LinkedIn can be used to recruit staff but the company charges for this, for people to look for suppliers, to market a company and for sales. This is what it is used for mostly in the world.
Marketing A Business
- Optimise your personal profile to match the business
- Market the business better and more consistently
- All key people need LinkedIn profiles
- Not everything works for all businesses.
Optimise Your Personal Profile To Match The Business
- Use the professional headline wisely
- Use keyword phrases (this is a bit like the keywords needed for websites for Search Engine Optimisation – SEO) – it is possible to fit a sentence in if required
- The keyword phrases must match those of the business
- These also need to be reflected in the summary, experiences and interests
- But don’t overuse the main keyword phrases as search engines call this practice ‘stuffing’ to achieve higher rankings – search engines can detect this and this can result in lower rankings
- In the additional sections – reinforce your message – expertise – publications featured in/PR, projects worked on, groups you belong to, public speaking you have taken part in etc
- Link to websites, blogs and all online company ID (don’t except the standard my company test, select the other option and do your own wording).
Marketing The Individual To A Network And Thus Helping For Company Marketing
- Update regularly and use the share an update feature
- Join relevant LinkedIn industry groups such as photographers if you are involved with professional photography as a profession
- Tie twitter to LinkedIn
- Ask selected questions of key people not all your network
- Participate regularly – 15 minutes a day is fine
- All key employees need to have a profile to maximise the company’s marketing potential.
- Just link one-way to company websites not two-ways as this affects the SEO – so decide to link from the website to the individual’s profile or from the profile to the website. This needs to be the same for all employees
- Make sure you use the best keywords – use Wordtracker/Good Keywords websites to help. They analyse the use of keywords to optimize search engines
- Develop relationships with key business partners/media
- Use service recommendations listings – ask clients to list you and recommend you
- Find marketing partners
- Search LinkedIn answers
- Ask targeted questions and follow up people with the best answers
- Have open and continuous conversations, follow threads
- Set up LinkedIn groups that speak to your target audience
Sales Generation
- Mine for clients – searching techniques
- Generate leads by following conversations
- Use Inmail to contact people – or if the decision maker isn’t on LinkedIn/doesn’t accept introductions then perhaps contact people close to the decision maker.
Also With the help of LinkedIn Automation tools you can easily make connection with your customers as well as at the same time interact with like-minded people. With the endorse feature it’s so easy for LinkedIn users connection to endorse them , you’ll find that many of them will do it anyway.
Just make sure your profile is complete and you’ve listed the skills you want people to endorse you for. It will definitely give your profile a bit of a credibility boost.
