LinkedIn success is undeniable. In past years, LinkedIn was a digital file device, a place where you can follow your colleagues, business contacts, and others in your network. However, years after its debut, it has grown into a much larger platform. LinkedIn, acquired by Microsoft in 2016, is now a marketplace for professional services, a place to find new job seekers and post or showcase your best content.
With LinkedIn having more than 562 million users in over 200 countries and regions worldwide, it is now a potential market for companies to market their products. In addition, companies are not limited by demographics and can actually connect with others in the same field but in different places.
Essential LinkedIn Sucess Tips for Growing Your Business
LinkedIn for business is full of benefits and offers more possibilities to attract new customers. Moreover, it provides better positioning on the internet to improve your connection with your existing customers. There are many advantages for your business. So, what should be done for a basic LinkedIn profile? The steps to be taken for LinkedIn success are listed below.
Create a Company Page on LinkedIn
The first step in LinkedIn companies is to create a company page. A page that showcases your brand’s personality allows you to gain more visibility and reputation for your brand.
Take advantage of all the resources a company page on LinkedIn has to offer!
• Company logo
Not mandatory, but very important. In a comparison between LinkedIn for Business and LinkedIn for Professionals, the logo on your Company Page on LinkedIn is the equivalent of a photo in a professional profile. Some statistics make a page with a logo get 6 times more visits than a page without a logo.
• Cover image
Continuing the comparison between “LinkedIn for Business” and “LinkedIn for Professionals”, the cover image on the Company Page is similar to the background image on a professional profile. In addition, like the background image, the cover image is LinkedIn’s way to impress your visitors from the very first moment. It is an excellent resource. Most importantly, choose an image or photo that represents your business. Ensure that the dominant colors are compatible with the corporate colors of your company.
• Company description
Equivalent to the core of a professional LinkedIn profile. Be very careful with what you write in the description section. You have 2,000 characters to reveal your business’s value proposition; What makes it different from others is why customers should trust your company and hire your services or buy your products. Take the opportunity to include your keywords. You have to be direct, persuasive, and convincing. Otherwise, you run the risk of your visitors leaving quickly and not continuing to read. You can add some symbols (though not abuse them) to give the text more life and more visual appeal.
• Other fields in the “About Us” section
There are other fields besides the “company description” that we have seen before in the “About Us” section. These areas are:
1. Specialties. LinkedIn allows you to add a maximum of 20 specializations. Take the opportunity to include your keywords in them.
2. The URL of your company’s website.
3. The size depends on the number of employees.
4. Sector: The drop-down area in which you must select one of the options shown (as before).
5. The year of creation.
6. Company type: Drop-down field where you have to select one of the options.
7. Include your business location (or multiple locations).
Most Relevant and Engaging Content for Your Audience
After you create your LinkedIn Company Page, the next step in LinkedIn for Business is to post regularly on that page. Post valuable content for your audience:
• You can publish articles about your company, products, and services.
• Do not forget to include content that will contribute to highlighting your company and your employees from time to time. For example, videos or photos of life in the company; your employees at special times (celebrations, birthdays…); texts showing your organization’s values, etc. You can share content.
• Likewise, you can publish content (news, statistics…) relevant to your industry from time to time.
• It’s about making your updates interesting to your audience.
It’s important to be consistent in your posts and do this regularly. The frequency will depend on several factors (industry you operate in, your content strategy, target audience, etc.). However, posting lightly but regularly (for example, two or three updates per week) is preferable to having periods of high release followed by no release at all.
Get Followers and Promote for Your LinkedIn Page
If you have a company page on LinkedIn and are posting on this page, that’s great, keep it up! The next step is to start promoting your page and gaining followers.
On LinkedIn for Business, unlike LinkedIn for Professionals, you have followers, not contacts. You can’t send an invitation so they can follow you: it’s made by those who want to follow your Page, you can’t invite anyone. That’s why it’s so important to promote your page. So how?
• Posting valuable content that makes your page attractive and useful.
