How To Make LinkedIn Work For Your Business

LinkedIn may well be the overlooked Fifth Beatle of social media, but its importance is difficult to overstate. More than 25 million people in the UK have a profile, and LinkedIn drives more traffic to B2B websites than Twitter and Facebook combined. In a recent survey, 91 per cent of marketing executives described it as the top place to find quality content. There are very few cat memes or cocktail-bar selfies on this social network.

These are some of the key ways in which LinkedIn business activities may benefit your brand – and your career:

Blogging

LinkedIn has achieved the rare feat of obtaining a perfect score from domain authority adjudicator Moz. That means that any Pulse posts or infographics will perform extremely highly in search results. A keyword-optimised post should reach many eyeballs, with the time-honoured Like mechanism propelling it into other people’s timelines; hashtags also steer potential audiences in your direction. The SlideShare slideshow package is growing in popularity as a quick, convenient way to disseminate key points in a series of viewer-friendly infographics. Like any social network, it’s important to engage with contacts, liking status updates and commenting on their activities.

Recruitment

With so many LinkedIn business and personal profiles in existence, recruitment represents one of the platform’s strong suits. A job advert can be uploaded and taken down at any time, providing detailed mechanisms for identifying suitable applicants. Each advert is allocated a recommended daily budget, but be aware you’ll normally be charged 1.3 times this amount for every 24 hours an advert remains online. Applicants may also choose to submit basic CV summaries, providing minimal insight into their skills or expertise. Nonetheless, LinkedIn is arguably the best platform for recruiting new staff, and the whole process is entirely self-managed online without a recruitment consultant in sight.

Marketing

LinkedIn’s sponsored InMail service is effectively an internal DM system. One SaaS business reported a response rate that is 11 times better via InMail than with conventional email campaigns. It’s been claimed that 46 per cent of social media traffic to company websites comes from LinkedIn business pages, dwarfing comparable figures for Facebook. Visitor-to-lead conversions also outstrip other social networks; HubSpot research produced a figure of 2.74 per cent, compared to just 0.77 per cent on Facebook. Company blogs notwithstanding, LinkedIn should be the first place to share news, promote forthcoming events or simply indulge in a little self-promotion.

Content

Almost uniquely among social media platforms, LinkedIn posts without video content achieve better engagement than those incorporating movie clips. Content remains online permanently, unlike time-limited Snapchat/Instagram Stories. LinkedIn business pages frequently rank higher in search results than company websites, reflecting the importance of regularly updating pages with original content. LinkedIn even suggests possible status updates based on key events and dates, simplifying and streamlining the process of maintaining a timeline topical. It’s advisable for any employees in your business to create their own LinkedIn profiles, creating a web of connections and ensuring a few easy Likes for status updates or blog posts.

Information

Joining groups lets you impart and receive wisdom from other members, with high levels of engagement. In this respect, LinkedIn represents a genuine rival to Quora. Because almost everyone with a LinkedIn business account or personal profile is in gainful employment, there’s less risk of low-quality information being provided than there would be through more conventional social platforms. Offering advice or publishing thought leadership blogs helps establish you as an expert in chosen markets, whether you’re provoking debate or simply sharing wisdom.