The Ultimate Guide on Using LinkedIn Profile To Promote Business

We have already seen how social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Pinterest, etc.) can be used to get maximum exposure and promote our business. Today, we will talk about using LinkedIn Profile To Promote Business. The reason I chose to write an article on LinkedIn is that it offers a wide opportunity to maximize your business with prospective users, client base, and potential partners. LinkedIn is a business-focused social networking site where people mention their education, careers, companies they have worked with, and positions they hold or have held in the past. They can interact with other people who align with their interests and career path. LinkedIn was launched back in 2003 and has been rapidly growing. Its user base is now more than 500 million users and has become an ultimate business-to-business marketing tool.

Also Read: How Can You use Quora to Promote Your Website

Using LinkedIn Profile To Promote Business

Now, the important thing is how we can use LinkedIn Profile to promote business. You may already have used other social channels and maybe were able to bring exposure to your business. But LinkedIn is not like other social platforms. It needs different strategies and techniques if you want to use it effectively. Here are different ways you can use LinkedIn to promote your business and target potential customers and make it one of the best lead generation social networks.

Also Read: Top 10 Best Social Media Templates For Your Social Channels

1) Setting Up Your LinkedIn Profile in the RIGHT way

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This is one of the basic things but is very crucial and should be set up in the right way. Filling out your LinkedIn profile is easy but there are a few things you should keep in mind. LinkedIn is a platform for professionals mainly so you should make your profile impressive and attractive by including your skills, industry, niche, achievements, and so on. Don’t leave your LinkedIn profile empty. Complete your profile fully.

Some useful tips here –

• Don’t write stories. Summarize yourself in a good and crisp way.
• Keep a compelling Headline that catches the eyes of people and entices them to explore your profile.
• Take advantage of the blog/website links on your LinkedIn profile. Instead of keeping it blank, link with your website or your other social media channels.
• Proofread your profile and make sure your profile is proofread and typo-free. (Use Grammarly Extension. it is FREE.
• Highlight your business on your profile.
• Use your keywords and phrases to make it easy for potential connections to find you.
• Be honest in your skills and experience. Don’t put wrong or misleading facts.
• Use your real picture on your profile rather than using any Gravatar.
• Get a personalized URL for your LinkedIn profile

2) Create a Company Page

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It is a good thing to have a Company page as well for better representation of your brand and products (does not matter if it is a small scale company or biz). You can mention certain important details like how long you’ve been working on this or how can interested ones contact you for more information.  Also, Linking the company page with your LinkedIn Profile is a strategic move. You can post updates about your products from your Page as well along with your profile. The point here is when it comes from your company page, it provides authority to your business and helps you build a brand name.

3)  Use Company Page Analytics to analyze your LinkedIn Marketing performance

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One of the important tasks of planning the road map for your business is finding how your efforts are resulting. Leverage LinkedIn’s Company Page analytics to evaluate engagement on your posts, the effectiveness of your updates, identify trends, understand your follower demographics, learn more about your page traffic, how your page has grown over time, and many more. This is the important tool provided by LinkedIn which cannot be ignored.

4) Build Your Connections

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Now, you are done with your profile and page and it is the right time to explore your network. Networking is one of the major things you need to succeed in any field. It is rightly said that your net worth is calculated by your network. So, here on LinkedIn, networking starts by building up your connections. Find people who share the same interest as yours, posses the same passion and career path. Follow them and build good relationships with them. But remember that quality is better than quantity. Plus, LinkedIn Profile does not show up the number of connections once they are above 500. It would just show as 500+ connections. So, there is no way of impressing other with the number of connections you have.

5) Join Relevant Groups

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Similarly, joining groups is also a part of your networking strategy. Search for groups that are related to your business lines. Not only join them but participate in discussions as well. The key point here is – Do not join groups to aggressively promote your business. Instead, help others and provide them with a solution to their problems, and wherever relates, pitch your business or solutions. You can also include a short signature with your company information on your discussions for slight promotion. In this way, you can attract new customers and clients or some good connections.

Instead of joining groups only, I would suggest that, if you feel, create a group of your own and let people join your group 🙂

6) Share Relevant Updates/Events/News

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LinkedIn is a professional-oriented platform. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, you cannot keep sharing your pictures or selfies all the time. You should share relevant updates, recent developments, events, or other news about your business and products. Your LinkedIn profile should look authoritative and not spammy. Also, post frequently and strategically. Do not just build your profile and leave it to be outdated. Get into the game and make a difference.

