How can Businesses Benefit from Using LinkedIn?

Technology has evolved to provide us with a stream of powerful tools that are available for you to reach new customers and connect with existing ones. Each tool has its own audience, purpose, and objectives, and generates different kinds of leads. Social media platforms are great for connecting with your customers and gaining trust from referrals and prospects. However, LinkedIn has many other valuable benefits such as it helps you connect with other companies, potential employees, and networking leads – we’ll get into these a bit further down.

This article will take you through the key benefits of LinkedIn marketing and how to use it as a business owner. Make sure you create (or update) your company page on LinkedIn right after reading this article to start making the most of these benefits.

But firstly…

What is LinkedIn?

Like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, LinkedIn is a social network. But unlike most social networks, LinkedIn is a professional networking site, designed to help people make business connections, share their industry experiences and insights, and find jobs.

LinkedIn is for anybody and everybody who is interested in taking their professional life more seriously by looking for new opportunities to grow their careers and connect with other industry professionals. Additionally, businesses can leverage the platform to strengthen their B2B marketing and establish a creditable and trustworthy presence online.

LinkedIn is an integral part of many successful businesses because of how effective it is in expanding professional networks.

Why is LinkedIn important for business?

LinkedIn is now the world’s largest professional network on the internet. It is one of the only social media platforms which focuses on the people behind the brand more than the product or service itself. From maintaining your personal brand to generating qualified leads, using LinkedIn is now an important part of being a fully-fledged professional in any industry.

It isn’t just a professional space for bigger companies, LinkedIn has become a valuable resource for smaller businesses in the B2B market. In fact, according to Hubspot, LinkedIn generates leads 227% more effectively than Facebook and Twitter, so it can be an essential platform for businesses utilising social media.

The Benefits of LinkedIn Marketing?

There are many benefits to establishing a presence on LinkedIn:

• engaging with followers and prospects
• generating leads
• expanding your business through career opportunities
• strengthening your public image as reputable and trustworthy. You can follow relevant companies and people, leverage existing relationships, and build new ones to grow your network.

To reap the benefits of LinkedIn and encourage your audience to contact your company, and perceive your brand as a trusted resource, we recommend all our clients set up a company page.

If you want to use LinkedIn to make valuable business connections, enhance your online presence, generate qualified leads, or find top quality talent, you will find the following benefits invaluable to getting your presence known across the LinkedIn platform.

1) It Helps You Rank Higher in Search Engines

When you have a LinkedIn profile, your business name will always rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPS).

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is extremely important for businesses today, especially when it comes to acquiring new customers. When you set up your LinkedIn profile, you can include key business information to encourage and promote online visibility.

Additionally, regularly updating your page and optimising posts for SEO can significantly improve your performance in SERPs when people run relevant searches on the internet. This means your business company page is more likely to appear on the first page of Google’s SERPs.

As a result, your company page and website may see an increase in visitor traffic, especially if you include links back to your company website in your posts.

In the example above, although our website is already ranked number one, our LinkedIn page is ranked 4th. Appearing on the first page of a Google SERP is key to gaining visibility.

2) You Can Network

LinkedIn is the ultimate environment for connecting with and building your professional network. Whether you need to find vendors, suppliers, manufacturers, or other third-party resources, LinkedIn’s networking abilities are second to none.

It’s common for businesses to join forces and work on larger projects with other businesses. For example, you may specialise in flooring or roofing, and you may be interested in working for a contractor as part of a larger project. Having a LinkedIn profile allows you to reach out directly and connect with the relevant people in different trades and industries.

Your company page supports you on this endeavour, as you have a trusted resource behind you that shows your network that you are legitimate. The platform is designed to connect people and companies with like interests, so your chances of finding a partner you can trust are increased with the power of the network.

These connections are great for helping your business to source new opportunities and grow.

3) Stay Up to Date

Like other social networking sites, LinkedIn aggregates a timeline and you can stay up to date with the latest developments, information, and concepts in your field. This is because connections in your industry, groups and overall network regularly post about what is happening.

Staying up to date helps you keep on top of the latest trends and insights so that you can always satisfy your customers and provide relevant and useful insights that relate to your line of work.

4) Find Employees When You Need Them

LinkedIn is a go-to platform for hiring managers as well as job seekers. When you have a LinkedIn profile, it is easier to find employees. People have more trust in a company that has a LinkedIn profile, and it is typically, one of the first places users go when they are looking for a new job. In fact, approximately 40 million people search for jobs on LinkedIn every week.

LinkedIn members who are seeking employment can search for jobs via LinkedIn, and your company will have a better opportunity to fill any vacant positions with highly qualified employees. Take advantage of this by keeping an active list of open jobs and positions attached to your company page. You are more likely to attract top tier talent based on the quality of your company profile and job descriptions.

So, if you want to attract quality employees, you will need a LinkedIn account.

5) Source Qualified Leads

A direct result of optimising your account profile and/or company page and posting relevant and informative content regularly, is the generation of organic leads, as users find and engage with you on LinkedIn.

Even better, businesses can promote their content through paid LinkedIn advertising, enhancing your lead generation efforts further. Paid LinkedIn ads allow you the control the targeting process by combining audience demographic criteria to build your ideal user, including IT decision makers, C-level executives, prospective students, small business owners and more.

You can reach the right audience with the right message to source your qualified leads.