Setting Up LinkedIn to Promote Your Business

Introduction

Using Linkedin Business can help you establish credibility, build a valuable network, and gain inside knowledge from other proven specialists in your profession. Are you maxing its potential for your business?

As the world's top industry platform, LinkedIn boasts of having over 722 million subscribers. One-quarter of these users are based in the U.S., with 22% of this demographic using LinkedIn daily. The key reason people choose LinkedIn is for reenforcing business connections. The platform is an ideal method for keeping in contact with previous coworkers, obtaining new business recommendations, or searching for employment.

Steps to setting up LinkedIn

1. Create a personal LinkedIn account first, preferably using your business email address. Although you can later add additional administrators, this account will be the primary administrator for your business page.

2. After logging in with your personal account credentials, create a company page by clicking the Work icon located in the upper right of the page. Then scroll to the end of the popup menu and select Create a Company Page.

This will give you four options: small business, medium to large business, showcase page (to have sub-page divisions that will connect back to a main company page), and educational institution. Once you choose an option, begin giving your company information. As your business logo and the tagline will be the initial impression to your viewers, give considerable thought to your tagline creation. When finished, click on Create page, which will generate your Company page.

3. Optimize your Company Page to call attention to it and attract followers. Scroll down to the blue Edit Page button and click it. Complete all the additional information requested. This information will define to visitors what your company does and help you to rank in searches through your LinkedIn SEO. This extra step of completing a profile can result in 30% more traffic.

To target worldwide audiences, you can use the translations settings that allow up to 20 languages to display on your page. The fields for name, tagline, and description are included in this translation feature.

Place SEO keywords in the first paragraph of your business description. For the best indexing by Google, incorporate keywords that appear natural. Your description should be no longer than four paragraphs, detailing the vision and values of your brand, accompanied by a summary of your goods and services.

From a topic list, choose up to three relevant hashtags to follow. By clicking on Hashtags beneath the post editor on your page, you can view all posts with your chosen hashtags. Then you can interact directly from your Page for liking, commenting, or sharing these posts.

Attach a cover image (1128px x 191px) for special announcements, such as a new product release or other major news, while keeping it straightforward and brand-related.

Lastly, include a custom button. This button is next to the Follow button that your Page visitors will see. You can use the default label Visit Website, or customize it to Contact Us, Learn More, Register, or Sign Up. These labels can be changed whenever you want. So if you need to promote an event that requires one of the other customizations, you can change to it and switch back later. In addition, buttons with URL links can have a UTM so you can trace your lead origin.

4. Set up a following

Unless you publicize your Page, no one will know it exists. Here are some ways to get your Page noticed:

• • Share your Page by going to your main page and clicking on the Share Page icon located next to Edit. You can share your Company Page with your individual Page, then simply ask business colleagues, clients, and friends to follow you.

• • Add your Company Page URL to your website. Include the LinkedIn icon in your footer with your other social media icons and wherever else you place social media links.

• • Have staff add your Page link to their LinkedIn profiles. Now that you have a new Company Page, ask your team to update their LinkedIn job descriptions to include a link to your new Page. They can just edit that part of their profile, delete the business name and start reentering it in that field. The system will locate and display corresponding names. After they choose your company and save the update, their LinkedIn profile will be linked to your Company Page. Not only can their contacts now find and follow your Page, but your employees will now number among the employees on your Company Page. Displaying the number of employees can assist your business in developing credibility on LinkedIn.

• • Invite others to follow you. From your Page, send your connections invitations to follow you. However, to prevent spamming, LinkedIn has set limits on the number of invitations you can send to 100 per week.

5. Set your LinkedIn marketing plan into action. Building your Page is hardly any effort in contrast to the struggle to keep it running with audience-attracting content. So developing a social media strategy for LinkedIn is a must.

As you plan, you should consider your LinkedIn Page goals. What is the purpose of your Page? Will it be for recruiting, attracting more leads, or for placing content not suitable for your other social media channels? If you plan to advertise on LinkedIn, what is your budget? In what ways can you out-do the content your competitors are currently posting on LinkedIn?

Your content plan should decide how often and what topics you post, if you'll have content from outside sources, and whether you will reuse your current content elsewhere for LinkedIn. When you upload your posts, you can set them to publish automatically at a specific time in the future, and view your schedule in a weekly or monthly format. In this view, you can add or rearrange future posts, or confirm your posts align with the themes and targets you've planned for this timeframe.

Aside from your original content, don't neglect interaction with other users. Remember that LinkedIn is a social media platform, even if you use it for business.

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