During the social media boom, various networks evolved into business tools. Instagram that was designed to share photos, became a giant online marketplace. Telegram was a pure messenger but now hosts thousands and thousands of business channels. However, LinkedIn was conceived as a business environment initially. Although it doesn’t have enormous coverage, this social platform remains the most significant professional network.

According to official data, there are more than 660 million LinkedIn users in 200 countries. 30 million enterprises have their company pages. And it’s natural. People use the site to find work, hire employees, share professional knowledge, and promote businesses. This guide is about the last task. We will focus on the best marketing practices that any company can use on LinkedIn. The following tips should help to attract leads, improve awareness, and boost revenue.

Basics of LinkedIn for Business

Let’s begin with the primary information. LinkedIn is a website focused on professional networking. Users here can expand their networks by connecting to other users and companies. It’s also possible to share content and write direct messages. HR managers use LinkedIn regularly to find new workers.

But businesses also can do networking. By setting up a company page, you can foster new relationships, find employees and colleagues, study competitors, and so on. LinkedIn provides access to rich analytics and convenient marketing options. At the end of the day, it’s the best social media for B2B marketing, as well as general lead generation.

Company Pages

A company page is a core hub for any business presented on the site. Often, they work as HR landings to attract potential employees. Still, these pages improve brand awareness, share career options, deliver content about your products/services to clients, etc.

The very first step in any marketing approach on LinkedIn includes the launch of this page. Note that you will need a personal profile to create a business one. Here are some guidelines on launching your company page:

1. Add a company. Follow the link above and create your page. Choose a business type and industry, enter the name, URL, and add an external link.

1. Attach brand images. As for now, you will need a logo (just like an avatar for personal profiles) and a background image.

1. Describe the business. Try to be precise and convincing, write about your domains, and add specialties. Focus on the first 156 characters for a Google preview.

1. Finalize and publish. Review the profile and add the information you missed. Don’t forget about relevant hashtags. Then, go live.

1. Appoint admins. If you won’t manage the page yourself, add employees, and give them administration rights. Page admins will focus on profile growth.

Remember to update and optimize business profiles. To keep attention high, you should refresh branding elements like background pictures, check links to be sure that they work, analyze feedback, and, surely, post new content regularly. LinkedIn is about networking, so repost and comment on other pages to set business relationships. To check how a page looks like for visitors, feel free to use the Member View feature.

Marketing Strategies

It doesn’t matter whether you’re building software for insurance agency or selling pet food. Marketing practices on LinkedIn work similarly for all industries. First and foremost, set core goals. You can use the SMART system to reveal specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals. Connect them to the LinkedIn features to get a clearer picture.

Secondly, don’t forget the nature of this social media site. It focuses on network building, so look at other profiles, both personal and business ones. Check how other companies/specialists from your industry manage their pages. Based on these insights, you can start own strategy to reach the goals set earlier.

The Best Ways to Promote Your Business

Okay, it’s time to proceed to the secrets and hints mentioned in the headline. Hope, you already know how LinkedIn company profiles work, so let’s just look at top marketing approaches. Some of them may look familiar, but we’d suggest to check them once again. However, there aren’t too simple points like “publish relevant content” or “add videos”. Just three essential options.

1. Employee Engagement

LinkedIn enables fantastic opportunities for employee-business-customer cooperation. If a company member posts or shares content, it becomes more successful because people tend to trust other people more than entities. For example, a manager can write the article and then repost it to your business page, doubling the sharing power. As well, workers can like, share, and comment on existing updates.

As a part of this hint, here are other related suggestions:

• Customize connections to build a professional network.
• Encourage employees to become fans of your business page.
• List career options and attract new talents to your firm.
• Mention employees and colleagues in updates using @.
• Use LinkedIn Endorsements to prove employee skills.

2. Professional Lead Generation

Leads are vital for any business. Through LinkedIn, you can attract a lot of new clients, but you should know how to do it properly. In a nutshell, it takes just five steps to start a successful lead generation campaign:

1. Create a business summary that shows prospects that your team understands their problems and have working solutions.
2. Deliver content through feed by posting relevant updates that show your expertise. Don’t forget about the best time, i.e. Tuesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
3. Make personalized conversations that can ensure each potential client in a tailored approach. Ideally, you should write freely, but some templates can help, too.
4. Monitor notifications and spot special days such as birthdays, work anniversaries, and career promotions. These content types work well often.
5. Use scripts or links so that you will be able to move leads from LinkedIn to your in-house sales systems. Website links are useful, but look at InMail scripts, too.

Additionally, feel free to use side LinkedIn tools. For example, Sales Navigator helps a lot in analyzing leads and finding clients. It focuses on account-based marketing and facilitates the search of relevant prospects.

3. Groups and Showcases

If you’re looking for deeper and broader marketing than just content promotion, look at two directions. The first one relies on advanced networking through groups united by industries, domains, markets, etc. The second one lets you specify your business nature by using subdomains of existing pages. Check out these opportunities:

1. Groups. By connecting people from one industry or field, groups help to move beyond your traditional circle of colleagues, mates, and employers. Find groups or create new ones to attract more attention to your business, find professional, and exchange knowledge. Groups also can help personal profiles to become thought leaders.

1. Showcase Pages. These profiles are parts of company pages but more specific. They can promote particular brands, projects, departments, campaigns, products, and services. It’s a useful tool because prospects will connect to your business even if they aren’t fans of the main company page.

Tips from LinkedIn Itself

Finally, we want to cover some advice from the LinkedIn team. It’s evident that the company behind such a strong business network knows something about B2B or B2C marketing. Still, not all of the listed tips are always useful. Below, you can find five top-rated and ubiquitous recommendations:

• Analyze everything. Feel free to use in-built tools like LinkedIn Page Analytics to uncover valuable insights. Informed decisions always lead to better business growth.
• Enable SEO. Optimization is key. To improve search results, you should add keywords and relevant links in descriptions, as well as updates you publish.

• Launch ad campaigns. Advertising is an essential tool for any business. LinkedIn Campaign Manager can help in targeting, mailing, displaying ads, etc.
• Sponsor top content. On a par with ads, the platform supports native sponsored promotion that boosts well-performing content pieces. Use it wisely.
• Start with a personal page. Yes, business pages are crucial. But people one LinkedIn look at employees, so be sure that personal profiles of your workers look solid, too.

A Long Road to Perfect Marketing

LinkedIn is a unique platform because it focuses on business relationships, mostly. Hence, it’s a perfect social media to build your brand awareness and attract new leads. Through personal and company pages, you can promote businesses, employees, products, and industries. Of course, LinkedIn is highly useful for HR tasks. By following our tips, you can create a successful business page and boost your company revenue. Good luck!