• Encourage your own employees to follow your company page and include them in their professional profile (in the “Experience” section). Remember that your employees can also be your best brand ambassadors on LinkedIn.
• Post the URL of your Page to your business website, other social networks it’s on, brochures, catalogs, presentations, etc. add.
• Reinforce your company page and build a community around it.
The next step for companies on LinkedIn is to feature your page and build a community around it. For this:
1. Make your page attractive and useful.
2. Post valuable content.
3. Do not forget about the multimedia content: photos, images, videos, and infographics.
4. Humanize your company.
5. Encourage interactions and conversations with your followers.
6. Respond to comments and questions.
7. Encourage interpretation and dialogue.
You can also click here to boost your brand’s organic followers. For companies, LinkedIn is an open gateway to the growth and success of your business.
The Complete Guide: Steps to Create a LinkedIn Success Profile
There are certain rules and steps to create a complete and perfect LinkedIn profile. These are as follows.
Optimize Your Company Page on LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, your company page serves as the meeting place for your customers. Your page, likewise, should contain some basic information about your company.
1. Add a Very High-Quality Photo
When it comes to uploading your company profile picture (usually the logo), you’ll need to make sure it’s 300 (width) x 300 (height) pixels to make sure it fits snugly in the frame. Your profile photo will appear not only on your LinkedIn company page but also on your employees’ personal pages.
2. Upload an Up-to-Date, Well-Designed Cover Photo
Now that your LinkedIn company profile photo is ready to be uploaded, you can now move on to the task of adding a beautifully designed cover photo. LinkedIn recommends that your cover image by 1536 (width) x 768 (height) pixels. In addition, they require a minimum of 1192 (width) x 220 (height) pixels. Your cover photo should be related in some way to your company or industry. Moreover, think of it as an extension of your profile picture.
Consider using Canva’s online image editor to help you design your LinkedIn cover photo. They have a LinkedIn cover photo template you can use, making the design experience fun and easy for users of any experience level, and of course, you can also use a tool like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or Affinity Designer.
3. Optimize Your Own Overview
On the “Overview” page, visitors can find information about the company in the “About Us” and “Latest News” sections. When you start filling out the “About Us” section on your company page, think about how to use the best keywords to optimize your page description. The keywords you use in your description can help increase your chances of being discovered by people looking for a business in your industry. But do not copy and paste information from websites as that is plagiarism. Instead, take the time to create a unique welcome and target users who are likely to come to your LinkedIn Page.
4. Increase Your Company’s Followers
Now that you have your page set up, you should focus on increasing your follower count. There are several ways to do this:
a. Ask your employees to add the page to their profile: Not only will they follow the page (which will promote your latest event) and share your content, but they will also add the page to their profiles under the “experience” section. This is the perfect opportunity for you because it makes your page more visible through people involved and connected to your business.
b. Post content regularly: Your company’s LinkedIn page will act as a “roundabout” for all your company updates, so you should post regularly. Moreover, your content will appear on your company page and in your followers’ updates. Take advantage of this option and post at least once a day. Some key examples of themes and ideas are news, announcements, product iterations, and other milestones your company has reached.
c. Add a LinkedIn plugin to your website: You can create a “Follow Company” button for your website to drive traffic to your company’s LinkedIn page to increase follower count.
5. Track Your Growth with LinkedIn Analytics
You can track and track growth using an information package from your company’s Analytics dashboard. To access it, click the “Me” tab and click on your company page under the “Manage” heading.
The analytics they offer fall into three main categories: visitors, updates, and followers.
Demographics show how many people visit the site and in what environment (desktop and mobile) in a given period.
Updating your analytics will show information about how your posts and updates are performing on your company page. Subsequently, you can use this information to gauge what type of content and topics your audience responds most positively to.
Finally, LinkedIn Analytics helps you track the growth of your followers. Which posts got the most followers? Has any campaign increased followers counted? If you map the number of followers you gain and lose, you can know how well your audience is responding to your content and the frequency of your posts.
