Are you doing all you can to leverage LinkedIn’s engagement opportunities?
Recently, LinkedIn made some changes to provide even more ways to communicate with clients, employees, and industry peers through its Company Pages. Now companies can make status updates on their pages, enabling followers to receive news directly from them. Since keeping up with changes to all the social media networks can be a job in itself, I’ve studied tips for getting caught up with everything LinkedIn.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Optimize your Company Page for better engagement
There are over 2 million businesses with a company page on LinkedIn, so how do you make yours stand out?
First, you’ll want to make sure your company page is appealing and primed for engagement. LinkedIn allows you to use rich media content, such as YouTube videos, images, and hyperlinked banners, to make your page more engaging and visually interesting, so be sure to take advantage of these features.
Next, use your company overview page to tell potential customers what you can do for them – don’t forget to use keywords to attract your target market. The overview page is a great place to pull in your blog content by inserting your feed URL, too.
Another place to focus some attention is your products and services pages on your profile. Including images, lists of key features, links to promotions and even videos can help customers find the information they want about your offerings.
After sprucing up your page, be sure to enable the page for status updates and designate who can post updates. Now, you’re ready to begin updating.
2. Build your LinkedIn community
Just as on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll need to build your community of followers before you can really see any payoff from your efforts. Even if your business is very small, you can create a vibrant community of super-targeted followers to expand your reach on LinkedIn.
If you haven’t already, ask employees to follow your page and share status updates with their LinkedIn connections.
You can also follow the pages of vendors, customers, prospects and companies within your industry or geographic location–hopefully they will follow you back.
You can even send calls to action to follow your page to your personal connections, your database of customers, as well as post similar calls to action within relevant LinkedIn groups.
Like any other online community, you’ll have to work to grow your LinkedIn company page following, but the targeted connections made here can be well worth your efforts.
3. Provide helpful, industry-related updates
LinkedIn provides the perfect platform for building your credibility as a knowledge leader or industry expert. The professional aspect of LinkedIn’s community means its members are focused on improving their knowledge base and careers. Spark their interest by posting tips and insights that will help them succeed.
If your company helps businesses with their marketing, provide free content that will help your followers achieve their marketing goals. Likewise, if you sell software applications, teach your followers how to leverage these technologies to make their companies more efficient.
4. Engage with others through their updates
Don’t be shy–if you want to get on the radar of companies that are important to your business, engage with their status updates. Publicly thank them for information, make suggestions you think they’d appreciate, and by all means share their valuable content.
LinkedIn is a great place to talk shop about issues surrounding your industry, so jump into the conversation with potential vendors and partners. Maybe they will reciprocate your kindness and promote your business, too.
5. Measure and monitor for success
LinkedIn has a useful Analytics feature, which can help you see how well your efforts are paying off, but the best way to see how well you are engaging your target markets is to study your company profile’s landing page. Check here often to see who has communicated with or commented on any of your company’s updates.
Monitor the updates from the companies you follow by checking under “Companies” on your home page. Or, visit the “LinkedIn Companies” home page to see a concentrated stream of the same updates. Checking these places often will help you stay on top of the conversation in your industry and jump in with comments when appropriate.
Have you taken advantage of LinkedIn’s new company page features? If so, let us know how you like them by leaving a comment below.
Image courtesy of creative design agency Arrae
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Ever hear of Neal Schaffer? He was named by Forbes as a Top 30 Social Media Power Influencer. He is a prolific blogger at Windmill Networking, a popular social media conference speaker, and an award-winning author of two books: ”Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing” and “Windmill Networking: Maximizing LinkedIn.”
