Business Tips: How to Grow your Business using Linkedin

Lauren Sparling

 

With over 700 million users, LinkedIn is a great tool to grow your business and network with other professionals.

Connecting with people in your field is probably the most well-known use for LinkedIn as you can get valuable insights about opportunities and events.

But before we get into how to post or add connections, you should start by making sure your company profile is set up.

To create a business page, you must have your own personal LinkedIn account. From there, you will manage your company's page through your own account and add admins to help run the business page.

There are 4 different types of accounts you can create for your business on LinkedIn:

  • Small business (less than 200 employees),
  • Medium to large business (more than 200 employees),
  • Showcase page (subpages for your business)
  • Educational institutes (schools and universities)

You should include your company logo, a tagline and a professional cover image on your business page.

It's necessary to make sure potential clients can find more information about your company through your LinkedIn page. You should have your website linked in your profile as well as any additional social media accounts. This maximizes the number of followers you can get across all your platforms and makes it easier for people to learn about your company.

 

This company, Sharebird, is a great example of a LinkedIn business page. Their profile picture is their logo, their tagline is short and concise, and their cover photo matches the rest of the company branding. They also included a link to their website and wrote a sentence for the About section of their page.

 

Now that you’ve gotten your business page set up, here's how to maximize your engagement.

 

1. Connect with people in your field

The more followers and connections on your page, the more legitimate your company looks. The magic number for LinkedIn is usually 500+ connections, but it's not expected for you to get there overnight. Start by adding employees of your business and companies or clients you've worked with. You can expand your connections by following businesses in your area, companies in your field or specialists from which you can gain insight. You will gain more natural connections as you continue to use your LinkedIn page.

Connecting with people helps to build an audience guaranteed to see and be interested in your posts. You can cultivate relationships with people through LinkedIn that can translate to real business opportunities for your company.

 

2.  Engage with your feed

Engagement is critical for growing your company’s page and reaching your target audience. When it comes to social media, you get what you give; liking and commenting on feed posts are integral to keeping up your engagement and driving people to your profile.

Whether you're commenting to congratulate a business on a new program they're offering or just on a cool graphic you saw, all comments help to show that there's a real person behind the account to connect with. The worst thing you can do for your page is to only post information and never reply to other people or comment on their posts. Doing this creates a one-sided dialogue and doesn't engage people with your content.

 

Here’s a great example of engaging with your feed by liking relevant content. Vivek Sankaran is the CEO of Albertsons Companies. He has no work connection to Blockbuster, yet he liked this post because of potential interest within his audience. LinkedIn content doesn’t have to be all business and it is completely acceptable to like and reshare things that you find intriguing, as long as it’s appropriate.

 

3. Share Information Consistently

Sharing information is a key part of building an audience. Even if it's not your own content, it's just as beneficial to share content that other people have made, i.e., curated content. This helps create a consistent feed for your company and feeds the algorithm that will make LinkedIn favor your more valuable posts.

 

These are examples of simple yet effective reposts. The original post was just an example of a McDonald’s advertisement shared by a LinkedIn account called Famous Campaigns. On the left is a repost with no added comments. On the right, is a repost with a quick sentence tagging the companies involved and adding relevant hashtags.

Neither of these instances included writing an entire article or creating something new to post. They simply consisted of finding something interesting that was already made and reposting it with a few added thoughts. Both examples are great ways to engage with content on your feed but adding hashtags and tagging pages ensures that your post will be more visible.

Overall, LinkedIn is a great resource to help grow your business and make valuable connections. Remember, regularly using your LinkedIn account and engaging with others is the best way to get the most out of the platform and make valuable, long-lasting relationships.