LinkedIn is the largest networking platform for professionals. It is started in the year 2002, launched officially on May 5, 2003, by Reid Hoffman. LinkedIn was launched with a mission of connecting the world’s professionals at one place and make them productive and successful. Satisfying its core mission, it has now about 500+ million members enjoying the benefits of this amazing networking platform. No matter whether you’re running a business or an individual, LinkedIn helps you manage every process involved in your growth.
As networking plays a key role in marketing, LinkedIn helps you build a healthy network with your target audience (if you are a business). It helps you connect with your friends or selected profiles to gain fruits by marketing your products on the platform. If you are a business of customer-centric, you have the option to reach your connections with your products easily.
Things businesses can perform on LinkedIn:
- Connecting (networking)
- Advertising your brand
- Sales
If you are an individual looking for career growth
- You can connect with people in your industry
- Exchange references
Looking for ways on “how important is Linkedin marketing”, check out below 10 LinkedIn marketing tips needed for your business right now.
Build a Powerful Profile
All you need to do first is to create a personal profile with a perfect portfolio. Provide your email id, contact information to help people reach you easily. Include your professional experience, educational information, skills, location and other details you would like to share with your connections. Boosting profile comes under self-marketing which simply means promoting yourself as a brand.
If you represent a business, add your website link to your bio and explain your business to attract your target audience. Add a beautiful headline to your profile, hence it grabs the eyeballs of people who come across your profile. In overall, do not leave a single matter that engages your audience to your business (nothing but your profile).
Give Time for Networking
After you build your profile with an impressive narration about you, start connecting to the people based out in your niche. Find your relevant connections, connect with recommended people and if you miss doing this step, you are going to lose something big. Set up a strategy and start connecting directly with the audience, influencers, and groups that help you reach more people easily.
Start Advertising your Brand
You now have a professional account to promote your business or brand and some audience (as you always have space for new customers in the platform and business as well). Now, what’s next? Initiate posting and promoting your business with innovative content. Come up with powerful strategies for advertising your brand as well. Post content, an image or a presentation relevant to your business that hits your target connections and turns them as your customers.
There are interesting options for businesses to advertise their brands with newly introduced business solutions like sponsored content, message ads, text ads, and dynamic ads that attract your users.
Be careful when you are posting any content because delivering irrelevant content to your audience might result in losing them. Here comes the importance of networking, right?
Amplify your Network
Imagine, you have a lot to say or sell but lack in taking them to your customers or you are trying to promote your business skills guide to someone who wants to settle as a teacher. These are the practices that waste you a lot of time and trust from your connections.
To avoid these, know your audience and connections well. Know what they are interested in or what motivates them and what turns them into happy customers. Post something which makes your connections to engage with the content. Getting them engaged and making them like, comment, share or directly visit your profile will result in growing your network.
Optimize your Profile
Having a profile doesn’t mean you have all the chances to reach your right audience. You need to optimize with relevant and impactful keywords to stand among the successful LinkedIn marketers.
Insert short and long-tail keywords in your profile to take benefits from related search queries. It is not just enough optimizing your profile when you create the account. Do it frequently, so that you will not miss adding trendy keywords. Update your profile whenever you got a new feature or technology added in your business. Hence, you get connected with new connections searching for trending topics which is very advantageous in growing your network.
Establish Identity
Start creating your identity which in result help in gaining trust from your audience. Establish brand identity for your business posting high-quality and worthy articles or posts that really educate your connections about something new and interesting. No matter how regularly you post, the only thing that matters is if it is the engaging content or not.
Be in Touch
Though high-quality contents are required to boost a strong profile, posting regularly (one post on a day) will take you closer to your connections. Post something that would make people involved in discussing the topic you posted. Also, participate in group discussions, contribute your great ideas and keep your presence active online.
Build Trust
Business never goes dull when you have trusted customers on your side. Same way, having trusted and engaging people on your connection list will make your promotions successful. Never lose trust by posting or delivering irrelevant content. Instead, entertain them with new technologies that will amaze your audience.
Surprise Them With Innovation
Show off your creativity and innovation in your posts that grab the attention of the audience to the product you are promoting. Innovation is what makes you stand far away from your competitors. Implement strategies that reflect your brand identities, and reach more people than usual which in turn differentiates you from the crowd. In short, astonish your connections with your concepts.
Add LinkedIn Badge on your Website
LinkedIn is one of the most impactful platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Getting more followers or connections is necessary for your business to drive traffic from the platform. In the same way, it is important to drive traffic to LinkedIn profile from your website to keep in touch with your customers. Add a LinkedIn badge to your website along with other social media channels and create a bridge between your website and marketing plans.
LinkedIn Premium Plan
LinkedIn introduced a premium option where amazing advanced features are available. If you are business actively looking to connect with other businesses, this premium plan definitely helps you reach your goal. The plans include
- Inmail
- Unlimited search
- Premium search filters
- Expanded profile views
- Track who visited your profile
- Profile organizer
- Saved search alerts
- Access to receive messages from anyone
- Reference search
In short, premium members can visit any profile available Linkedin with this privilege plan. Members can see professional background details of anyone and contact them though they are not connected. Also, anyone who is not in your connections can message you with an openlink.
You can search for seniors like directors, CEOs, and other superiors with a premium membership plan. Know who visited your profile, organize your connections by placing different profiles in different folders or tags, save your search results, and get introduced to worthy profiles.
Pricing
The premium plan starts at $19.95 per month for sales professionals. Also, there are multiple premium plans based on the type of profiles like recruiters, general users, job seekers and salespersons.
