How Can Small Businesses Benefit by Using LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has a reputation for being a social platform for industry leaders and well-known experts. This is why many small businesses skip out on LinkedIn. They consider LinkedIn to be a social platform for industry stalwarts to publish their content and viewpoints.

Though its reputation is being one of the most professionally focused social platforms, the notion that LinkedIn cannot serve the purpose of small businesses is entirely false. LinkedIn is a great place to build onto your business connections and make the bond stronger with existing connections.

Let’s explain how LinkedIn can help small businesses in their social strategy.

 

Build a LinkedIn page for your company

You may already have a personal LinkedIn page, but it cannot leverage all the advantages drawn from a LinkedIn business page. By having a LinkedIn company page, you can easily stay connected with your employees, customers, prospective employees and people who are important for your business. When building a company page on LinkedIn, you need to do the basics right, and that includes providing a company website link in the URL section, creating a professional looking banner, offering a business description, and linking all your existing business connections already on LinkedIn. Company pages on LinkedIn make the business visible to search engines as well. This is one of the reasons you need to consider LinkedIn as a crucial tool for your social media strategy.

 

Building a robust industry network on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is preferred by most industries and businesses with reputable brand names to communicate with other industry leaders and influencers. However, keeping in touch with other brands and companies in your niche is important for your small business. When it comes to branding, it is incredibly important to make sure your business is discussed by other brands within your niche. With a regular presence and frequent LinkedIn activities, you can easily socialize with other stalwarts in your industry and get noticed by a larger audience.

 

Make use of LinkedIn recommendations extensively

LinkedIn, unlike many other social platforms, allows users to showcase customer recommendations. Every time a customer positively reviews a business on a LinkedIn page, it gets a badge from LinkedIn which is openly displayed for everyone to see. Your business can easily showcase the popularity and positive responses from your customers on LinkedIn and influence other visitors. It is already a known fact that social media recommendations influence buying decisions more than anything else. 88% of consumers depend on online reviews and recommendations before purchasing products.

 

Posting expert blogs on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is equally a great platform for blogging. Many industry stalwarts and several businesses become quickly discoverable this way. LinkedIn blog posts are also ranked in Google SEO and other major search engines. The blog benefits your business by establishing a voice of an expert. With quality blog posts you can build a reputation as a contributor of quality content.

 

Non-promotional engagement in LinkedIn groups

You can find a lot of professionally focused groups populated within niche industries. For every business niche, you can find several popular groups on LinkedIn. Becoming a member of these groups is the easiest way to promote your business. Post relevant content in these groups to build a long-term engagement and create a strong community around your brand. Just engage with the audience with non-promotional content.

 

To conclude

There’s a huge potential for LinkedIn for small businesses. As your business grows, LinkedIn will play an important role in spearheading the growth. LinkedIn helps to make your social media activities and promotions more professionally focused. With Facebook, you can reach the audience at large, but in LinkedIn you connect people that really matter to you.

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