By posting updates and optimizing your company page, you can start building a more active digital presence through LinkedIn success. But don’t stop there. Now you must attack and share your message and content with the world.
Leverage LinkedIn Success Groups and Communities
LinkedIn Groups are private spaces on LinkedIn where users can gather to socialize about a topic of professional interest. This topic of interest can be broad (like a writing topic) or very specific (like a documentation topic and technical writing management).
Having a great LinkedIn success profile and 500+ connections in your network isn’t always enough. That is to say, if you really want to impress people, build your reputation, and build relationships that help advance your professional life, you need to take advantage of LinkedIn Groups. Here are some of the following ways you can use groups:
- Sharing your own knowledge, experience, or resources
- Asking relevant questions or seeking advice
- Better understand your target customer or customer
- Reading discussions to see things from other professionals’ points of view
- Finding potential advisors or partners
- Promote your work
Every group has guidelines that every member must follow. For example, many groups prohibit members from excessively promoting themselves, their companies, products, services, or businesses. Consequently, those who don’t follow group rules risks being removed from the group by a group admin.
How do LinkedIn Groups work?
LinkedIn groups are exclusive to the members in them. You won’t be able to see any of the member conversations until you join one. That is to say, non-members can only see the group name, the number of members, a summary of the group, and group rules. To join a group, you must choose the color blue. Click the request button to join.
A group admin will then review your request and either accept or decline your request depending on how they think you might join the group (or not). However, response rates to pending requests can take from a few minutes to several days or weeks depending on if moderators are active. In addition, group popularity can make approval longer as moderators have to check applicants and also monitor the group’s activities.
Once accepted into a group, you can introduce yourself or start a new conversation in this group from your space on LinkedIn.com or the plus sign icon at the bottom of your screen in the mobile app with options to attach an image, video, or document file. You can also read existing conversations and add your entries. Do remember to follow the instructions to avoid being removed from the LinkedIn success group. In addition, any conversation you decide to start is limited to 1300 characters, including spaces. You can also tag up to 20 group members in a conversation.
Benefits of Joining LinkedIn Success Groups
Used correctly, LinkedIn groups can be a powerful tool for almost anything from furthering your education to finding a new job. Here are a few advantages of joining and participating in LinkedIn Groups.
Networking is probably the biggest and most obvious benefit of joining LinkedIn Groups. Firstly, by just joining one group, you can automatically connect with individuals with interests and experiences you may never find in your professional field. Secondly, if you take the time to use the group to network properly, someone in the group can become your next boss, client, client, business partner, mentor, coach, or another type of colleague.
LinkedIn Groups are great educational resources. And best of all, they’re completely free. Whether you’re learning something new by reading one of the talks or connecting with a group member outside the group, you can easily expand your knowledge by leveraging the wealth of knowledge and expertise shared by group members.
There are over two million groups on LinkedIn covering a wide variety of topics. LinkedIn lets you join 100 of them, so there’s more than enough room for you to cover.
You can set up your own group and try to build a digital community. Follow these steps to be successful:
Give the group a focus
It’s better to think about the quality and concentrate your focus. You should be specific rather than being too obvious.
Determine whether it will be a closed or open group
Both types of groups have their advantages. Closed groups require you (or a moderator) to approve applicants before entering the group. This is useful for continuing the discussion among those in the industry, but it can also be private and take a lot of your time. Open groups allow anyone to join; this can be great for mass exposure. But it can also get out of control very quickly.
Choose the best moderators
You need someone who can consistently post engaging questions and try to get answers from everyone in the group. You’ll have a lot of trust in your moderators, so choose wisely – your group’s success depends on it.
Be active
After a while, people will leave groups that are not very active. So, make sure active discussion and content are circulating in your group each week.
Building Your Network and Connections on LinkedIn
LinkedIn Success Groups are a great way to network and build relationships with potential customers and even partners. Share knowledge and interact with others in the industry. You are likely to discover that you have the solution to the needs of others through your product or service. If you need any guide to start, Socialays can help you with your social media needs.
