Hi everybody!
Small companies and start-ups should definitely use LinkedIn for their business. It’s a great platform that is really useful especially for such companies as they often don’t have a lot of money to invest for marketing and communication. Whether you don’t have a LinkedIn business account yet or you have one but don’t really use it, this blog post is made for you. You might be hesitant to use this platform, thinking it will make you lose time or you don’t see how you could take advantage of it. So, let me give you 6 reasons why your company should definitely start with it, to benefit from it a maximum.
1. Promote your business
LinkedIn is the perfect place to communicate what your company is all about. You can write a description of what your company does by sharing your vision, your story, your missions as well as your values. To do so, it’s quite easy. You’ll just have to create a LinkedIn business page (which is free by the way) and then write down the information asked by LinkedIn to complete your profile.
2. Build strong business relationships
With 675 million members, 30 million of which are companies, LinkedIn is the world’s largest business networking online platform. You’ll meet plenty of people there, from clients you already have to future ones, as well as suppliers and other stakeholders of your industry. Being on LinkedIn will allow you not only to connect, but also to engage with them, which will help a lot in the building of a strong relationship. And you know what? With its advanced search function you’ll find all the people you need to know very easily.
3. Develop your company’s credibility
By posting rich content related to your company and industry, you’ll show that you are an expert and therefore that you can be trusted. It will give you credibility which will help your company to become a leader in your field of activity.
4. Find the perfect job candidates
With so many LinkedIn users sharing their professional and education background, as well as their skills, their current professional status (for instance if they are interested in new working opportunities) and so much more, why not thinking of this as an opportunity to find the perfect match for your company? You could start by connecting and engaging with them, and who knows, they might be your next employee. Also, by posting job offers on the platform, you will increase the chance that people see them and therefore more candidates will apply to them. The more applicants you’ll have, the easiest it will be to find your hidden gem.
5. Improve your Google ranking and bring more traffic to your website
Google loves LinkedIn! Indeed, if you want to improve your SEO on Google, LinkedIn might just be your solution, as the search engine will position LinkedIn company pages high in its search results. But don’t forget that in order to have a good ranking, you’ll need to pay attention to the keywords you use on your LinkedIn page (for instance use relevant ones in the text describing your company). They should be related to your field of expertise and represent what your company does.
Also, when creating your LinkedIn company page, do not forget to link it to your website, because if your LinkedIn page ranks before this one on the Google search results, it will be a great way for people to get an easy link to your website, which will lead to more traffic to it at the end.
6. Identify trends and opportunities
LinkedIn is a great way to keep you up-to-date. By following other actors of your industry, for instance competitors, suppliers and so on, you will find useful information regarding their accomplishments, their evolution and the next trends to pay attention to, which can help you find new business opportunities.
I truly hope these reasons have helped you realize the potential that LinkedIn represents for your business. Let me know in the comments below if you see other reasons why LinkedIn for business is useful. I am very curious to hear what you think!
In my next article, I’ll write about all the things you need to know about LinkedIn posts. In the meantime, do not hesitate to share this article if you liked it or you think it might be useful for someone you know.
Take care!
Loved this article – I didn’t even think about identifying trends + opportunities for a business site but of course it makes a lot of sense! What do you think about businesses, that don’t typically find their future employees on LinkedIn? For example a restaurant?
Thanks a lot Olivier and happy to hear you enjoyed this article! To answer your question, I’d say that even though LinkedIn might not be the typical platform to promote businesses like restaurants, I still believe there is an opportunity for them, for instance when it comes to their brand awareness or to create a B2B network. Indeed, it could be a great place to connect with event professionals that might then choose your restaurant to host their parties.