Whether you’re running a B2B or B2C business, you will greatly benefit from having a solid presence on LinkedIn. Here are a few more reasons why you should consider setting up your profile on the platform today.
LinkedIn has over 546 million users
Over half of LinkedIn’s registered members log into the site every month, so it’s not surprising that it is the 30th most visited website in the world.
Over 130 million of users are from the United States, and a large majority have graduated college and graduate school.
Many business owners are also on LinkedIn which is why it’s a popular platform for businesses targeting other businesses (B2B). With these
numbers, and the type of people you come across on the platform, you can already see just how much you’re leaving on the table if you don’t include LinkedIn in your brand’s marketing activities.
Get found easily - consistent inbound leads
LinkedIn is the number one platform for lead generation according to many business owners. It’s also got a high domain authority, so LinkedIn profiles and pages rank high up on Google. If you search for your name or your brand on Google, you’ll often see your LinkedIn page at the top.
Many brands also find LinkedIn to be far more effective at generating new business than when they post or advertise on Facebook or Twitter, though of course, this will generally depend on the type of business you do.
Businesses often go on the platform to look for business help by posting jobs and hiring qualified people. Likewise, the more average LinkedIn user maintains a LinkedIn profile to look for jobs posted by businesses on the platform.
Often, however, people just want to maintain their professional relationships or expand their network to help ensure they remain relevant in their niche or industry.
Whether you’re a solopreneur trying to get leads on the platform, or a company with a team of employees looking to close multi-million dollar deals with businesses, you can surely use LinkedIn to your advantage.
You can establish yourself or your brand as a leader in your industry
You know the saying, tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are? Well, that saying holds a lot of power on LinkedIn. If people see you are friends with the big wigs in your industry, then that makes you one of them, right?
Well, not necessarily, but sometimes perception is everything. And just connecting with powerful and influential people in your niche can make the difference between success and failure when dealing with potential clients.
To establish yourself as a thought leader, you’re going to have to basically do a lot of hard work on the platform. You can repurpose or republish your most popular posts or articles on LinkedIn.
It not only gives you more mileage out of work you’ve already invested time in, but you can breathe new life into content that’s still relevant by the time you publish it on the platform.
One of the quickest ways to start gaining more followers is by following influential people. Do your best to be ‘social’ and share influencer’s posts.
Add thoughtful comments to their posts and discussions. Try to get in front of their faces and catch their attention.
If you provide enough value in your own posts, these influencers may even recommend, endorse and promote you to their followers as well!
If you’ve got a team of people working for you, get them on LinkedIn if they’re not on the platform yet. Then set up a company page, and connect your employees to the page.
When you publish valuable posts on your page, tag relevant influencers and also ask your employees to share it with their own network. This will help snowball the traffic to your profile and eventually to your website.
LinkedIn can help improve your site’s SEO
LinkedIn has a domain authority of 100 which means search engines love the content published on the site. While the links to your site may be “no follow” - meaning LinkedIn won’t be passing any of their perfect domain authority score over to your site - you can still greatly benefit from it.
The fact remains, however, that if you consistently publish high-quality content on LinkedIn, then you’re going probably going to get plenty of referral traffic from the platform.
Many SEO experts say that “no follow” links from popular platforms like LinkedIn give various off-site signals to search engines which in turn helps with your site’s rankings.
How To Utilize The Power Of LinkedIn Networking To Drive Traffic To Your Website
Now that you know why your business should have an active presence on LinkedIn, it’s time to show you how you can utilize this powerful platform to drive traffic back to your website.
Set up a great Linked profile
Setting up an excellent profile on LinkedIn is the first step to conquering the platform. Whether you are a small business owner, a team leader, blogger,
production manager, sales executive or even the CEO, you should make sure you complete your profile page before you do any activities on the platform.
People will be checking you out when you engage with them so make it worth their while! Since you want to drive traffic back to your website, you shouldn’t forget to include a link to your site.
Make your profile look professional. You can upload an excellent quality photo of yourself. Remember this is a social platform for professionals, so try to avoid uploading a photo that will make you appear immature and less than professional (try to avoid uploading wacky photos!).
Include all relevant experiences in your profile too. It’s important to only mention the relevant ones because you want your profile to support your headline.
Listing far too many experiences that do not relate to your purpose on LinkedIn will only weaken your profile, not strengthen it. It’s going to make you look unprofessional.
Create a company page for your business
If you own a business, you should create a company page on LinkedIn. Get a graphic designer to create a nice and attention-grabbing banner image.
You should also upload your company logo to help people recognize your brand and further develop trust with your audience.
You have a section dedicated to your company details – you can add your website link, your headquarters, the number of staff you have, your business specialties, and other company information.
You should also write a brief story about your company in the “About Us”
section. Make it easy for people to decide if they want to follow you or not –
you can make this section witty, but still remain professional at the same time.
Your company page lets you tell your company’s story, share opportunities, engage with your followers, and get the word out about your brand. Make sure you use it to your brand’s advantage!
Write engaging posts and share it
There’s a difference between writing to share valuable insights and writing just because you read somewhere you should be posting updates frequently.
Quality will always trump quantity, so you better make sure your brand gets a reputation for sharing highly valuable content on and off the platform.
Your posts should be in line with your brand’s goals. If you’re trying to establish yourself as a credible leader in your industry, then your posts should convey that level of authority to your readers.
Every time you post something, your followers will be hanging on to your every word, and they’ll be twice as likely to share it with their followers too!
If you post low-quality stuff that doesn’t really add any value to the community, then you’re not going to get shares, likes, or comments. You will most probably end up losing your followers.
If you want to avoid this from happening at all costs, then you need to plan out your content calendar. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it will pay off after some time.
Once you’ve built your reputation on the platform, it will be easy for you to publish something and encourage your followers to click on through to your site or do whatever your call to action is.