How to Use Linkedin for Business Development & Promotion

In the past couple of years, Linkedin has become the go-to platform for organic engagement. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, there is still a lot of growth potential for those with a low budget, since the platform does not “force” the purchase of ads and sponsored content.

Knowing this, you might wonder how to use Linkedin for business development purposes. After all, if there is anything we learned in 2020, it is that being visible on many different platforms is key to reaching your audience.

In this post we discuss:

• Why you should use Linkedin for your business
• The difference between a business and a personal page
• How to create a company page for your business
• How to create a content strategy that drives engagement

Why should you learn how to use Linkedin for business?

Compared to other social media platforms, LinkedIn is more effective for brand awareness, since it still offers a lot more potential for organic engagement. Apart from its focus on business and networking, as well as the benefits of low-priced promotion, here are some more reasons you might wanna use the platform:

1. Your business remains relevant

2020 has proven that companies need to stay active on several platforms if they wish to survive. When it comes to B2B companies, LinkedIn is the perfect platform to show relevance and remain updated. We discuss this in detail in the following chapters.

2. Your network grows and so does the engagement

Linkedin is a business connection platform that allows you to keep your business profile updated. This shows people what your business represents, which in turn exposes your brand to your connections. How?

• Every business or person you are connected to directly is on your first level of connection
• Anyone connected to your direct connections are connected to you on a second level
• Anyone connected to your second level connections are connected to you on a third level

This makes linkedin business connections wider than other social media platforms. As a result, all your branding efforts, including your optimization, visibility, and information strategies become easily accessible to these connections.

3. Get access to qualified talent and leads

Linkedin was initially developed to improve employment opportunities for qualified talent. This means that you, as an employer, can find your next employees on Linkedin using advanced search tools as a business. These, however, as paid options.

Aside from hiring, however, Linkedin is also a great way to engage in personalized conversations, which results into leads and (hopefully) customers. This post does not delve into these points in depth, as in most cases you will need to use a personal profile for these efforts.

Linkedin business page vs personal profile

Before delving into the specifics it’s important to remember that both personal and business pages are free to create. Apart from that, here’s what you need to keep in mind:

Linkedin Pages represent organizations and include sections like the business’s overview, an About Us section, open job positions, and a list of people that work there. A page collects followers which are able to keep track of the latest updates you post, as well as engage with the content. Users are also able to run ads on their pages.

Linkedin personal profiles represent individuals, and are often seen as “digital business cards”. An individual profile does not have followers, but rather connections, as these types of profiles emphasize heavily on the power of networking. Aside from work-related skills and experience, users can list their endorsements, recommendations, personal interests, and update their status anytime they want. Personal profiles are also necessary to setup and administrate a page.

When it comes to business development, it is important to remember that both personal profiles and pages are useful. Many might say that the ultimate Linkedin growth hack is to first build up a network through your personal connections, and then gradually introduce them to your brand. This is possible thanks to organic second-tier engagement opportunities, which Linkedin still offers (if you interact with your brand’s page, your connections might see it on their feed).

How to determine which of the two you should use for your linkedin b2b marketing

The answer to this question determines your Linkedin content strategy, and the approach you take to any future outreach. Linkedin is the “hotspot” for B2B connections, which means that you will often see entrepreneurs experiment with the best way to approach potential clients or partners. In short:

A personal profile is best to use when trying to sell a service/product, or when trying to find Beta customers for your startup. The biggest mistake, however, is that many entrepreneurs are not willing to spend time on this effort and end up sending automated/sponsored messages without even thinking of follow-ups or industry-relevance. If you choose to engage in a 1-on-1 communication, you better allocate enough time to get into real, human discussions.
Best for: Agencies, early stage startups

A LinkedIn page, on the other hand, will offer more results for companies that are either willing to spend money on ads, or already have a significant number of followers. In order words, more established businesses. That being said, it doesn’t mean that early-stage companies or agencies shouldn’t create a page - they should just not expect to get leads from it right away. Pages are mostly focused on promoting the brand’s identity, supporting awareness stage campaigns, and hiring industry-relevant talent.
Best for: Established businesses with marketing budget, growth startups, Early-stage startups looking to build awareness in the long term

5 ways to growth hack Linkedin for business purposes

When talking about business purposes we don’t necessarily talk about increasing your odds to get hired. Keep in mind that this article is all about promoting your business and helping you connect with the right people, easier. Here are a few tips you can implement:

• Write Linkedin native content - The Linkedin algorithm prefers status updates that go beyond simply sharing blog posts or videos. Take the time to write a good, unique description for the content you share, or create custom audiovisual material (videos, images, infographics). This will increase the potential of the content going viral.
• Combine social media channels - Linkedin is great to display your professional side, but customers and/or potential partners may want to see other aspects of your life as well. Therefore, it might be a good idea to add links to your Twitter, and Instagram, as both serve a different purpose which can improve your ods of reaching your goals.
• Optimize your Linkedin page for SEO Use the right keywords to improve the position of your Linkedin page on search engines. This will help you get discovered easier by people who might be looking for you.
• Employee participation leads to more followers - If you have just started out with your page, it is important to have your employees engage with the content you publish on Linkedin. As mentioned previously, second-tier engagement is still working for Linkedin, and you can use this to your advantage.
• Engage with relevant content - Find the most relevant hashtags in your industry and engage with this type of content on a regular basis. This is a great tip for both personal profiles and business pages, as it can improve your exposure aside from regular status updates.

Here are some more “hacks” to explore when it comes to business growth:

How to set up a company page on Linkedin

The process of creating a company page is rather simple. To start, click on “Work” and select “Create a Company Page”.

