Promoting your business on social media doesn't begin and end with placing a few ads on Facebook, Instagram or even LinkedIn. It requires creating a cohesive presence for your business that will help you attract the best employees, adds legitimacy for your prospects and raises awareness in the community about the services that you provide. LinkedIn's sphere of influence continues to expand, with more than 500 million users who are actively looking for products, services and networking opportunities. LinkedIn is a platform where many individuals stay active but are you optimizing your business presence?
Here are four ways that smart marketers are levering LinkedIn to grow their business.
1. Create and Expand Your Company Page
Creating a company page on LinkedIn allows your employees to link directly to the business, which can expand your circle of networking simply by tapping into the network of your staff members. When you first look into it, you may discover that someone has already created a company page for your business -- either a former employee or someone who does business with your organization. In this case, you can claim the listing page so you're able to ensure that the information there is kept up-to-date. Old information can be worse than no information at all, so be sure to schedule regular check-ins with your social media profiles. Check out these best practices that will help you kick-start your business page creation process. Remember: more information is better, but only add details that you're sure won't be quickly outdated.
Here's a few of the fields you absolutely must fill out:
- Add your company logo and a compelling cover image
- Description of your organization
- Your website's URL
- The size of your company
- Your industry, company type and year founded
- Fill in your location
Each of these components aids discoverability for your business. Just think: when's the last time you looked up a business and could only remember a portion of the company name, but knew that they were in Orlando, Florida?
2. Grow Your Audience Organically
There are several different ways that you can grow your LinkedIn audience such as advertising within the platform, posting notifications on your website and cross-populating with other social media platforms. However, did you know that you can invite the hundreds of individuals you've curated as personal LinkedIn contacts to connect with your business page? LinkedIn recently released some neat new functionality that will help you quickly and organically grow your reach. Trying to get people to connect with -- or even notice -- your company page can be a real challenge, which makes this new functionality even more exciting. Any admins for the company page are able to follow these steps to grow your audience:
- Navigate to your company's LinkedIn page
- On the right-hand side of the screen, you'll see an option marked "Grow your page audience"
- In that section, click "Invite more connections"
You'll then have access to a section of the site that allows you to select individuals and directly invite them to connect with your business page -- and ostensibly with all the great information that you are posting on a regular basis.
3. Become an Active Publisher
LinkedIn is a serious publishing platform, offering writers and marketers a range of tools that will help share their story with the world. Plus, there's a broad swath of interested parties and you can effectively share your insight and thought leadership with an engaged audience without a great deal of effort. Putting together video, audio and written options for your content will help you reach the broadest possible audience. It's important that you stay on topic and share details about projects that are interesting, a new technology that your audience needs to know about and any legislation that could impact them in the future. When you're generous with the information that you share, you'll find that people are much more willing to engage with your organization.
4. Microtarget Your Advertising
LinkedIn advertising has come quite a long way since their 2016 acquisition by Microsoft, and now offers exceptional segmentation capabilities that any marketer would be delighted to use. One of the ways you can use LinkedIn to grow your business is by boosting some of the great posts you're already creating and sharing within the LinkedIn platform. You can send Sponsored InMail to potential prospects, create Text Ads that will show at the top of the frame for your target audience and Dynamic Ads that display in your audience's news feed along with an image in a way that feels more "advertorial" than straight advertising. If you're looking for traditional web-based advertising, LinkedIn doesn't disappoint and you can purchase programmatic advertising. All of these options can be tracked through LinkedIn's Campaign Manager for your convenience.
LinkedIn may be overlooked by some businesses, but as a professional services organization, you simply cannot overlook this critical step for marketing your business. From providing prospects with an easy way to reach out to key staff members to recruiting the best new professionals, LinkedIn provides a wealth of opportunities for a relatively modest investment of your time.
Want to learn more about how to market your MSP? Contact us at 855-964-2608 or fill out our quick online form to request your free 60-minute website review and consultation.
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