Whether you like it or not, the face of your company is becoming more and more accessible to the public due to social media platforms. Your online profiles are becoming just as important as your company’s website, especially the professional social media platform, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a business development tool to reach out to people in order to increase your connections. It has been a longstanding practice but utilizing LinkedIn to brand your company and draw distinct viewers to your company as oppose to the individual is growing quickly as a best practice. Here are 5 helpful tips to develop a LinkedIn strategy that works:
SEO Benefits
LinkedIn, as part of your overall social media strategy, can help tremendously when trying to increase your search engine optimization. Just like a website, make sure that you have a clear summary describing your company’s background and services and don’t forget to use keywords. It also helps if you have links on your website to drive traffic to your LinkedIn page, which brings me to the next key tip.
Drive Traffic to Your LinkedIn Page
Create plugins on your website to drive potential leads to your LinkedIn page and connect. Don’t be afraid to add plugins not just in one place, add them to your blog as well.
People Care Who You’re Connected To
When taking a look at your LinkedIn page, keep in mind the entire site. Your contacts are just as important as the content on your page – not just to you but everyone else as well. Every aspect of your LinkedIn profile needs to be in sync with your overall message. Granted, we are all connected with friends who may not be in the same industry, but make sure you’re not connected with someone whose occupation…has a bad reputation or rather, isn’t condoned by the general public. LinkedIn’s social media platform is about networking and knowing people who know people – people care about who you’re connected to.
Banner Image Matters
The banner image at the top of your page is another extension of your company’s brand and mission. Make a banner image that stands out and fully projects who your company is. Recently, the “about” section has moved to the bottom of the page. Now that it may be out of sight, still don’t forget to keep that information up-to-date – it’s still important to keeping your SEO high by using relevant keywords.
Product or Services Recommendations
Gaining recommendations from previous or current clients is a great way to add credibility to your company. LinkedIn has made it easy by creating a Products Recommendation side bar and it is visible to anyone who looks at your profile. People look for the opinion of others constantly so seeing recommendations from people to use your products or services, it extremely helpful to gain new clients.
- Keep in mind SEO benefits that having a LinkedIn page could offer
- Drive traffic to your LinkedIn page by creating links on your website, blog and other online platforms
- Keep your connections clean and consistent with your company’s overall purpose
- Images will always grab people’s attention – create a banner image that stands out while keeping your brand image in mind
- Accumulate recommendations to enhance your credibility
About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.