I know what you’re thinking… not ANOTHER social media platform I need to get to grips with! However, if used correctly LinkedIn is an extremely simple and useful tool for businesses – sometimes even more so than any other social media channel.
This blog explains everything you need to know about LinkedIn so you can evaluate how you and your company could benefit from its use.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a free networking site for personal and commercial use, to connect and market brand/expertise/skills; designed to build connections and efficiently grow your businesses. Compared to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram; LinkedIn is the World’s largest professional social network. With 380 million registered users across 200 countries and 4 million companies with a LinkedIn Company Page.
Regarding commercial profiles, LinkedIn allows companies to have their own page where they can share their expertise, services and connect with potential clients. They can also connect with employees (both past, current and prospective), and publish ‘news’, helping to increase engagement and expand the company’s visibility through shares and likes. Companies can also advertise job vacancies and headhunt potential candidates.
A personal page acts as an online CV, where an individual can log all work experience and skills. These skills can be ‘endorsed’ by others and links to online portfolios can be attached to build a strong resume.
How can LinkedIn be used?
- Networking
LinkedIn in THE networking site.
Information collated from users’ details can be shared and directed to relevant contacts to build professional connections and discover new business opportunities.
Searching for co-workers and business partners updates news feeds relevant to the users’ needs.
LinkedIn acts as an enormous database for contacts. To ‘connect’ with another profile is the LinkedIn equivalent to Facebook’s ‘friend’ system, enabling an individual to have contact details for relevant profiles on file.
- Business Development
LinkedIn offers ongoing updates to create a community dialogue to interactively connect content to generate lead to your LinkedIn page and activity to your website. Sharing URLs to blog posts and other social media channels on LinkedIn helps cross-reference you website’s content on multiple channels. All of this will increase traffic to a business’ website and therefore improve your SEO ranking.
Following other corporate profiles (i.e. competitors/ clients) can benefit your business in updating your news feed with relevant and up to date content, which can be shared and explored with your own contacts.
- Recruitment
For companies with job vacancies, LinkedIn can be used to find suitable candidates, identified from previous qualifications, experience and mutual connections. This is an excellent resource to save time and money in finding new suitable connections.
Businesses can use LinkedIn to their advantage when looking for opportunities to recruit new staff members. It is an excellent tool for researching the market and talent hunting for prospective employees.
- Competitive Intelligence
Keeping engaged with the market helps with the business’ reputation in building trust. The impact of 100-200 followers for a business account can provide a positive exposure in impacting the drive for engagement and sales.
REMEMBER: for a business account, ensure the business have their own domain. For example, yourname@yourcompany.com, rather than using external domain providers such as Gmail and Outlook, otherwise the registration process won’t work.
Call Finnick Creative to discuss how we can help you and your business improve your online presence with Social Media: 01242 546945
Or visit the Finnick Group website HERE
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