How Can I Use LinkedIn For My Small Business?

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking website. It currently has over 546 million users in over 200 countries. The site has 250 million active monthly users and 40% of its users check the platform every day. Although the platform has 3 million active job listings, this isn’t the only reason that users flock to the site. The average CEO has 930 connections, so this is clearly the place to be if you want to use LinkedIn for business.

How to use LinkedIn for Business Marketing

If your only business presence on LinkedIn is a personal profile, then you may be missing out on some key opportunities. When you create a business profile for your company, not only do you increase your visibility on the platform, but you also open up the door to hiring the best talent.

Before plunging into the world of LinkedIn for business, it’s important to set out some key LinkedIn campaign objectives. Just like any marketing platform, if you don’t set out your objectives before you get started, you are unlikely to gain traction in any meaningful way. Here are three ways you can use LinkedIn to boost your business.

Objective One: Hire The Best Talent

With three million active job listings, you can assume that there are plenty of job seekers on the platform too. If you want to grow your business by hiring the best talent, then posting a job advert on the platform could be all you need. After all, 40 million students and recent university graduates are on LinkedIn.

However, this isn’t the only way you can use LinkedIn to supercharge your candidate search. Leveraging your network for recommendations can help you to find someone that your network will personally vouch for. Or, you can search for candidates with the skills and expertise you need to grow your business using the search function to narrow down your ideal candidate and reach out directly.

Objective Two: Grow Your Profile

LinkedIn is a powerful branding tool and can be used to grow your reach. This includes connecting with decision makers (more on that later in the article) but also allows you to have your own company soapbox. LinkedIn articles are a great way to get your share your position, spark a debate or simply connect with your audience.

This isn’t the only way you can grow your personal and business profile on LinkedIn. The endorsements feature might seem superfluous, but it’s a good way to show past working relationships and instil trust in your network.

Objective Three: Find The Decision Makers

The last method might seem the most obvious, but for business owners, reaching out to potential partners and decision makers is one of the best ways you can use LinkedIn for business. You might think that it’s only recruiters using LinkedIn on a regular basis, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. According to Jeff Bullas (Social Media Marketing Strategist and Speaker), over 49% of key decision makers are on LinkedIn. So, if you’re hoping to expand your business with that new connection or start a conversation about how your business can help, this is the route to take.

LinkedIn Marketing and Advertising

Of course, one of the most effective ways that you could choose to use LinkedIn for your small business is via marketing and advertising. This is a paid route, compared to the above organic methods, but is equally successful in the long term.

There are a number of options for paid advertising on LinkedIn, including:

• Text Ads: appear on the right-hand side of your desktop screen, displaying a short (100 characters) message. Short, but sweet in terms of impact.
• Display Ads: more visually driven ads. Again, placed on the right-hand side of a desktop screen and are highly visible. Only placed on LinkedIn pages with lots of traffic.
• Dynamic Ads: user information from profiles are used to create an eye-catching personal message. Particularly effective if you are looking for more subscribers to your company page.
• InMail: the direct approach is a sponsored InMail campaign. This is the direct route, allowing your company to bypass busy email inboxes and private message a user’s private LinkedIn Inbox instead. 100% deliverability is promised with this service.
• Sponsored Content: whether you wish to boost a particularly good post or an article, LinkedIn allows you to sponsor your own content to appear natively in LinkedIn feeds.

No matter which method you choose, there is an undeniable advantage to LinkedIn advertising and marketing efforts. The biggest draw for LinkedIn advertising is the fact that other avenues – such as Google – are very saturated markets. LinkedIn offers less competition, in comparison, as well as a much more niche target audience. If you want to reach a highly specific audience, then this is definitely the avenue for you and your small business to go down.

Of course, getting noticed on LinkedIn isn’t the only thing that would be beneficial for your small business. Having the right insurance for your specific business needs is also an important factor that you need to consider.

Call our team today on 0333 321 1403 for a discussion of your circumstances and a personal quote.

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Author Phil Ainley, Marketing Manager