3 tips for using LinkedIn with your small business

LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful social media platform for small businesses to take advantage of – if they know how to use it. Here are three tips for developing your business on LinkedIn.

Build your brand and credibility with quality content

LinkedIn is a great place to share blog posts, thoughts, pictures and videos that demonstrate your competency as a business. If you're a law firm, you could write articles on news updates or famous cases, integrating takeaways and lessons for readers. If you sell electronics you could write how-to guides on the latest products, or give in-depth guidance on which ones to avoid. Whatever the business, the goal is to provide readers with value at the same time as you're showing them you're a knowledgeable and trustworthy business.

Leverage your employees' networks

One of the most overlooked ways to promote your business on LinkedIn is encouraging your employees to share your business's content with their own personal networks. 

The reach you have directly on LinkedIn might be small, but your indirect network can be enormous.

The reach a small business has directly through their followers is generally quite small. However, when you factor in the reach you could have if staff members shared your content to their networks, the eyeballs on your content can dramatically increase. If your content is truly valuable, then it can be shared even further, spreading virally. 

Have your profile set up to impress customers and candidates

A solid company profile can help generate customer leads as well as employee ones.

A customer that's trying to decide whether they should purchase from you will often go to LinkedIn to check out what their profile might say about their product or service. Given that LinkedIn is a professional network, often these customers can be B2B. In this case, they want to get a feel for whether you can be a reliable part of their supply chain. LinkedIn's own statistics show that users are almost 50 per cent more likely to purchase a company's product after interacting with them positively on the platform, so it's a great place to make your mark.

In many ways, a jobseeker is the same as a customer, except the product they're looking for is an employment opportunity. When your LinkedIn profile is set up right – all the correct information, links to your website, compelling content and a detailed 'About Us' section – people that are scoping you out for job opportunities are going to be even more convinced that you're a worthy employer.

Getting your LinkedIn marketing right is just one part of running a successful small business. For more information on how Wilson Porter can assist you with the others, contact a member of the team today.