How to Use LinkedIn for Business: A Simple Guide

We’re all familiar with LinkedIn and its role in the business and career landscape, but as a professional, you’re probably used to operating the platform from an individual standpoint. LinkedIn strategy for business is inherently different, as your company is looking outward and presenting itself to the public — whether it be industry partners and competitors, potential clients and employees, or anyone who wants to learn more about your mission, capabilities, and goals.

This guide will aim to teach you how to use Linkedin for business, how to build a solid business profile, operate through both organic and paid marketing challenges, and ultimately curate a well-rounded LinkedIn strategy for business that results in a persuasive presence on arguably the world’s most influential social media platform for professionals.

Why Businesses Need to Take Advantage of LinkedIn

With the sheer amount of relevance social media attributed in the mid-aughts, LinkedIn quickly rose to the top as the premier resource for businesses and career professionals to market themselves. Since that time, the percentage of US adults who use social media increased from 5% in 2005 to 79% in 2019. In the years since, LinkedIn has evolved to become a full-fledged interactive community where individuals and companies digitally coexist adjacent to their physical presence and can, in turn, build connections, gain education, and even showcase influence as they make personal or industry-wide advancements.

However, simply creating a LinkedIn profile for your business is not enough — you need to establish your company’s identity and maintain an active LinkedIn presence, thereby making it a sharpened tool in your digital marketing arsenal. Let’s take a look at the major benefits you will see when maintaining an intuitive business profile.

Thought Leadership – What Is Your Brand Known For?

The most clear message your LinkedIn needs to convey is your company’s full range of products, services, and capabilities. Setting yourself apart from competitors in your industry by including key differentiations, sharing case studies, and informing your community about relevant breakthroughs with educational materials can help define what you’re all about. This will help reinforce your expertise with the appropriate audiences.

LinkedIn is also a way for companies to relay important messages from top leadership to the general public in a more casual and accessible way. Showing that you’re willing to engage from the highest level can help catch the attention of your investors, competitors, collaborators, and even eligible employees in the field. This gives your company a compelling human element, which so many organizations lack.

All of this culminates in building trust and authority with your audience, and highlighting that you’re constantly involved in industry advancement through consistent updates helps your community realize that you’re constantly aiming to meet the expectations of the moment.

Promoting Culture to Bolster Recruitment

A second and equally crucial component is emphasizing the human element of your organization by featuring the diversity in your personnel and highlighting the different teams and career skills of your employees. This lets the public know you’re fair and equitable, value a wide range of trades, and truly appreciate your teams.

This focus on the culture you’re building is a great way to celebrate company achievements and improve workforce morale, which can act as a valuable recruitment tool that naturally attracts attention from anyone, from potential recruits to partners and other parties who may be interested in becoming involved with your company’s initiatives and goals.

How To Build a Solid LinkedIn Business Profile

Let’s look at the basic steps to creating a robust LinkedIn business profile.

Create a Strong Company Page

While it may seem self-explanatory, you need to make sure that you fill in all the necessary details during the profile creation process so that users can identify your business. This includes adding a logo and tagline, which will be your most immediate identifiers for most people. You’ll also want to create a unique LinkedIn URL, add your website address, your industry categorization, and a few other organization details. Next, you will click “Create Page.”

Optimize Your Page for the Desired Audience

Your profile is only as strong as your messaging and relevance, so you’ll want to begin steadily implementing content that appeals to and intrigues your intended audience in order to attract the right engagement. Posting regularly helps to show your LinkedIn sphere of influence that you’re up-to-date on the latest topics and trends, and running an active profile proves that you want to interact with your community.

These can consist of everything from static posts to the new newsletter feature, assorted media, including webinars, and so much more. Incorporating a variety of applicable and relevant posts helps define your brand and makes it easier for people to find you through both search engines and LinkedIn itself.

A few other ways to make your business profile more accessible are by maintaining relevance within the digital community. This can include everything from using SEO-style keywords in your business description to incorporating translations and adding up to three relevant hashtags to your profile. Having a branded cover photo helps complete the aesthetic of the page, and using a custom button to derive a specific call to action reinforces your end goal, and can take people to your website at the very least.

Organize Your Contacts and Community

One of the most crucial aspects of upholding a credible LinkedIn presence is by following the right contacts and categorizing yourself in the appropriate communities. One way to do this is by making sure that you post regularly, and not just social media-style content — professional industry information is always king. Showing you have authority or an opinion on a subject draws attention from both users and the algorithm itself.

The most important aspect, however, is that you display an authentic voice for your brand. You want to translate your values as a company coherently, so blending a mix of industry wins and company culture can give onlookers a more well-rounded view of what your company is all about. This is why video content featuring high-ranking employees giving updates or breaking down concepts resonates so well on the modern version of the platform.

What To Avoid on a LinkedIn Business Profile

Perhaps the biggest factor to consider when orchestrating your LinkedIn presence is regular posting. Having constant activity on your page shows both the site and your audience that you’re ready and willing to be engaged. However, this doesn’t mean you should be posting about any and everything — many companies want to appear trendy or in-the-know when hot topics arise, but that doesn’t mean it will be applicable on a place like LinkedIn. One of the biggest keys of thought leadership is being able to relay crucial information to your audience in a way that’s relevant to the way they interact with your business. While casual content is welcome, it’s the professional posting that users are there for.

LinkedIn’s Organic Capabilities

The organic reach of LinkedIn should not be understated, and oftentimes, unintentional authenticity has the widest appeal. While consistent posting is warranted, people still yearn for variety and educational content. Some great strategies you can apply to stand out from the pack include featuring updates in your newsletter, highlighting partnerships and case studies, or calling on influencers to emphasize your brand. Anything that provides your audience with information gain or achieves notoriety on a subject reinforces your influence in a space like LinkedIn. This is also accomplished when your employees stay connected, engage with these posts, and even receive recognition for their contributions and efforts in a public setting so that others can celebrate joint advancements collectively.

Advantages of Paid Marketing on LinkedIn

“Really honing in on the right actionable audiences leads to valuable campaign insights. At Lamark, we’re able to see what companies and industries are engaging or converting that we might not be actively targeting.” – Tara Rimetz

At Lamark, paid marketing on LinkedIn is huge for our business-to-business clients, and that’s because we’re able to generate leads based on a series of hyper-focused key performance indicators or KPIs. These types of campaigns usually target other professionals within the industry space, and garner leads in order to make headway with relevant parties. All of this excels through a funnel, which gives you additional insights into the industries and professionals you’re aiming to work with over time. This is especially helpful during promotional periods, such as Black Friday, when companies aim to expand their reach but still want to market themselves in an orderly fashion.

At the end of the day, LinkedIn’s promotional value lies in translating your brand into an accessible digital medium for anyone to consult. Whether it’s highlighting products and services, hiring employees, or spreading industry knowledge and awareness, your company’s influence can make waves on LinkedIn’s professional platform. Operating an authentic and informative business profile can help your company make a stride in its corresponding industry, and it is a fantastic public display of what your organization is all about.

If your company is in need of assistance with organic or paid marketing on LinkedIn, Lamark Media is unlocking potential on this digital marketing platform and many others. Contact us today and see how we can explore the numerous capabilities that come with expanding your brand’s reach through social media, search, digital display, and so much more.