LinkedIn Marketing Strategies
Ways to Market Your Business on LinkedIn.
Groups
Interact, offer value and be yourself
Forums
Interact, offer value and be yourself contributing to forums related to the niche you are targeting.
Company Profile
Give an overview of your products and services and how you offer value.
Creating a Company Profile:
Inbound marketing on LinkedIn begins with ensuring that your company can be found in the LinkedIn Companies directory. LinkedIn Companies was launched back in 2008 and is a database that is comprised of information that is primarily user-generated. The information on company profiles is also extracted from information held by LinkedIn partners, Capital IQ and Business Week. With backing by these major firms, LinkedIn Companies is quickly becoming an alternative free source of company information where you should absolutely be present.
Should someone be searching for a company with your expertise, you want to ensure that you are found. Follow these steps to be sure the best information is on display for potential customers:
Edit the description of your Company Profile: Make sure it is in sync with your company website.
Product:
You can include an in depth overview of your product or service with your company profile.
Add keywords within the Specialty Section:
There is also an opportunity to enter 256 characters under the Specialties section. Make sure that any keywords for which you want your company to be found are here.
Industry:
You can choose a main company industry. Make sure you choose the most appropriate, as this is a field that may be used in a search to find your company.
Location:
There is also a search field for location. LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to enter up to five locations. Use this if your company is represented in multiple regions.
Blog RSS:
Enter your corporate blog’s RSS feed to showcase your latest blog entries.
Corporate Twitter:
If your company has a Twitter account, make sure you include your username. Doing this will post your latest tweets on your page.
Getting found on LinkedIn Companies is only part of the picture. Since LinkedIn is a social networking platform, many people seek out those with a specific expertise by doing a keyword search under “People.” Every employee representing your company on LinkedIn increases your chances that your company will get found. The more connected your employees are to others; the easier it will be for people to contact any of your company employees through the LinkedIn platform.
Keyword Targeted Search
Look for potential clients and customers through targeted searching within your niche.
With these tips you will have the start building your business through Linkedin.
Spreading Yourself Too Thin
Your efforts should be targeted within a specific niche or group of niches without targeting you are spreading your resources thin.
Not Being Visible
Put yourself out there there is no room for secrecy if you want to build a well known brand.
Being Afraid To Leave Your Comfort Zone
Building a business is a calculated risk you need to consider any opportunity that comes your way strongly.
Sending Mixed Signals
Be confident and honest about who you really are.
Giving Up:
Never do this it is like one of my favorite quotes by Thomas Edison “Many of those who failed never realized how close they were to success when they gave up” Giving up usually happens when you are finally gaining momentum never stop hustling.
Not Showing Your Personality on Your Profile
You need to be personable and interact people want someone they can connect to and trust.
Not Having a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy
You need a game plan centered on how you will grow contacts, interact and add value to your LinkedIn network.
Not having SEO on Your LinkedIn Profile
Whatever niche or niches you are targeting should be positioned for through your profile.
Here are some reasons why people may use LinkedIn.
- To stay in touch with friends and colleagues.
- To reconnect with old friends and colleagues that you may have not been able to find or be found by otherwise when emails and phone numbers are changed.
- To get introduced to new interesting friends and business connections.
- To promote your products and services, find or be found by new customers.
- To find or be found by new vendors, suppliers or service providers.
- To find a job through your network and to make it easy for employers and recruiters to find you.
- To find someone to fill a vacancy that you may have.
- To find experts and get advice.
- To share your experience, help others and give advices.
- To stay updated with the latest news especially about your network and what’s new.
- To join groups and start or join in interesting discussions.
- To build and strengthen your personal branding and online presence for you or your company (improving the chances of being found on Google).
- To find new opportunities for business, partners or investors
- To consolidate in one place trusted (to some degree) recommendations that you can get from your colleagues, friends and business contacts.
- To use who you know in common to ask for reference about someone or a company before working or doing business with them.
- To look up anyone that you need to meet or speak to and find out what you can about them to understand them better and to make a good impression.
- To be able to post questions and get different answers
- To be able to create or participate in polls (surveys) and find out the results.
- To be able to post and share announcements, updates, news, cool things.
- To be recognized as a subject matter expert in your area of expertise.
As you can see the possibilities and power of this network are endless.
How do you get found on LinkedIn? Five places to put keywords
If you want to rank high for a keyword, such as "sales manager" or "graphic designer" make sure to put those keywords in:
1. Your headline
2. Your summary
3. Your current job
4. Your past job
5. Your specialities
For example, I have LinkedIn expert in all five places. When I search my contacts, I
I come up on the second page out of 18 million contacts for LinkedIn Expert. It works.
Be yourself and give a thorough walk through of your story and what you offer.
More Tools and Features of LinkedIn
By now, you probably realize the importance of adding relevant keywords that your target markets may search for to your headline, summary, and specialties sections of your LinkedIn profile. Here are some pro tips to optimize your profile to get found by great new contacts:
Edit your public LinkedIn URL: An example is my personal LinkedIn URL, http://www.linkedin.com/in/Jasonbaudendistel. This will optimize your LinkedIn profile to show up in search results on major search engines when someone searches for your name. It is important to claim those results for your name as they provide a gateway into your personal brand.
Customize your "Website" listings: Under the websites section of your LinkedIn profile, you can list up to three URLs. Choose the "other" option when setting up each of these links and describe them with relevant terms. For example, rather than using the terms "my website," I use "Online Marketing Leads.” Not only is this more descriptive, but it also gives me a better opportunity to rank for these keywords in search engines.
Include a link to your Twitter profile: You can have more than one Twitter account listed, and you can also integrate Twitter into your LinkedIn profile in the "Settings" section.
Best practice: Rather than sending all tweets, selectively send tweets to your LinkedIn status update by adding # in to the end of specific tweets.
Make your LinkedIn profile publicly visible to everyone:
You want other professionals on LinkedIn to be able to find you and contact you anytime!
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