PACK & SEND can help you deliver amazing products worldwide. LinkedIn https://linkedin.com can help you deliver amazing business results online. Let’s explore 8 ways that LinkedIn can work for your business.
- A completed Company Page can increase your online presence
You may already have a business Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/ and a Google Brand Account https://www.google.com/business but have you spent any time creating or updating a LinkedIn Company Page https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/setup/new/? Let’s look at the immediate benefits. You will get a link to your website on a very reputable website that ranks well in Google and is likely to appear in Google Search Results. Your staff will be able to have your Company Logo appear on their LinkedIn Profile. ,Your clients, prospects and even future staff can check you out online and Follow your Company Page so that they can keep up to date with what you are doing.  It also allows you to create content that can appear for your keywords in Google Search Results!
- Your senior leaders can use their network to promote the business
 If there is going to be a ‘whole of business’ approach to using LinkedIn for your business success, you need to make sure that your senior leaders are on board and have well completed individual LinkedIn Profiles. It will not be possible to encourage employees, stakeholders or clients to engage and support you if your own leaders LinkedIn Profiles are less than average. As a minimum, they need to be Following the Company Page, linking to the Company website and providing a good quality description about what the business does in their ‘Experience’ section.
Ideally, these suggestions will also be incorporated into the business Social Media Policy that is discussed when every employee joins the business and on an annual basis with all employees if the policy is updated. Once this is done and the senior leaders share an Update or an Article through their network, this can spread the business message far and wide as it can prompt viewers to look at the LinkedIn Profile of the person who created it and then see the details of your business.
- Your staff can help provide employee marketing opportunities
When your business shares an Update via the Company Page, you can send out a direct message to your employees via email and invite them to Like, Comment and Share the Company Page Update and this will extend the reach of the Update. Naturally, it is a personal choice for them to do this, and it is definitely best if the Update is informative for the people in their network (not just a sales message). I definitely would not recommend this technique for every Update, but if your business has just released some amazing research findings or won a special award, this is great news that your employees will hopefully enjoy sharing.
- LinkedIn is an amazing research tool
In the past, finding out the contact details of the decision making person in a particular business usually involved a direct referral from someone who already knew that person. But with LinkedIn, you can find out who that person could be and contact them directly yourself! However, don’t fall into the trap of connecting with them and then spamming them – you will not win the business and LinkedIn will notice this behaviour and will probably delete your account! Go through the usual sales process and introduce yourself directly (phone calls can be very effective) and build the relationship over time by providing value.
- LinkedIn is an amazing content marketing and publishing toolÂ
Individuals can write Articles on LinkedIn and these can be search engine optimised to appear in Google search results for your business keywords. You can include calls to action and generate leads. If a published Article provides amazing value, it has the potential to go viral, internationally. You can also update it even after publication. You can include images, videos and other media on LinkedIn Profiles and in Articles. You can invite your employees to include your business introductory video on their LinkedIn Profiles. There are many ways to repurpose your business created content through LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn offers paid services to support your business goals
Larger businesses create Career Pages and use the LinkedIn Recruiter service to help find candidates through LinkedIn. Others pay for Sponsored Updates. Some individuals choose to pay for the Premium offering to increase their options when using LinkedIn. All of these choices require a careful cost-benefit analysis. If there is a benefit, then it is well worth considering. That said, I always like to maximise all of the free options first so that the paid options, once implemented, can be maximised even further.Â
- LinkedIn keeps you in touch with past associates and keeps your business front of mind
Former clients, staff, suppliers, stakeholders etc may not want to subscribe to your business email marketing, but they may be willing to remain connected to your business representatives or Follow your Company Page. This helps them remember your value offering and if they have fond memories of your business relationship, it will keep your business in the front of their mind in the future. It is also important to have a social media policy that addresses how and when a staff member will update their LinkedIn Profile after leaving the business and whether or not they will need to share the details of any of the Connections they have made in the role.
- LinkedIn provides measurable ways for you to assess its value
There are various metrics you can collect to measure the value you are obtaining by using LinkedIn. You can see how your number of Company Page Followers increases, how much interaction you receive from your Updates and how many referrals you receive to your website (via your Google Analytics). You can also see how often your Posts are viewed and you can start with baseline statistics on how many views each employee has per 90 days, how many Connections they have and how many Likes, Comments and Shares they receive when they send out Updates or Articles. A lot of this data needs to be collected manually as it is ‘real-time’ only – but it enables you to really identify what works for your business.
In Summary
Every business has a unique value proposition and a unique target audience and selecting the right tools to use on LinkedIn for your business goals is essential. For example, a local tradesperson would have a very different LinkedIn strategy to an international management consulting firm. Some techniques are more useful than others in certain situations. It may be that a series of quality articles published four times a year may provide much more value to a business than a weekly Update in a personal newsfeed of someone with only a few Connections.
Selecting the best options can save your business a lot of time and energy and standardising your LinkedIn processes will make it much quicker and easier in the future.
If you would like to see more free tips and techniques online, please visit  http://sueellson.com.