While posting, make note of below –

• Keep Descriptive caption
• Use Eye-catching/Tempting images
• Use Relevant Hashtags

7)  Ask for Recommendations

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In order to make your LinkedIn profile legit and powerful, ask for recommendations. Regularly ask your clients to give you recommendations and provide testimonials. These reviews are listed under your company information on your profile which showcase your excellency and quality of products or solution you’ve delivered and which adds to your value. It helps to build trust among your potential buyers and influence them. You can also ask for endorsements for your skills which will help to build up a good and compelling profile.

8) Add the Company Follow and LinkedIn Profile share buttons to your Blog

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You can promote your company page and LinkedIn Profile by having the Company Follow/Profile button to your website. This way, your visitors will find a new way to connect with you and eventually will turn into your LinkedIn audience and then permanent readers. Along with this, consider adding the LinkedIn Share button to your various blog posts or pages which will allow your visitors to share your piece of content to their LinkedIn profile and hence resulting in maximizing the exposure of your business.

9) Share your LinkedIn status updates on Twitter

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What’s better than the cross-promotion of your business? LinkedIn allows you to link your Twitter account with it. If you are ever posting an update to LinkedIn that you’d also like your Twitter followers to see, you can easily syndicate that update to Twitter by selecting the Public + Twitter option. Below is the snapshot for the same.

Also Read: Why Are You Losing Twitter Followers?

10) Usage of @mentions in your status updates

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I believe that you are already familiar with the @mention tag. We all use this feature a lot on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter posts or comments. Well, LinkedIn also allows you to tag or @mention other users and companies in status updates. Isn’t it good that we can use the same @mention feature to draw the attention of any users or companies by including this tag?  It means that the user/company will get a notification that you mentioned them and hence can be proved to be a good option to open doors of driving new leads or sales.

11) Use LinkedIn Polls

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Polling is a good option to get an idea of what people want and what are their demands or expectations. LinkedIn Polls lets you create polls and distribute them to your networks and/or specific people you want the information from. You can view and analyze real-time results to get a behind-the-scenes look at what people are thinking and expecting and then direct your business to fulfill their demands and ultimately promote your business.

12) Use sponsored Ads

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Sponsored ads are a good way to reach a highly engaged audience with native ads in a professional news feed across desktop and mobile. Advertising does cost money, but they are effective to provide a good return on investment (ROI). In terms of lead generation and driving sales, ads tend to work better than having a static profile with mere content.

13) Use Multi-Language Option

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LinkedIn offers a very handy feature i.e. Multi-Language option. If your business expands across different regions where English may not be the primary language, you can create custom descriptions or names of your company in different languages. This information will appear for each LinkedIn member based on the language settings they have chosen to use when using LinkedIn. Give this feature a shot and it will certainly help you to attract customers in other countries or regions as well. You can also choose your preferred language as below.

14) LinkedIn Pulse

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LinkedIn Pulse is an online news aggregation feed designed for LinkedIn members and is a great tool to reach a larger audience and build an online reputation. It is a platform (available on mobile devices as well; apps available on both Android & iOS) where members can share self-publish content to their audience. You should also note that most of the LinkedIn Homepage feed comes from Pulse. To add on, pulse users receive weekly email digests with new posts and content. There is so much to write on LinkedIn Pulse. Maybe we will come up with separate LinkedIn articles on that 🙂

15) Upgrading to Paid LinkedIn Membership

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If you are serious about your business and ready to go the extra mile to succeed in it, you can upgrade your account by paid LinkedIn membership. By doing so, you will get access to some additional features and benefits which will help you to take your business to the next level. If you are confused about going for an account upgrade, you can always opt for the trial version and test out the features and analyze its results. If you find them impressive and worth having, you can go for a LinkedIn Premium account.

The conclusion of Using LinkedIn Profile To Promote Business

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By now, you might have understood why and how we should use LinkedIn profiles to promote business. I would also like to emphasize that LinkedIn (like other social channels) will work for you only if you take it seriously and put in your efforts. And I hope this LinkedIn guide will help you to promote your business with LinkedIn. Just stay up to date with new LinkedIn news and new features. If you find something new which you can try to attract customers and provide exposure to your business, do not hesitate. Go & try that 🙂

That’s all in this article. Don’t forget to share it with your friends and colleagues. Is there anything else we should have included in our guide on using LinkedIn to promote business? Do let us know. If you have any feedback or queries, use the comment section below.