Optimize Your Brand's Presence on LinkedIn

Let me throw some statistics at you. (Hold on.)

LinkedIn has 380 million users.
LinkedIn is attracting new users at the rate of 2 every second.
Linkedin gets 35 billion pageviews each quarter.
LinkedIn reaches 37% of the total U.S. digital population
LinkedIn users spend an average of 17 minutes on the site per month.
LinkedIn has 1 million professional publishers on the network.
LinkedIn has hosted more than 3 million longform posts.
LinkedIn serves as the publishing platform for 18,571 long for posts per day.
LinkedIn is used by 41% of all millionaires.

Numbers alone do not form an actionable plan. But all of these statistics are leading somewhere: LinkedIn is awesome.

But awesome for who?

It’s easy to view LinkedIn as a big resume board — a place where individuals can share their personal contributions and achievements.

And it is that. But it’s more. LinkedIn isn’t just for individuals. It’s for businesses.

The lost value of LinkedIn — and therefore its potential value for you — is that LinkedIn provides major optimization opportunities for businesses.

Just as you can present your individual prowess and professionalism on LinkedIn, so you can communicate the expertise and products of your company on LinkedIn. Your business can shine on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn provides a source of indisputable brand integrity, a marketing tool, a talent attractor, a lead generator, a thought leadership platform, and way more.

Here’s what you need to know about optimizing your brand’s presence on one of the world’s most powerful online business directories.

Enlist your experts to produce content.

One of the first things you should do is decide who’s going to “do” LinkedIn. Your social media department is an obvious choice. Be sure to Add Administrators (Edit → Designated Users Only), so the right people can access the page, edit the page, and post updates.

Choose your keywords.

LinkedIn is a massive search engine, fielding millions of queries daily. Many users search for companies specifically using LinkedIn’s boolean or business-specific search. How does LinkedIn generate accurate search results? It depends on the keywords you’ve used in your profile. Select these keywords wisely, since they impact your visibility.

Make it look good.

Use custom banners to improve your brand’s visibility. Businesses can use three banners for their company page. The sizing of these banners is 646 x 220. Go a step further and use these banners to showcase a CTA.

Update regularly.

When thinking through their “social media strategy,” most companies eagerly figure out how often to post on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Instagram. What about LinkedIn? LinkedIn is just as important as social platform, and potentially more important, depending on the niche and nature of the company. Update frequently in order to improve your exposure. Twice daily is a good rule of thumb.

Create a company group.

Start a group as an accompaniment to your company’s presence. You can create closed groups for your employees to interact and discuss issues. You can also create group that is company related, but open for discussion from all sources. Such a group may be a helpful source of interaction for potential clients or talent prospects.

Invite website visitors to follow your company on LinkedIn.

Increase your company’s visibility on LinkedIn by adding a “Follow” button to your homepage. You can create this simple social feature using LinkedIn’s Plugin Generator.

Release a steady stream of Slideshares.

LinkedIn loves Slideshare. They loved it enough to spend $119 million to acquire it. It makes sense that Slideshare and LinkedIn have a tight integration. You can use this cozy relationship to add some pizzazz to your business page. Well-designed slideshows are a remarkable addition to a business page, and can add some life and color to your updates as well.

Link to the right website page.

The most natural thing with a LinkedIn company page is to link to your website homepage. I would suggest something more strategic. Link to a custom landing page. You already know that users are coming from LinkedIn. Take this opportunity to introduce them to your company with a unique landing page that will turn them into leads.

Post videos.

Videos garner huge engagement on LinkedIn. 60% of the top 100 brands on LinkedIn actively post videos. With the YouTube and Vimeo integration, sharing videos is a snap. Placing a video on your profile page is also a strategic way to keep users on the profile page longer.

Use a Showcase page.

LinkedIn doesn’t provide a products and services tab for companies anymore (discontinued April, 2014). They have something better. It’s called Showcase pages.

Showcase pages which appear on the right hand side of a company page are intended to promote a specific product or service. They appear as a separate result type in general queries. You can have up to 10 Showcase pages. Each Showcase page gets a unique logo, banner, and individual analytics.

If you use a Showcase page, keep in mind that these pages can be followed just like company pages. The more Showcase pages you use, the more updates you’ll need to keep up with.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is the number one social media platform that companies aren’t using. The reason is fairly obvious. LinkedIn is mistakenly viewed as focused on individuals. In reality, the power of LinkedIn extends beyond resumes and job histories, and into the open landscapes of business development, leads, connections, and beyond.

How are you using LinkedIn to build your brand?

This article was written by Neil Patel from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. SmartRecruiters is the hiring success platform to find and hire great people.