At this point, you will have several options to choose from. Unless you are a creative artist or a very large company, you will most likely have to go with the “Small business” option at this stage.

Fill out your page identity, company details, and profile details, and make sure you upload a logo that fits the dimension criteria set by the platform. This step should take just a couple of minutes.

Once all the information is added, tick the checkbox to verify your eligibility to create the page and click on “Create page”.

Linkedin company page best practices

• Include as made details as possible - According to LinkedIn, pages with all details get 30% more views.
• Add page admins - The Admins are responsible for different levels of management in your business. You can see how to do this here.
• Keep your images updated - This includes updating the page logo and cover photo, as well as sticking to the right sizing for the photos of your posts.
• Share appropriate (& engaging) content - We discuss this in further detail in the next chapters.
• Once again, engage your employees - on average your employees have ten times more first level connections compared to your company. This means that the more your employees follow and engage with your company page, the faster your business will grow its audience. Hence, engage your employees to your page because they are your best business advocates.

Creating a content strategy for your Linkedin page

The most effective way to start a conversation on linkedin is through posting engaging content daily. You can share content in the following ways

Status updates - these help you remain consistent, displaying your tone of voice and identity as a company. You can post these daily, but make sure you don’t come off as spammy.
Videos and blog posts enrich the content on your page and generate an additional source of referral traffic for your other channels. These can be used as “secondary” content, and don’t need to be published on your page as often.

Getting started: Decide on the type of content

What type of content will you be writing or sharing? At this initial stage the team needs to come together to discuss and decide what you want to publish. This decision depends mainly on your target audience, but also on the industry you are serving and the goals you are trying to achieve. You can get some great ideas on the type of content you can write by reading this article.

Plan the content in advance

Unless you are sharing your latest blog post or commenting on latest industry news, you can (and should) most likely plan your content ahead of time. This is ideally done right after the strategy is approved, and the execution process is started.

• Create all graphics, videos, images during an earlier stage in the process.
• Create all posts and schedule them on Buffer, which is free to use, or Sprout Social if you wish to delve deeper into the analytics.
• Research industry-relevant publications to discover interesting topics, research, or statistics you could write about in the future and make a “creativity folder” which you can use when you run out of ideas.
• Build a content calendar to keep track of the publishing process and outsource tasks with less hassle. You can find a great Linkedin content calendar template here.

Determine the publishing frequency

As aforementioned, status updates can be more frequent than other types of posts. But how can you best decide on the publishing frequency you need to follow to keep your audience entertained?

To determine this you will have to combine findings of existing studies, with continuous testing. You can easily track the CTR of your posts by adding customized UTM parameters to measure performance. This is the easiest and most cost-effective way to track the analytics and improve your publishing frequency.

Don’t forget to track your Linkedin analytics

Aside from Google analytics, Linkedin offers the possibility to track the performance of your page. There are two ways to understand how to use Linkedin for business growth through analytics and performance:

• Post, shared posts, and articles analytics - This allows you to gauge the impact of your LinkedIn page content.
• LinkedIn page analytics - This allows you to gauge business trends in your industry across time periods and metrics. Available page analytics include:
  • Followers and visitors analytics to give you an in depth understanding of your visitors and followers sources and demographics
  • Updates analytics to help you evaluate the effectiveness of all your updates
  • Talent brand analytics to gauge your employee pool, whether you’ve gained or lost good talent. You can only access it if you have enhanced your company page with LinkedIn career pages.
  • Pipeline builder analytics that’s only accessible when running a pipeline builder campaign. It helps to gauge how your pipeline builder is getting new talent for your company.

How do you check your post, shared posts, and articles analytics?

• Click the me icon at the top of the homepage
• Click on Posts and Activity under Manage
• Find the specific post to analyze
• Click the analytics icon located below the article or post to get a detailed breakdown of the analytics

How do you check your LinkedIn page analytics?

These can be found in the page admin roles:

• Access your page admin view from the My Pages model on the left side of the homepage
• Click the name of the page
• Click analytics
• Select the type of analytics you want to view

Wrapping up

After reading this post you should have a better idea on how to use Linkedin for business purposes. This post explored the following areas:

• The benefits of using Linkedin for business
• The difference between a linkedin business page and linkedin personal page
• Ways to create your linkedin company page
• Ways to create your linkedin content strategy

And in the following chapter we provide a detailed FAQ section to help you answer any questions that may remain.

Frequently asked questions

How do you share a Linkedin post on a company page?

When learning how to use Linkedin for business development, it is best to start be status updates on your page. To do this, click “home,” then on the three dots under “Publish a Post,” select recent updates and scroll downwards until you get to your company post. Then click share on the post you want to share. Make sure to add a description to the post you are about to share to enhance its visibility.

How to post an article on Linkedin?

On your linkedin page, go to the middle of your homepage. Click on the “write an article” button in the post-creation box. Paste your article in the box or write one. Don’t forget to include an image and a headline. Once you are done with formatting, click the publish button at the top right corner.

What is the difference between company pages and groups?

A company page is a space that holds information about your business. This includes your contact information, products, and services, among others. Linkedin groups are spaces that enhance communication and networking among business people and are quite similar to Facebook groups. When learning how to use Linkedin for business purposes, it is best to start from creating your own business page, and promote it through industry-relevant groups.

What are some other great practices to increase engagement on Linkedin?

• Find popular groups in your industry. Active members will know where their target persona lives online.
• Use objective-based advertising. LinkedIn’s new feature is already proving to have super effective results.
• Try LinkedIn for retargeting (both paid and organic).
• Partner with or share posts from LinkedIn Influencers.