In today’s digital world, social media has become a critical link between consumers and businesses, with companies leveraging these online platforms to advertise and drive revenue. One of the most popular social media websites, LinkedIn, has gained recognition as a go-to professional networking platform, however, businesses have also found value in it as a space in which to promote themselves. But should your business have a LinkedIn page? Since the platform is home to 810 million members, the answer is likely “yes,” but here are some things you should consider before signing up.
Goal-Setting
The power of social media is extraordinary—if used correctly, it can help attract new business, deepen engagement with existing customers, build brand awareness and credibility, drive website traffic, recruit talent and more. But before you spend the few minutes it takes to sign up for a LinkedIn company page, you should first identify goals for your business’s social media presence. Creating a list of goals will help you build an effective strategy to accomplish them.
Determining Your Audience
As previously alluded to, LinkedIn differs from other platforms like Facebook and Twitter as it is much more focused on the business environment and professional networking. With this in mind, it is important for your company to determine whether or not the audience you are trying to attract is even on LinkedIn in the first place.
For example, a local retail store or other B2C company may find that Facebook and Twitter yield much better results than LinkedIn, since the latter is geared toward professionals and less toward the average consumer. But for a B2B company that wants to focus on building a brand image in a certain industry, LinkedIn may be the smarter choice. You can learn more about LinkedIn’s demographics in this 2020 Hootsuite report.
Since LinkedIn is primarily a professional networking platform, it can be very useful for finding new talent to join your team. If you determine that you want to target job seekers in your industry, you should consider posting your open positions on LinkedIn. The website’s jobs page acts as a central space for candidates to find open positions that match their experience, skills and desires—and if you choose to promote your job posting, you can get three times more qualified applicants, according to LinkedIn.
How Do You Want to Build Your Brand?
While it’s free to create a personal account or company page on LinkedIn, traditional advertising on the platform does come at a price. There are also ways to promote your business without running a paid campaign. Here are some ways to build your brand on LinkedIn.
Paid Advertising
To run any sort of paid advertising campaign on LinkedIn, a business must create a company page, so deciding to start this type of digital advertising on the platform means you should also keep up a consistent online presence.
Paid advertising on LinkedIn is a great way to attract new talent and build brand recognition among workers and businesses in your industry. But paid advertising on Facebook or Twitter may be a better choice for B2C companies who are looking to drive direct sales. A business advertising on LinkedIn can choose to run:
- Sponsored content: native advertising that appears in the LinkedIn feed; can be single-image ads, carousel ads or video ads.
- Sponsored messaging: personalized and targeted LinkedIn messages that drive conversations; can be message ads or conversation ads.
- Text ads: the more traditional form of ad that includes a headline, description and small image.
- Promoted job posts: job postings with a set budget that will target qualified candidates and be placed higher in job recommendations and search results.
Content Marketing
Regardless of whether you decide to pay for advertising, if you have a LinkedIn company page, you should be consistently posting and sharing content such as blogs and videos that put your business in a positive light. Sharing this content to your company’s LinkedIn page can organically increase social media interaction, drive traffic to your website and even enhance your site’s search engine optimization (SEO). If the content you produce is interesting, useful or entertaining, others may share it to their LinkedIn network, increasing your company’s visibility.
If all this digital advertising talk is confusing, that’s OK—our highly experienced social media marketing team is here to help you strengthen your brand and drive results.
Let’s Get to Work
Ready to take the jump? Our social media specialists are standing by to help you create a successful LinkedIn strategy that will continue to produce over time. Reach out to us today.
