10 Tips on using LinkedIn for your business

Read time: 6 minutes

LinkedIn is the largest business networking site in the world. Unlike other social networking sites, it is centred around advancing corporate careers and business reputation. LinkedIn is a true game changer for business to business (B2B) companies. With over 645 million users (LinkedIn, 2019), LinkedIn is a great tool to build networks and connections, generate leads, drive website traffic and build brand awareness.

Not familiar with LinkedIn? It might be the perfect platform to market your business! Here are 10 tips on using LinkedIn for your business.

10 tips on using LinkedIn for your business:

1. Encourage your employees to connect with your company’s LinkedIn Page

Employees are your biggest advocate. They want to be part of your organisation and they’re motivated to see it succeed. Ask your employees to list that they work for your company on their profile. By connecting with your employees on LinkedIn you’re not only enhancing your reputation as an employer, but you will also tap into each of their networks, expanding your reach tremendously. In fact, LinkedIn (2019) found that on average, your employees have a network that is 10 times larger than your company’s follower base.

2. Take advantage of LinkedIn with Groups

LinkedIn Groups provide a place for professionals and businesses in the same field to share content, find answers, post and view jobs, or make business contacts. Being an active participant in a LinkedIn group will therefore help you grow your networks within your industry. Participating in a group discussion will also attract views to your company’s page. If you’re looking to find relevant groups to join, simply use the search feature at the top of your homepage or select from the suggestions of “groups you may like”.

3. Connect with people you don’t yet know

The main point of LinkedIn is to establish new connections, and grow current connections with professionals you know. Users will have to find and follow your business’ page; however, it is useful to connect with people as a personal user too. Your personal LinkedIn profile should be reflective of your business and its values. Connecting with new people with your personal profile will help grow brand awareness and increase the likelihood of people following your business’ page.

4. Only use professional photos

If you’re using images on your business’ LinkedIn page, make sure you are using high quality imagery. Professional, high quality images will help to make your brand look professional and trustworthy. Also, remember to have your logo as the profile photo of your business’ page. To make sure your logo fits without cropping, resize your logo to 400 x 400 pixels.

 5. Customise your business’ public URL

LinkedIn gives business’ the opportunity to customise the URL of their business profile. We recommend at least including your business name in the URL. It is also useful to include keywords relevant to your business (eg. accounting) so that when someone searches for accounting business’ on LinkedIn, your business is more likely to show up.

Here’s Redsteps’ custom LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/company/redsteps-marketing-&-communications/

6. Use hashtags to get discovered

LinkedIn hashtags were only introduced in 2018. Like Instagram and Twitter, LinkedIn uses hashtags as a powerful tool to discover and connect with members who may not be following your businesses page. But since LinkedIn is a professional platform, it is important to keep hashtags relevant to your business. Branded hashtags are great too as they group your posts together so that users can easily explore your content!

Redsteps branded hashtags on LinkedIn are: #redstepsblog #redstepsevent #redstepswebsite #redstepsmarketing

7. Use images to increase content engagement

Our brains process images much faster than text, so it makes sense that posts with images result in twice as many comments than text-only content. According to LinkedIn (2019), image collages perform especially well for businesses.

8. Post job opportunities

Posting your job opportunity on LinkedIn allows you to reach professional and qualified candidates. Once you post a job, it becomes visible to the entire network on LinkedIn. LinkedIn users can then apply for your job directly from LinkedIn, making it easy for you, the employer, to cross check their resume with their public profile.

9. Post content at the right time

Research shows that posts to LinkedIn tend to get the most engagement on Wednesday mornings. It’s good to keep this in mind when planning out your LinkedIn posts. To learn more about the best times to post to social media, click here.

10. Stay up to date with new LinkedIn changes

LinkedIn has been making lots of changes lately, and they are expected to continue changing their structure. One of the latest updates to LinkedIn – you can now easily schedule meetings with LinkedIn’s in-app calendar. To keep up to date with changes, be sure to check out LinkedIn’s blog.

We hope you found these 10 tips on using LinkedIn for your business useful!

Redsteps turned 10 this year, so we’re celebrating with a series of ’10 tips’ blogs to help you with your business’ marketing. Follow us on LinkedIn to be notified when we upload our next blog!