Social Media Marketing: LinkedIn for Online Community Development
August 18, 2011 by Brandon Aday | 0 comments
If you are a professional in any industry, and someone asks if you are on LinkedIn, your answer better be a resounding YES! Not only is it important to have a profile filled 100%, but it is also important to promote your profile whenever possible. The barrier to connect with those you don't yet have a professional relationship is much lower, compared to Facebook, which is for more personal relationships. Unlike with Twitter, you can be more selective with who you connect with. However, the key benefit to using LinkedIn, is that you know what people are on the network for... to connect on a professional level!
Now this post won't focus on the individual LinkedIn profile page in particular, or how to use it for networking, as that has been covered in many articles, blog posts and books (see The Power Formula for Linkedin Success: Kick-start Your Business, Brand, and Job Search ). I will however go over some of the basics. For example, you should have your profile 100% filled out, and should configure your custom vanity URL (i.e. http://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonaday). You should also make sure your profile is publicly available and can be found in Google and other search engines. In fact, when I type in Brandon Aday, this is the first result that pops up.
Once you have your profile filled out, and are making connections, be sure to ask for recommendations, and to recommend others whom you have worked with in the past. Once you get comfortable with LinkedIn, you can start joining groups that are related to your field, and even start answering questions in LinkedIn Answers (and sharing links back to your website, profile or other valuable content). Finally, you should also make sure that you optimize your Job Title, to be as descriptive as possible, as it will be viewed in search results. For example, my job title is set to "Digital Marketing Strategist", instead of President/CEO of Aday Interactive, Inc.
Now with that out of the way, let's look at a feature sometimes overlooked about the network: the company profile! The company profile is similar to the Facebook Fan Page, although not as feature rich. The LinkedIn company profile page can provide an overview of your organization, as well as pages for products and services. It is allows your connections to keep up with your company news, without them having to follow you in a space that is considered to be more for family in friends.
So now let's take a quick overview of what the profile looks like. You can find profiles under the "Companies" menu item at the top of the page. You will notice there are not many options for customization, so each page is fairly similar. Below are some screenshots of the Aday Interactive, Inc. company profile on LinkedIn which was recently launched. You will notice the pages allows for an overview of your company and services.
If you click "More" under the overview, you will also see keywords that indicate your organizations specialities. In this case they are Digital Marketing, Web Development, Social Media, and E-Commerce.
Under the Services tab, you can include product or service listings, as well as descriptions and social links to share your page with others. As you can see below, you can customize the page with banner images, as well as place promotions on the right column of the page. In this case, the page is showing a raffle I am promoting on they Aday Interactive Facebook Fan Page, that will provide a $100 Voucher for Google AdWords to a lucky subscriber to the Aday Interactive, Inc. Newsletter each month until the end of 2011! You can place different promotions on each service page, and each can lead back to a specific landing page on your website. In addition, you can also have current customers "Recommend" your products and services, so you can spread them vitally to their network connections.
Similar to the Fan Page, you can also link your company profile to your Twitter account so that it can constantly stream your tweets. You can also import your RSS feed so that visitors can see your latest posts in your blog.
Once you have created your company profile, and have added all of the relevant content, you can share it with your connections on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and ask them to "follow" your page. If you have multiple employees on the site, you should also have them all place "current employer" to match your company profile. This will update the employee listings automatically on the company profile, and can help expose your page to their own networks as well. You should also encourage current clients, website visitors and others who are interested in your services to follow your page. This will allow them to receive updates, just like in the Facebook News Feed.
LinkedIn is a great site with many different options and services that are not often taken advantage of. With a little exploration, you can create a nice professional profile for your site on LinkedIn, which can help enhance awareness of your organization, as well as increase off-page SEO to your website. Though it is no where close to Facebook in regards to size, it is the largest social network of professionals on the Internet, which everyone should tap into to help grow their online community building efforts! If you have any questions on how to set up your company profile feel free to contact us for more information or schedule a coaching session today!
