As a small business owner, you’re always looking for new ways to reach potential customers and grow your business. In today’s digital age, social media platforms like LinkedIn provide valuable opportunities to increase brand awareness and generate leads. But is having a LinkedIn presence right for your small business? Here’s what you need to know.
What are the benefits of having a LinkedIn presence for a small business?
Some key benefits of having a LinkedIn presence as a small business include:
- Increased brand awareness – A complete and optimized LinkedIn company page helps people find and learn about your business.
- Lead generation – LinkedIn is used by over 740 million professionals. A LinkedIn presence puts your business in front of a massive audience of potential customers.
- Thought leadership – You can establish yourself as an industry expert by publishing long-form posts and articles.
- Targeted advertising – LinkedIn advertising platforms allow you to target ads based on location, job title, industry, and more.
- Market research – Monitor discussions and trends to gain valuable insights about your industry, competitors, and target audience.
- Recruitment – LinkedIn is a top platform for finding and connecting with talented professionals to recruit.
- SEO boost – An active LinkedIn presence can improve your overall SEO and search visibility.
Having an authoritative and well-optimized LinkedIn presence can deliver real value for small businesses in many ways. It provides access to a large professional network and multiple tools to aid core business functions like marketing, market research, recruitment and more.
What types of small businesses benefit most from LinkedIn?
While any small business can potentially extract value from LinkedIn, some types of businesses tend to benefit more than others. These include:
- Professional services – Consulting, marketing, HR, accounting, etc.
- B2B companies – With a decision maker audience.
- Thought leaders/personal brands – Coaches, authors, speakers.
- Tech and SaaS providers – Target tech-savvy users.
- SMBs selling high-value products/services – Can justify ad spend.
- Recruitment and staffing agencies – Access to professionals.
Essentially, businesses that sell to other businesses (B2B) or professional services firms are ideal for LinkedIn because their target audience is already active there. The platform also suits individuals looking to establish thought leadership and personal brands.
What are some basics to have in place?
To create an effective LinkedIn presence for your small business, there are a few basics you need to have in place first:
- Company page – Have a complete, optimized LinkedIn company page with your business description, products/services, contact info, etc.
- Employee profiles – Ensure all staff have properly completed LinkedIn profiles that identify them as employees.
- Content posting – Share company updates, links, images, articles, and other content regularly.
- Showcase pages – Use Company and Showcase pages to highlight products, services, projects, culture and more.
- Sponsored content – Run sponsored updates and LinkedIn ads to expand reach.
- Analytics – Use LinkedIn’s analytics to assess page views, post reach, website traffic from LinkedIn etc.
Having these company pages, active employee accounts, and starting to post regular content provides the foundation. From there, you can expand into other opportunities like ads, content publishing, recruitment tools and more.
What tips help maximize the impact of your LinkedIn presence?
To really maximize the power of LinkedIn for your small business, keep these tips in mind:
- Choose the right keywords for your company page based on what your ideal customers are searching for.
- Craft compelling company updates, articles and content that engage followers.
- Use visual assets like images, infographics and videos in your posts.
- Publish longer-form thought leadership content to establish expertise.
- Run targeted campaigns focused on generating leads and conversions.
- Retarget website visitors by installing the LinkedIn Insight Tag.
- Leverage employee networks by empowering staff to share content.
- Consider an “always-on” approach instead of set campaigns if budget allows.
- Track and measure regularly to see what content and strategies are most effective.
The most successful brands on LinkedIn put effort into crafting engaging, valuable content optimized for their target audience. Making the most of employee networks and paid advertising options can also make a big impact.
What are some common mistakes companies make on LinkedIn?
While getting a business profile up on LinkedIn is a good first step, there are some frequent mistakes companies make that limit their results:
- Not keeping profiles and pages updated. Stale, outdated info looks bad.
- Failing to post regularly and interact with followers.
- Not utilizing employee networks by sharing content.
- Too much promotional content instead of valuable insights.
- Not using analytics to identify what content resonates.
- Avoiding paid tools like ads due to budget concerns.
- Not integrating the LinkedIn Insight tag with their website.
- Not optimizing company pages for keywords prospects search for.
Avoiding these common errors, and instead following best practices around content, optimization, paid tools, analytics and leveraging staff networks pays dividends. It’s also critical to invest time into regularly updating profiles and pages.
How can you get started? What are some first steps?
For small businesses new to LinkedIn, here are some recommended first steps to get started:
- Create or update your LinkedIn company page – Optimize with keywords, an eye-catching banner, descriptions of your business, locations, products, and contact info.
- Ensure all staff have a complete profile highlighting their role – Set a policy for employees to include the company and role.
- Follow relevant voices in your industry – Build your network by following key brands, thought leaders, potential partners and more.
- Share your first company updates – Start posting news, articles, events, links, images, video or other updates to build content.
- Look at competitors’ pages for inspiration – See what other brands in your space are doing well.
- Explore opportunities for sponsored content – If new to paid posts, start small to test performance.
Focus first on building out and claiming your LinkedIn real estate, joining the community, and organically posting as your business. Once you establish your presence, there are opportunities to refine your strategy, produce more content, advertise, use tools for recruiting, conduct market research and more. Think long-term and build a presence step-by-step.
Conclusion
In summary, creating a strong LinkedIn presence offers small businesses tremendous opportunities to reach new audiences and achieve core business goals. Follow best practices around content, company pages, employee networks, analytics and advertising to maximize your impact. Avoid common mistakes like failing to post regularly or not optimizing pages. And get started by claiming your LinkedIn real estate and organically engaging. With a strategic, long-term approach, LinkedIn can become an invaluable asset for your small business.
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