LinkedIn is a great resource for your business in terms of networking, making connections and promoting yourself and your brand.
It’s a resource that you need to make the most of going beyond just a standard social media platform. LinkedIn provide a wide range of free resources ensuring that you’re provided with expert advice on how to best utilise it.
Here are some tips that we recommend to make the most of LinkedIn.
How to set up a LinkedIn Business Page
The primary reason you’re probably thinking about setting up a LinkedIn page is to advertise your business.
Step 1
First make sure you have a personal profile on LinkedIn. You have to create a business page through your own personal account and cannot do one without the other. You will need to have had a LinkedIn personal profile for at least 7 days before you can set up a business page. It makes sense for LinkedIn to have these steps in place; that way you’re showing potential customers/networkers a face to go with your brand!
Step 2
Go to the LinkedIn’s section page of LinkedIn’s marketing solutions website and simply click create page. It’s important to select an appropriate category the categories range from small business to education institute.
Step 3
Fill in company details, ensure that you include a website link adding a logo and a tagline so visitors can see what you’re all about. It’s also best to include more details about the products and or services you offer. You can do this by writing a short paragraph within the description section.
There are many other options you can also add to your page including location, hashtags and a cover photo. You can create a cover photo using free tools such as Canva ensuring additional usernames to other social platforms and main contact details are visible. Make sure to use good quality photos!
We recommend taking the time to do all these steps. By fully setting up your LinkedIn business page, you will show authority, build trust and make those all-important contact details seen by visitors.
Building your LinkedIn profile – Skills, Endorsements and Recommendations
List your skills, gain endorsements and get recommendations where possible. What does that mean, you may be thinking? Read on.
List your Skills
People are less likely to want to network with you If they don’t know what you have to offer. LinkedIn allows you to list your skills that can be seen by visitors to your profile. For example, you may be good at social media so make sure to list it. You can have over 40 skills on your profile so now is not the time to be shy!
And if you’re really not sure, you can take a skills quiz to help you finetune!
Skill Endorsements
Endorsing skills is basically somebody else agreeing with you that you’re good at a certain thing… Crazy, right! And the best thing is, you can ask people to endorse you. Whether they want to or not is a different question, but you are allowed to at least ask. Most people will be happy to support you by endorsing your skills. With LinkedIn being a professional platform, most want to help others do well in business and some people will have even seen your skills first-hand. You can find this section on your own personal profile.
LinkedIn Recommendations
Getting recommendations is as simple as asking. Ask fellow peers and clients to recommend you. In common terms this is a bit like a reference however, it doesn’t have to be from a past employer it can basically be anyone of your choice.
Doing this can help build a good reputation for you and your business increasing page views. As we said above with the endorsements, people you ask may have worked with you in the past. They will be even more likely to want to recommend you from their own personal experiences so, don’t be shy!
All of this can seem a tad daunting if you have never used LinkedIn before. However, don’t panic as LinkedIn have a learning site helpfully called LinkedIn Learning. This is where they have dedicated courses to showing you things like this. If you’d like to speak to a human on this one, give us a call on 01427 808870!
Building your LinkedIn Business Page
Once you have created a personal profile, followed our page set up advice and then waited 7 days, you can now create a business page on LinkedIn. Thankfully, LinkedIn has a great tool for first-timers which appears on the page itself:
Make sure to have followed this checklist to fully optimise your business page. Think about business pages you have come across in the past:
- What did you like about them?
- Did they use eye catching imagery?
- Was there information missing?
- Could you find what you wanted to know?
- Were you impressed with their page?
- Could you clearly see the brand, company name and logo?
Ask yourself these questions when creating your own business page to make sure it’s 100%!
How to create engaging content on LinkedIn
Now your profile and business profile are set up, it’s time to start creating content for your page followers. Here is a list of post ideas to get you started:
- Insight into ‘behind the scenes’ of your business
- What the day-to-day looks like
- Engagement posts such as polls. For example, if you own a bakery you may want to create a poll asking what favour cupcake people would like to see next.
- The people behind the brand – people love seeing other people!
- Your values and ethics
- Games, fun facts, funny memes – don’t be too business-orientated
- Sharing other business/user posts
- Videos
- Infographics (if they apply to your industry)
You can keep track of what posts are doing well by using tools such as LinkedIn page analytics. This will show you everything from impressions, clicks, click through rate, video views and more!
TOP TIP:
When posting, try to be consistent. Sparsely posted content can fall through the gaps and gives a bad impression. Don’t let this recommended frequency stress you out though. You don’t need to create really fancy content all the time.
Small business owners don’t have that time and LinkedIn users know that all too well. A quick 1-minute video update of you at work, or a photo of a recent job will do just fine.
Share your knowledge and expertise, along with your personality!
How to Network on LinkedIn
Networking is also one of the main reasons to have LinkedIn. You can make connections with other businesspeople and join groups to interact and gain more professional networking within your industry.
Joining a LinkedIn group can also create a forum-like space for your customers to connect. Start conversations to help get yourself and your business noticed!
TOP TIP:
Don’t be annoying in groups and forums. It’s a quick hack to getting kicked out! Start softly by participating and engaging in posts. Comment on other people’s posts, share your thoughts, like content and more. When you do begin to share, share credible content that brings value to the group members. The main reason for doing all this first is to not self-promote straight out the gate. Groups are rarely for direct sales, rather growing connections and learning.
We like these 5 hacks on getting the most out of LinkedIn groups
Using LinkedIn Tools
This enables you to achieve your sales goals by helping you boost them. It’s a tool built using LinkedIn’s data to help you easily access other LinkedIn members data such as sales insights. It allows you to search other companies and potential clients by using a variety of features like advanced lead, recommendations and company search.
The feature provides members with a way of to create and join events professionally such as webinars, online workshops and meetups. Being page admin allows you to setup an event and invite your connections. Once you have created an event you can change the details and attendees will be notified. Click on this section title to find a LinkedIn events onboarding guide.
Plugins allow you to incorporate your LinkedIn profile and business page to your website. Some of the plugins available through LinkedIn are:
- Company profile
- Member profile
- Follow
- Share
- Company insider
LinkedIn Small Business Centre
Through this tool you can grow your brand. The centre provides you with resources on how to establish brand presence, connect with your audience and marketing advice. You can also get discovered by potential customers through the service providers filter.
Learn more on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a really fun platform to experiment with your individual brands. As a small business, you can thrive on LinkedIn and build genuine, worthwhile connections. Remember, the main focus of LinkedIn is not to generate sales. The benefits come from creating networks and then reaping the rewards that come out of those links!
