LinkedIn is a social network for business, education and in many more fields. Here we are discussing some Useful LinkedIn Features And Benefits of LinkedIn. LinkedIn has evolved into a much more robust networking tool, enabling companies, especially those in the business-to-business (B2B) space, to grow their customer bases, generate product and service ideas, and gain valuable feedback from the people they want most to hear from potential clients. There are a number of Useful LinkedIn Features And Benefits to promote your business online like:
Useful LinkedIn Features Benefits
- Reach a specific audience
- great place to get and receive advice from your peers
- Fine & Identify business partners, clients and service providers and get in touch with them.
- LinkedIn is also a business platform.
- LinkedIn is also great for identifying the best possible talent for your industry and getting in touch with them.
Before starting let’s first discuss some advantages of LinkedIn :
- LinkedIn is about networking, but because it is a site that’s focused on professionals and businesses, your company can network effectively with prospective client organizations.
- LinkedIn has a decent search feature that can help you find people in your industry and in the industries you serve. That makes it easier not only to find potential customers but also to keep tabs on what your competition is offering – both of which can help you be more competitive.
- Don’t link with people just to build the number of connections you have. Use your connection requests more strategically to engage and build relationships with your target customers and influencers in your market space.
- Build trust for your brand: LinkedIn is chock full of groups that are devoted to specific professional topics. Join the ones that are relevant to you. Once you’re a group member, become an active participant in discussions that help you and your company gain recognition as an authority in the field.
- Promote your brand as an authority Once you get the hang of how LinkedIn groups work and you’ve gained some traction in the space, consider starting your own group.
- LinkedIn can be a great tool for content marketing, and this could become a channel for you to become a trusted source for business insights in your industry.
- Be certain to include updates from your blog and a few well-placed links leading back to your corporate website.
- Gather feedback Have a new idea or a product that’s just been launched? This is the place to ask for feedback from people whose ideas and opinions you trust.
- Asking for input can be a great way to identify potential customers and to make current customers feel valued. And notice that asking for input also gives you an opportunity to mention a product or service without it sounding like an advertisement.
The benefits of using LinkedIn
Making Yourself Irresistible: Like most social platforms, LinkedIn is constantly evolving and adding features to help you get the most out of connecting with others, typically for professional reasons. Consider using these features to your advantage by giving your profile a professional makeover. Features that will help position you as an expert in your respective area include:
1) Keywords: Incorporating keywords will boost your SEO and help you become found on LinkedIn and your LinkedIn profile found by search engines. Consider the ideal person your profile would speak to, your buyer personas and if your profile were side by side with another, what words would make you stand out. Have these words thought-out and ready when you create or edit your profile.
Areas to incorporate great keywords include your headline, summary, interests, job titles, job descriptions and skills. A keyword-centric headline will boost your profile traffic and makes you more appealing to prospective employers.
2. Recommendations & Endorsements: Recommendations can be a critical part of your LinkedIn profile while endorsements have seemed to just confuse people. That said, both play a role in how you are found during advanced people searches. Endorsements make it easy for a connection to quickly say that you are experienced in a certain area without putting in the time to write a full recommendation.
3) Professional Gallery with work examples, photos, video & use of Slideshare: If you’d like to really stand out on LinkedIn and attract more business opportunities, a great way to get noticed is through visual content and creating a portfolio of work examples. There are a few ways you can create a portfolio by adding project examples, images, embedded video and slideshare presentations to your profile page.
4) Use Your Profile Link: One way to customize your LinkedIn profile is by acquiring your unique URL. By not customizing your profile, you limit your exposure to prospective connections, partners and clients. Having a unique URL also improves your ability to be found on search engines and when users are doing targeted people searches.
5) Use the How You’re Connected tool (a.k.a. the six degrees of Kevin Bacon tool): The “How You’re Connected” tool on your profile page helps introduce you to other LinkedIn users that may be connected to you or other connections you have. Now when you visit someone’s profile, the tool allows you to see who in your network knows that person, and how he or she know each other. Using this tool is a great way to view people you want to be connected with and who might be the best person to ask to make an introduction.
6) Perform targeted searches with advanced people finder: LinkedIn is more and more becoming a database for finding people, connecting with prospective business associates and individuals with very specific competencies and keywords included in their profile. Searches can be performed by typing a person’s name, keywords or titles into the search box at the top of the page. Advanced searches can be performed by using specific criteria such as location, school, industry, etc. Click the “advanced” link at the right of the search box or the top of the search results page.
