profile.

This can be as simple as an animated video describing you, or promoting your products to coincide with your branding.

Video can be pinned to your profile or linked to other content such as your experienced section to back up work that you have undertook in the past.

Using video will position yourself as established, organised and more advanced than the average LinkedIn member/company, guaranteeing you stand out on the platform.

Creating content for your page

What are your objectives?

Before putting out any content on LinkedIn you need to have your objectives in place. The 3 main objectives that you generally have on LinkedIn are:

  • Brand Awareness
  • Thought Leadership
  • Lead Generation

Healthy mix of all 3 objectives: Organise your content portfolio to ensure healthy balance

Identify your target audience

The content that you put out is dependant on your audience, you need to identify why they are there, what they are trying to find out, what they like and where they are.

Measurements

Having analytics software in place is important and essential whilst tracking the progress and success of your LinkedIn page.

Copywriting Tips

  • Use your opening line to your advantage, hook readers in.
  • You have 1300 characters for posts
  • Use hashtags
  • Break up your paragraphs

Different forms of content

  • Articles
  • Polls
  • Stories

Stories

The stories features are a great way to stand out from others on the platform. The way LinkedIn stories work are that you upload photos/videos which last for 20 seconds and are available to view for 24 hours.

Ideas for stories:

  • Behind the scenes
  • Client transformations
  • Asking questions

Who to connect with

To maximise your engagement on LinkedIn you should choose carefully who you would like to connect with. To start off choose by connecting with:

  • Work colleagues
  • Friends
  • Clients
  • People who have reacted to your profile

This will give you a basis of people who should engage on your posts and provide support on your page. From there, expand your network with:

  • LinkedIn Group members
  • Industry leaders
  • Prospects

This should give you a strong network to work with who will react and support your posts.

Talk To Us

LinkedIn is an extremely useful platform for anyone in the corporate landscape. At Stone Create we specialise in both LinkedIn marketing and advertising. For more information on our social media marketing packages, get in touch with us today.

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