By now, it’s likely you’ve heard of the ‘Facebook for professionals’…LinkedIn itself has seen tremendous growth over the last 2-3 years…with over 80 million users, it’s seen by many professionals as a useful tool to find a job, find workers and even market a business.
Consisting mostly of business-to-business (B2B) type firms, LinkedIn is also increasingly a good tool for B2C firms as well.
While LinkedIn is a valuable social/professional networking tool, it’s mixed with many other social media platforms businesses use. Depending on your firm, LinkedIn is certainly one tool you and your company should consider.
LinkedIn marketing if you will can be broken down into two main levels: profiles and groups
Your personal and business profile is there to showcase you and your company to the multitude of LinkedIn members. You can (…and should) have one profile for yourself and one for your company.
(Example – My personal LinkedIn profile is located at http://www.linkedin.com/in/seocopywriting while our SEO Advantage profile is located at http://LinkedIn.seoadvantage.com)
All of your employees should have their own profile setup. And it pays to have a completed profile. Ones looking incomplete will see little activity so be sure you have done everything you can in setting up your profile.
Once you have a profile setup and begin making connections with fellow employees, customers and other professional acquaintances, you can then begin engaging with others in your industry. Frequent status updates, answering others’ questions work to engage potential leads and develop thought leadership.
Posting company announcements, events and new products also work as part of an overall ‘engagement’ strategy you should consider when working with LinkedIn.
Another way to develop this all important thought leadership is to participate in groups on LinkedIn and perhaps start your own if there isn’t much out there on what you do already. To get a group started, promote it through other social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.
And if you’re starting a group, you have to be really proactive is starting conversations. Get people talking to build a larger, more engaged following. After awhile, conversations will start organically on their own and build – but in the beginning you have to be proactive and engaging to build that following.
Beyond this, we invite you to check out some of HubSpot’s resources on LinkedIn. They in fact just started a group for online marketers – there you can a lot of the latest ‘buzz’ on what’s happening.
We’re always developing our social media expertise and use of tools like LinkedIn so check us out and see how we harness this professional networking tool to reach out to other interested professionals – whether they’re in our industry or not.