7) Create a company page, use the new showcase pages and review your analytics: Creating a company page not only allows a business to provide the latest company and industry news, event information, and job opportunities, it also helps position your business and its employees as experts within your industry. Registering and maintaining a company page is an incredible opportunity for businesses that not only to recruit the best, but also establish a thought leadership position in their industry.
8) Alumni search function: The Alumni search function is a great tool to find people associated with a particular school, industry or location.
9) Don’t be a stalker – create personal relationships: Use the who’s viewed your profile feature to increase visibility, discover new opportunities and check out analytics to see specifics about the people who have viewed your profile. With this tool there are basic and premium features – the basic version (free) allows you to see where your five most recent viewers work and live, how they found you, their industry and job titles and keywords that led to you.
10) Joining groups makes you more visible: One of the easiest ways to boost your profile and personal brand on LinkedIn is to connect with other professionals in similar industries, with similar interests and with the competencies or connections you are looking to target. A great way to connect and exchange ideas is with LinkedIn groups. LinkedIn allows a user to join up to 50 groups – and it is highly recommended from a SEO, personal branding and search-ability standpoint that you join the 50 groups that are best for you.
11) Appropriate and thoughtful posts: Sharing content on LinkedIn is a great way to showcase your knowledge as well as provide your expertise that can help other connections. When you share a post, provide information on the relevance to your audience or group. If you’d like to share a post with a group, be sure to check the “post to groups” checkbox and include a question or comment that will encourage member engagement.
source from blog.hubspot.com
Business Benefits of a LinkedIn Company Page
A LinkedIn company page helps you network and prospect for quality sales leads, but it also establishes your public image on a global scale as a reputable and trustworthy organization. Although many people view the social media site LinkedIn only as a site for job hunters and for growing your professional network, LinkedIn is an equally effective tool for generating new business leads and nurturing referral relationships.
A LinkedIn company page provides your business with the opportunity to tell your company’s story, engage with followers, share career opportunities, and scale your word of mouth marketing.
To encourage your audience to make contact with your company and perceive your company as a trusted resource, create a LinkedIn company page that is informative, error-free and well managed by company administrators. Additional business benefits to using a LinkedIn company page include:
1) Creating shareable content that benefits your audience.
By producing content that your viewers want to see and share with others, your viewers become engaged advocates of your company and expand your global reach and influence. Make your content available in different formats such as SlideShare business presentations, blog posts, infographics, webinars, podcasts, and videos to suit the viewing preferences of your target audience.
2) Introducing new products or services you’ve developed.
According to the Marketing Tech Blog, the top 5 reasons why people follow brands on social media are promotions and discounts, latest products information, customer service, entertaining content, and ability to offer feedback. More than half of vendors say they have generated sales through LinkedIn. With LinkedIn company pages, you can introduce new products or services your company developed and explain how they will help customers to achieve their professional goals and meet their business needs. You can also provide links to your website to enable readers to easily find more information and convert your website visitor traffic into warm business leads.
3) Differentiating yourself from your competitors.
On LinkedIn, you can use your company description to emphasize how you stand out from your competitors. Include company news and share information about your company culture to reach potential new hires and convey your company’s values, mission and vision.
Consider how you can use stories, infographics and photos to give users a authentic, transparent and positive impression of your company.Visualstorytelling via links to video, infographics, photos and artwork gives users impressions about how your company thinks and acts.
4) Finding job candidates who can make a significant contribution to your business success.
LinkedIn profiles reveal valuable information about people seeking jobs at your company, including their stability, their record of successful accomplishments and their passion for what they do. By hiring and retaining these employees, your company will benefit from their expertise and energy.
When social media communication is done properly by your existing employees, it has the potential to create powerful relationships. By developing these relationships with current and prospective customers, employees and referral sources, your employees can significantly enhance your company’s bottom line.
5) Checking on what your competition is doing.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content, making it the social media platform used most often. By visiting the company pages of businesses serving your target market, it’s easier to monitor changes in your industry and track what your competition has accomplished. Noting transitions of employees and monitoring the social media content strategies of other companies on a regular basis will help you identify trends and opportunities for talent acquisition and growth areas for your business.
6) Improving your ranking in search engines.
Google and other search engines rank LinkedIn company pages and posts highly in the search engine results pages, so adding updates to your company page and optimizing posts for SEO helps to improve your performance in the search results pages. As a result, your website may see an increase in visitor traffic, especially if links back to your company’s website are embedded in your posts.
source from rawsoninternetmarketing.com
