What Can LinkedIn Do For Your Business?

If you thought LinkedIn was noth­ing more than a way your staff can pro­mote them­selves to po­ten­tial em­ploy­ers then it is time you thought again.

LinkedIn is ac­tu­ally a valu­able mar­ket­ing, re­search and net­work­ing tool for your business.

It goes with­out say­ing that your own per­sonal LinkedIn pro­file has been dili­gently completed.

There are many com­pa­nies, how­ever, that have not set up their own LinkedIn page or whose page is not re­ally act­ing as an am­bas­sador for their brand or a re­cruiter of new busi­ness. Here is a guide to what LinkedIn could be do­ing for these businesses.

Since be­ing founded ten years ago LinkedIn has come a long way and it is def­i­nitely here to stay. It boasts over 100 mil­lion mem­bers and is eas­ily the top busi­ness so­cial net­work­ing site. It is a great place to be found on and your LinkedIn com­pany page will also be listed in Google’s search en­gines. It seems al­most churl­ish to ask what LinkedIn can do for your com­pany but here is the low down for those who are still not convinced.

Drive Rev­enue

Just for a mo­ment let’s leave that all-im­­por­­tant com­pany page to one side and think about how your busi­ness could be prof­it­ing in other ways from LinkedIn. Any sales rep worth their salt must be able to im­me­di­ately see the value that LinkedIn of­fers for find­ing qual­i­fied leads and for get­ting to know a bit about them be­fore mak­ing con­tact. LinkedIn is a sales tool with­out peer and could be help­ing to de­liver your fu­ture key clients or suppliers.

Pro­vide on­go­ing staff development

The in­dus­try groups on LinkedIn of­fer a great way for your staff to share ex­pe­ri­ences and learn from oth­ers and to stay up-to-date with their ar­eas of ex­per­tise. Larger com­pa­nies may even wish to set up their own groups to fa­cil­i­tate this.

Get your com­pany found

This is where the com­pany pro­file comes into its own – you can make LinkedIn a mar­ket­ing tool that raises aware­ness, con­verts cus­tomers and helps you to stay top of mind. Set­ting up a page could not be eas­ier – it will not take more than half an hour. De­scribe your com­pany us­ing key­words you think peo­ple may use to search with and pro­vide links to your web­site and use the feed wid­get to in­te­grate your Twit­ter and com­pany blog as this helps keep your page ac­tive and up-to-date.

Con­vert customers

You can not only get your­self found but you have every op­por­tu­nity to start con­vert­ing this in­ter­est too. The prod­ucts and ser­vices sec­tion of your com­pany pro­file gives you space to cre­ate in­di­vid­ual list­ings for each thing your busi­ness does. What’s more there is even space for a ban­ner ad at the top of each page. De­sign these care­fully with a strong call to ac­tion and you can drive a lot of traf­fic to your website.

These prod­uct pages can be fine-tuned over time and cus­tomised by the ad­di­tion of vari­ants that are de­signed to be served up to spe­cific demographics.

An­other strong tool for con­vert­ing cus­tomers is dis­play­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for your com­pany. You can re­cruit peo­ple to rec­om­mend you on your com­pany page in a sim­i­lar way that you do for rec­om­men­da­tions on your per­sonal page.

Stay top of mind

We would sug­gest that your com­pany can en­sure it stays top of mind through the use of sta­tus up­dates. These are use­ful in dri­ving en­gage­ment with those fol­low­ing your com­pany page and keep­ing your­self top of mind with those po­ten­tially in­ter­ested in your company.

The best way to at­tract fol­low­ers to your com­pany is to make it easy for them to do so.

LinkedIn pro­vides a line of code that makes it easy to add a fol­low but­ton to your web­site or blog. In­clud­ing a call to ac­tion – like ‘fol­low our com­pany on LinkedIn’ - in your email sign-off and on other com­mu­ni­ca­tions can help too.

Re­cruit staff

LinkedIn can add value to your company’s re­cruit­ment ef­forts too. As part of your com­pany pro­file there is a sec­tion where you can add in­for­ma­tion about va­can­cies and new po­si­tions. LinkedIn can also pro­vide a use­ful tool for re­search­ing can­di­dates for po­si­tions within your com­pany as well.

Get your com­pany LinkedIn 

LinkedIn pro­vides a num­ber of other tools to help you mon­i­tor and analyse vis­i­tors to your LinkedIn pages. There are also a num­ber of more ad­vanced op­tions - such as us­ing ad­ver­tis­ing on the net­work – that can help com­pa­nies to mar­ket them­selves fur­ther on the net­work. For starters though you should con­sider the ways in which LinkedIn can ben­e­fit your staff, your sales and your company’s presence.