LinkedIn for Business: a Guide to Best Practices

A Beneficial Social Network for Your B2B and Recruitment Needs

· Blog

Founded in 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, LinkedIn has been connecting professionals worldwide for over 20 years. Now used by individuals and companies, the platform boasts over 1 billion members[1] as of June 2024, including 24.4 million in Canada[2] as of April 2024.

With so many people connected, LinkedIn has become the ultimate networking platform. Here are some tips for business leaders to optimize their use of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn: An Ideal Platform to Increase Visibility and to Stand Out

With over 67 million companies[3] registered on the platform, LinkedIn is an excellent place to highlight your services, promote professional activities, enhance your brand, strengthen your reputation, and remain open to new opportunities.

If you use LinkedIn personally, you must tailor your profile to make it stand out. The same goes for your business page: how does your company differentiate itself from competitors?

LinkedIn users spend an average of 17 minutes per month on the platform.[4] Maximize your chances of being seen and engaging your audience!

How to Optimize LinkedIn for Your Business

Just as incomplete personal profiles fail to attract potential employers or business partners, an unfinished business page won’t stand out either.

Fill out all sections and keep your page updated. A completed profile is more credible and professional and appears more often in search results, driving more traffic to your page.

Make Your Story Appealing

The “Home” and “About” sections are the first areas visitors will explore. In the “About” section, introduce your company by telling its story, describing your products and services, sharing your mission and your values, and highlighting what sets you apart from your competitors.

Your presentation texts should be structured, concise, error-free, and strategically written with keywords relevant to your field. Write convincingly but avoid overloading sections with too much text—visitors often skip overly lengthy descriptions.

Include a link to your company’s website and your organization’s physical address.

Not overly confident in your writing skills? Consider hiring an agency specializing in crafting this type of content.

Showcase Your Company Through Images

LinkedIn is a social platform, and just like similar channels, a picture is worth a thousand words! The profile picture and banner are the first elements visitors see on your page.

Typically, use your company logo as your profile picture. This logo should also appear on the personal pages of your leadership team members and employees.

The banner can introduce your company with a catchy tagline or feature an attractive visual tailored to your products and services.

Use high-quality, professional photos or illustrations. After all, it’s your brand image at stake!

Grow Your Business… and Your LinkedIn Page

By adding your LinkedIn page to your website and other platforms where your company is active, search algorithms will favour you even more. You can also mention your LinkedIn page in newsletters and emails.

The “LinkedIn Page Analytics” dashboard is a goldmine for optimizing your business profile. It provides data to assess your page’s growth and track trends based on specific metrics (content, followers, visitors, etc.) or timeframes.

Drive Engagement

The more you post and interact on LinkedIn, the more the algorithm will highlight you. Start by encouraging people to follow your page.

When members interact with your posts, your profile becomes more visible and more frequently visited. Encourage your leadership team members, employees, partners, and clients to follow your page and share your content.

What Content Should You Share?

Post regularly to encourage interaction with your content and take the time to respond to comments. Don’t forget to engage with posts from your peers as well!

Enrich your news feed by behaving like a human, not a bot! Scheduled posts with no follow-up or interaction discourage potential clients or partners from reaching out. Like other social networks, LinkedIn thrives on user engagement. No engagement means no interest. Stay active and responsive.

Share relevant, engaging content highlighting your company’s expertise without relying solely on self-promotion. Prioritize quality over quantity, offer variety, and occasionally share third-party content. The current best practice is to aim to share new posts on your company LinkedIn page twice a week.

Adding an image or video is more likely to grab attention when sharing.

Keywords, Hashtags, and Groups

Optimize your business page and posts with effective keywords to attract the right audience!

Keywords increase visibility in LinkedIn’s search engine and on Google, as LinkedIn pages are indexed there.

In addition to keywords, hashtags are beneficial when posting content. Hashtags help users discover your posts. Use them thoughtfully and sparingly.

Maximize your company’s presence by joining related groups, communities within your field, and discussions that encourage people to follow your page.

Participating in quality discussions is also a way to demonstrate your organization’s leadership in its field. You can even create your own group!

Advertising on LinkedIn

Businesses can also access advertising tools to run paid campaigns with targeted outreach. This method goes beyond organic content strategies, helping you reach specific target groups potentially interested in your products and services.

These ads can appear as promotional content in user feeds, messages in InMail, or text ads.

LinkedIn has been the leading online professional networking site for over twenty years since its beginning. Capital-Image can help amplify your company and brand across various platforms, including LinkedIn.

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