How to Harness the Power of LinkedIn as a Web Marketing Tool for Your B2B

Social media is undoubtedly one of the most important small business marketing strategies available, right now. For little or no cost at all, you can effectively market your business and brand to people through a number of channels on the web. While Facebook and Twitter are both very valuable for digital marketing, LinkedIn is the networking site every B2B needs to be using if they want to increase web traffic, leads and sales, all the while building brand loyalty.

The following is a guide to maximising the power of LinkedIn to the benefit of your business. I’ll be frank: To really reap the rewards of this web marketing gold mine, you’re going to have to invest some time and maybe some money to properly network in LinkedIn. But when traffic to your website spikes and you’re getting more business from the people and types of businesses you serve, what you put into LinkedIn will seem like a small and totally worthwhile investment.

1) Make an Impression with Personal and Branded Company Profiles

• For any business owner who plans to use LinkedIn for web marketing, this is where they need to start; crafting highly professional and totally complete profiles for both their business and themselves. Profiles that lack information or contain spelling and grammatical errors are poor representations of your business—if you can’t even finish your LinkedIn profile or read it over for mistakes, what does that convey to others about the services or products your business offers?
• Also, your personal profile deserves as much time and effort as the page you create for your business. In any type of marketing, but especially web marketing where people need more convincing that you are who you say you are, presenting the human side of a business is crucial to earning trust. This means your personal profile must contain a professional yet friendly-looking photo, and a complete ‘Interests’ section will be just as valuable as your education and experience when it comes to convincing those who read your profile that you and your business are real and capable.
•  Be sure to add links to your website in both of your profiles. After all, driving traffic to your website should be one of the major goals of your LinkedIn marketing efforts.
•  Effective digital marketing via LinkedIn will also require you to use the right ratio of keyword terms so that your profiles are found. This is the topic of a post for another day, but something you need to keep in mind if traffic is—and should be—a goal.

2) Make Connections with Anyone…and Everyone

While it might not seem like reconnecting with your old schoolmates or ex-girlfriends will be of benefit to your business, making connections—and lots of them—should be your goal in LinkedIn. Even if an old co-worker is in a totally unrelated business or industry, they might know someone who needs the services your business offers. Connections in LinkedIn help build authority and trust and a recommendation from a mate or boss can boost web traffic, leads and even sales.

Start by making a list of anyone and everyone you know or have dealt with in the past. Search for your friends, co-workers, acquaintances, current and past business associates, customers and suppliers. You’ll be surprised to see just how many people you actually know.  From there, you can keep adding to this list of connections by connecting with your connections’ connections and the people you meet while interacting in LinkedIn Groups, another very valuable marketing tactic.

3) Interacting in LinkedIn

Unfortunately, it’s not enough to just build profiles; you’ve got to interact by making regular status updates, adding links in your updates and the content you share to your website and others.

• Ask questions and answer people’s inquiries about your business or area of expertise. Interacting in LinkedIn is what gives you and your business credibility. Remember, no amount of web marketing will win you traffic, leads and sales if people don’t trust that you are who you say you are.
• Join groups that relate to your industry or that interest you. With more than a million groups to choose from, you’re likely to find something that applies, but if not, create your own group.

4) Content Your Connections will Appreciate

Just like any other web marketing you do, marketing in LinkedIn requires quality content. Write articles and share eBooks or How-to’s that your connections will appreciate. Remember who your audience is and that while it might be appropriate to share a post on a particular topic on your business’ blog, the people you connect with in LinkedIn might not find it as interesting or worthy of a read.

Before you start thinking there’s no way you’ve got enough time to dedicate to LinkedIn, ask yourself if you can afford not to have a strong presence on this business networking site. When your competitors are marketing themselves effectively in LinkedIn, you’ve got to do the same or lose out. Besides, LinkedIn makes the pool of web prospects a little shallower by bringing B2B people and their businesses together. The least you can do is participate and reap the rewards!

If you would like to learn more about creating a highly effective LinkedIn profile and what it takes to network like a champ, or would feel more confident hiring a team of web marketing experts to do it for you, get in touch with The SEO Company on 1300 885 557 or email us here.