LinkedIn is more than just a social network – it’s a tool that can help you grow your business. If you are not using it to its full potential, you are missing opportunities to connect with new people, expand your network, and learn from other professionals who share similar interests or goals as yourself.

Why should you take advantage of what LinkedIn has to offer? Here are five reasons why you should use LinkedIn to promote your business:

• It helps you connect with potential customers
• It helps you find employees
• It can help you establish credibility as an expert in your field
• It can help you get free publicity for your business through influencer endorsements and recommendations.
• It can help you find new opportunities for partnerships

Now let’s look at some steps you can take to promote your business on LinkedIn.

Create a LinkedIn page for your business.

If you have not already created a business page for your brand, this is the first step to start building an audience on LinkedIn. Once your company has its own independent presence on the site, encourage others within your field or industry to visit it and “follow” the content you share there. You can do this using any number of promotional tools, including email marketing campaigns or even posters in local office buildings where potential clients might pass by them every day (and therefore see them multiple times).

Build a community of followers.

Every business needs a community, and LinkedIn can help you build one. You can connect with people you know, people interested in your business, people who have a connection to your business, or people who have a connection to other businesses relevant to yours. For example, you can connect with:

• employees of companies that use the same software as you.
• employees of companies that supply the materials you need for your products or services.
• employees of companies where customers commonly visit or shop (for example, hotels).
• individuals whose skills align with the skills required for your job openings.

LinkedIn is all about connections and building relationships with others with similar interests and goals. Use this to your advantage by creating groups based on topics relevant to your industry and encourage people to join them. These groups will help you build a community around your brand, which could lead to new partnerships or opportunities for growth down the line.

Build relationships with employees, leaders, and customers.

One of the most important things you can do as a business leader is build relationships with your employees and customers. Linkedin allows you to connect with people from all over the world with similar interests. This can help you find new customers for your business, or even find new employees for your company. How can you do this?

Get active in groups. Groups are one of the best ways to meet new people and engage with them. Join groups relevant to your industry and share content from other members in your feed or comment on other people’s posts.

Follow people who are influential in their field and you’ll have access to their updates and news, as well as their insights on topics related to your industry. If they follow back, you can send them direct messages with questions or comments about what they posted.

Network with people who work in different departments at your company. You might not have much in common with someone from finance or human resources, but there may be some overlap between what they do and what you do, which makes it easier for both of you to understand what each of you does for a living.

Document your company’s history.

Documenting your company’s history is an important part of presenting your business as a reliable partner to customers and suppliers. You can do this with a timeline, which you should include on your website, or with short stories about the milestones in your company’s history. For example, if you were to write about how product X came to be, who was involved in its creation, what challenges they overcome during development, etc. Such content gives people an idea of what it took to get to where you are today (and also helps them see that you’re not just another fly-by-nighter).

Cross-post content from your blog to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a professional network, so it’s not a good idea to post content that isn’t work-related. You can post content related to your business, but it should be professional. It’s also okay to share content related to your personal life or hobbies, as long as it doesn’t compromise your professionalism in any way.

You can even use LinkedIn to highlight what you have accomplished in the past and how it has helped shape who you are today. Post content that solves problems, too. If you create quality posts relevant to your followers (and their followers), they’re more likely to share them with their networks than if they were just being posted onto their profiles alone. This means more people will see it and engage with it

Post job openings.

Posting a job opening on LinkedIn is a great way to reach more people who may not follow you on other social media platforms. You can also use it to find the right candidates for your open positions. LinkedIn offers free tools for posting and reposting jobs, including a “jobs” tab that allows you to customize how your ad looks and where it appears (e.g. career sites, company pages). As a bonus, LinkedIn sometimes offers discounts when hiring through their platform. Just be sure the position is eligible before signing up!

Tracking down people on LinkedIn is not as easy as on Facebook, but the people on it are typically more engaged and have more professional success, so the payoff can be worth it.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is a powerful tool that allows business owners to connect more personally with their staff and customers. It’s also an opportunity for companies to share what they do and how they do it, giving insight into their culture.

As of 2021 more than 4.5 billion people utilize social media. This represents tremendous potential for your brand to interact with. Practicing good social media engagement is the key to effectively tapping into that audience.

Social media engagement includes comments, likes, mentions, clicks, and shares. Many people believe that their success is determined solely by their number of followers – but the most important metric of social media success is actually an engaged audience. (Quality over quantity.)

Using this method of communication and outreach, you can overcome many of the obstacles that traditionally impede outbound marketing efforts, allowing you to reach a much larger audience of potentially interested individuals – many of whom could turn into leads and customers.

