LinkedIn is now the largest professional network in the world, with more than 225 million members in 200 countries using it in 19 different languages. This is according to Deep Nishar, the company's Senior Vice President of Products and User Experience. The site is good for business because its company page option offers an excellent opportunity to drive traffic to your company website, promote products and services, share important information and recruit top talent for employment purposes.
Tip #1: Complete Your Info
Having a company page doesn't mean your LinkedIn presence offers value. Users on the business networking site are typically there for professional reasons and are particularly discerning about who they follow—and what it says about them. To optimize your page effectively, you need to complete your information:
- Tell the story of your company and brand briefly and in a compelling way.
- Add specifics about your areas of expertise and your different lines of business.
- Bring your page to life with an exceptional banner image at the top that contains your company’s unique branding and core messaging.
Encourage your staff to create LinkedIn profiles of their own and connect with your page. That way, visitors can see who works there and connect with individual team members.
Tip #2: SEO Your Page
Optimize your LinkedIn page for SEO benefit by adding your primary keywords to the Company Specialities section. You can also use your keywords in the description of your products and services in the same way that you do on your website. The continuous stream of updates posted site-wide on LinkedIn makes it indexable by search engines, so use that fact to your advantage. This ensures that when users search for content, a hyperlink to your company page turns up in the results.
Tip #3: Add Your Products
The Products section of your LinkedIn company page is a particularly powerful tool for generating customer reviews. It gives you the ability to generate leads by:
- Promoting each product independently and linking directly to it
- Asking for customer referrals or testimonials
- Adding a separate banner image that links to a landing page on your website
- Including a link to any relevant YouTube videos about your products to highlight specific items
Tip #4: Engage, Engage and Then Engage Some More
As with anything to do with social media, consistent posting is key to optimizing the performance of your LinkedIn company page. LinkedIn's home page shows members a selection of the latest posts from people and companies they follow, so posting regularly will generate awareness and recognition of your company. Commit to a regular schedule of posting at least three times per week and use the featured and targeted options to engage your followers. Featured updates are highlighted at the top of your page, so it's a great way to promote your upcoming webinar or special event so that more people see it.
Tip #5: Review Your Performance
Analyzing what works and what doesn't is just as important on your LinkedIn company page as it is anywhere else in the digital environment. The site has great analytics capabilities and directly below each status update, you can view the number of impressions, clicks and interactions the update has to date, as well as the percentage of engagement it generated. By following the data, you can get a good understanding of your audience and what works with them.
Using these tips will enable you to improve your LinkedIn company page and your company's overall performance on social media.
* Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
