No question: LinkedIn is indispensable for businesses today. With around 600 million registered users, the platform is now one of the most significant social networks in the world. Companies active here can leverage a whole range of advantages that the platform offers. These benefits impact not only the acquisition of new employees and young talents but also customer success: B2B companies, in particular, can gain attention, position their brand, signal their expertise, and interact with important individuals within and outside their existing network. But how exactly can companies implement these advantages for themselves, and why should they absolutely not forgo using this platform for their purposes?
1 Become a Thought Leader
The platform stands out primarily due to its great potential in terms of reach. Companies and their key stakeholders have the opportunity here to signal their expertise and present their perspective on things – thus becoming a thought leader. Well-founded contributions with professional added value can ultimately open up an exciting perspective and offer important information content to other LinkedIn users. Those who ensure that their contributions are high-quality, innovative, and well-founded will be repeatedly sought out by users when it comes to statements or assessments of specific situations. Good positioning can generate attention and build reputation. The fact is: By offering content-based added value in the form of relevant content, potential customers and business partners can be reached. This works particularly well here, as LinkedIn, similar to Facebook and Twitter, offers companies the opportunity to achieve reach through multiplication: If a member pays attention to a post with a like or a comment, this post suddenly becomes visible to all contacts of that member. In this way, people who are relevant to one's own industry but are not yet in one's own network can be reached. But companies and their representatives can benefit not only from sharing their own content: Through groups, they can also network with other thought leaders, thereby gaining important advocates and building more influence. Overall, LinkedIn therefore offers a great opportunity to strengthen the community's trust in one's own expertise.
2 Generate Leads
Thought leadership doesn't bring money, right? Wrong! LinkedIn is so important for B2B companies today precisely because interested observers can quickly become leads and thus paying customers here. Because: Whoever draws attention to themselves with relevant content and offers informative and entertaining added value simultaneously provides insight into their expertise, working methods, and views. For potential customers, this means they can better assess who they are dealing with. Producing and sharing high-quality content, ideally in an accurate, professional, and approachable manner, therefore becomes the best advertising. Furthermore, the platform offers great opportunities for direct contact: If interested members within or outside their own network become aware of their post, they can easily and quickly leave a comment or send a direct message – and contact is already established. The tedious task of looking up email addresses or phone numbers is thus a thing of the past. This significantly lowers the barrier to contact and ensures direct communication with potential customers.
3 Attract Talent
However, it's not only B2B clients who swear by the popular platform. Applicants have also long discovered the platform for themselves. Companies can ultimately also place their job postings in LinkedIn's job portal and attract applicants with a detailed and engaging company profile. Applicants, too, can get a much better picture of what the company stands for, how it works, and what it values, by using the content posted by the company. This makes it more likely to gain the trust and sympathy of applicants than with standardized job postings on large portals, where applicants don't get a deeper insight into the company's philosophy and working methods, and important information tends to get lost among common phrases. Because company employees can also be found directly on the platform, contact for applicants is also made easily via a direct personal message. Asking questions and the initial getting-to-know-you feel much more personal and natural than, for example, through an anonymous form.
4 Maintain Network
In business, the right connections are crucial – experts probably agree on that. And here too, the popular social platform can help, because: LinkedIn allows for casual contact to be maintained with acquaintances made at conferences, meetings, and other professional events. Unlike Facebook, these contacts can be added to one's network without having to disclose personal or private information. Sharing or publishing a post can then be an occasion for renewed contact. The good thing: LinkedIn is a worldwide network, similar to Facebook. Thus, international acquaintances can also be easily overseen and managed in one place. Also, the mutual recommending and brokering of contacts works extremely simply on LinkedIn: People for whom a post or a contact might be relevant can simply be tagged under the post.
5 Low Activity
Believe it or not: only 3.75% of users regularly create content on LinkedIn – crazy, right? But how can companies make the most of their presence on the platform? Some tips and tricks can help.
Optimized Company Description
A comprehensive, easy-to-understand, and accessible company description allows both customers and applicants to get an accurate impression of the company. If the right keywords are also included, the company will be found by all interested parties. For more information, the link to the company's own website should always be included.
User-Friendly Information Presentation
The information should always be well-structured and presented in a way that is easily scannable, meaning it can be quickly grasped at a glance. By the way: Very formal language and complex expressions are out of place. Instead, a professional yet approachable tone should be chosen.
Added Value and Quality Instead of Pure Marketing
The internet is full of people who want to sell something. It is therefore important not to turn one's content into a pure sales brochure, but always to offer informative added value that provides other users with important insights or reports something new.
Regularity and Consistency
Those who regularly produce content have the best chances. They generate an audience that already looks forward to new posts. It makes sense to give the posts a recognition value, for example, by always using the same filter for photos.
Experiment with Content Types
There are many ways to convey your message: Whether with photos, texts, an article, a video, or an audio recording – the possibilities are unlimited. And they want to be used! Therefore, one's own postings can certainly be a bit more creative. This also helps to draw the attention of relevant target groups in the flood of content and to optimize one's own digital selling.