Creative Ways To Increase Social Media Engagement

You might cross your fingers and hope that your followers spontaneously begin to engage in conversation, but most will require some encouragement. Fortunately, there are a variety of tricks of the trade which can be used to increase interaction and make your digital platform a success:

1. Make Your Own Hashtags

Hashtags can help you organize your posting strategy and give interested subscribers a method to follow up with things that pique their interest. They can also help you attract new subscribers. Additionally, other brands may follow suit and tag you in comparable posts that use the same hashtag, which can increase interaction among your fans. Hashtagging is a unique and fun way to reach out to both existing and new audiences.

2. Create and Join Q&A Sessions

Participating in Q&A answer sessions is a great approach to provide users with value while also establishing your brand as a helpful one. If you’re able to provide appropriate responses to questions and initiate dialogue with prospective consumers before your competitors do, you can establish yourself as the go-to service provider or supplier in your industry.

3. Organise Online Competitions

Competitions on social media have been around since the inception of the digital revolution – and are one of the most effective techniques of increasing participation. Contests, on average, can contribute to a 34 percent increase in the size of your fan base. Keep these considerations in mind when orchestrating a competition:

• Clarify the Rules: Ambiguous or hidden rules can frustrate users, leading some to believe they’ve been duped.
• Give Yourself Adequate Time: Too much time is just as bad as not having enough time. To ensure that your content remains at the forefront of your audience’s minds, keep the length moderate. See what others are doing before finalizing your contest’s timeframe.
• Choose a prize that is appropriate for the situation: Generic showy prizes attract leads that aren’t interested in your product, so try to find something that uniquely appeals to your target audience. You may get fewer participants, but those that do participate are more likely to stay for the duration of the event. For example, giving away an iPad will almost certainly garner a lot of attention. But if the prize has little or nothing to do with your company, the attention you receive is unlikely to translate into qualified leads.

4. Connect With A Social Cause

Emotional content is significantly more successful than logical and dry content. A social cause is the ultimate emotional motivator, and may help your business stand out from the competition. Here are a few tips to help get you started:

• When researching potential causes, look for those that align with your brand’s principles. Choosing a social cause doesn’t necessarily have to be directly related to your industry, but it’s easier to fight for something that you are passionate about.
• Tap into your customer base for advice on which cause to take on. Utilize a poll or quiz to find out which issues resonate with your audience.
• Once you decide on a cause, create a list of ways that you can make a difference. Fundraising is a popular method, but caring and raising awareness might have a greater impact in some situations. Invite individuals to share personal stories on your channels. Demonstrate your support for the organization. Promote acts of goodwill. These will all help you reach your goals.

5. Host a Social Media Takeover

Sometimes the best way to breathe new life into your social media feeds is to hand them over to someone else. Partnering with an influencer or celebrity who has a large, engaged audience is a great approach to get your brand in front of some fresh faces while also injecting a new voice if you’re running low on post ideas. Make a list of business partners and industry contacts that you think might make ideal candidates. Takeovers are intended to increase exposure, so it’s best to partner with someone whose target audience is similar to your own.

With approximately 240 million people using social media nationwide, there’s a good chance that your niche customers and clientele are using at least one social network platform. Having a presence on these platforms is a great opportunity to get your brand in front of them.

Let’s look at a few of the benefits of marketing your business in a continuously growing digital community.

1) It establishes credibility.

With a whopping 81% of shoppers researching a brand or product online before making a purchase, it’s important that your business has an established online presence. When a potential customer or client sees an active social media platform from a company that regularly posts updates, it reassures them that you’re a legitimate business and not another internet scam. If you haven’t updated your website or social media platforms in a while, customers or clients may think you’ve gone out of business, or lacked legitimacy from the start.

2) It builds brand awareness.

The U.S Small Business Administration states that there were 31.7 million small businesses at the end of 2020, proving how competitive it can be for a business to thrive. Social media can communicate your brand’s distinguishing factors that set your business apart from the competition. There are multiple formats of content you can share on your business profiles, including images, videos, and blogs. Social media platforms typically operate with similar features that allow users to share your content, thus exposing more potential customers to your brand. If creating content for your brand seems overwhelming, hiring a social media coordinator could be worth looking into.

3) It encourages engagement.

Interacting with your clients across social media platforms allows you to strengthen your customer relationships and build a loyal base of followers. Personalizing your responses to questions, concerns, and comments can show that your business genuinely cares about their experience. Once your customers feel connected to your brand, they will be more likely to use your service or shop your store.

73% of marketers have found that social media has been either “somewhat effective” or “very effective” with their brand. If you haven’t thought about integrating social media as a functioning tool of your business strategy, today is a great day to start.