By Molly Redus
Social media has created endless opportunities for not only consumers, but businesses as well. Businesses within a variety of industries are heavily involved in the social media realm. One of the popular platforms used by companies is LinkedIn. Today, there are over 3 million company pages active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has created an algorithm that provides multiple features to benefit a business and their online presence.
- 1. Establishing Followers
Creating a company page within LinkedIn is the starting point. Once the company page is created and the page’s following has began to gain followers, then the advantages can fall into place. Through the company page you can share compelling status updates, relevant information formulating through your specific industry and more. This is the most effective way to continue growing followers for your business. Furthermore, LinkedIn can be a valuable resource for your HR department’s recruiting efforts. Similar to a candidate’s resume, their LinkedIn profile can give you a good idea whether or not a particular candidate would be a good fit for your opening. You can also post jobs on LinkedIn so individuals can apply directly on the platform or your own website.
2. Pulse
The Pulse feature allows LinkedIn users to receive organic articles published each day relevant to their industry, location, connections and pages following. Pulse features a lot of the content found on a user’s homepage. For company pages, this means potential new followers. A lot of the article recipients are not previously following the company page. Therefore, as LinkedIn Pulse sifts through thousands of articles published daily, Pulse picks the articles most essential for each user. Depending on the user’s industry, location, connections and pages following, articles will display on their homepage giving them the opportunity to click on the article and take the next step. When a company page generates an article for Pulse, the chances of a like-minded user following the company page increases. This form of content creation is a valuable tool to expose potential clients to your company’s expertise and to become a thought leader in your field.
3. Analytics
LinkedIn has built-in analytics. This creates convenience for businesses as analytics do not need to be outsourced through other programs. LinkedIn’s analytics takes into account the industry, region and keywords used on the company page. Through this information, the program can generate how many people view, like, comment and share your status updates and published content. Taking the next step further, the analytics can also generate detailed demographics as specific as who is viewing the page’s content. Digging even deeper, these detailed demographics will ultimately share what types of people are attracted to the page’s content which will allows you to better understand your audience and the effectiveness of your content. This is all information that can be shared with your clients and information from which you can discover trends and draw conclusions.
4. Advertising
Once the target audience is truly defined from analytics and other sources, content can be created to meet the audience’s needs. It’s essential to advertise because it will complete the branding cycle. There’s a variety of advantages for businesses by advertising through LinkedIn. First, it’s simple because it’ll reach the audience immediately. Through the company page, infographics, testimonials, promotional videos and much more can be shared instantly. Second, display ads on LinkedIn gives you the control to creatively personalize these online advertisements. Thirdly, LinkedIn analytics can easily track the data received from published content which gives insight on adjustments needed to be made. Lastly, it’s cheap! Social media advertising is quite cheaper than a lot of traditional advertising, which is even more of an incentive to utilize it’s advertising opportunities.
As Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are undoubtedly major players in social media, LinkedIn’s presence continues to grow. Particularly for businesses that are involved in B2B, LinkedIn is an essential resource as it has been called the ‘Facebook of Professionals.’ Through LinkedIn, you are able to connect with leaders in your community and in your field and build on efforts to develop relationships and increase your brand awareness.
