LinkedIn for busi­ness­es: curate a pro­fes­sion­al image

To create a business profile on LinkedIn, you first need to make a personal profile, which is free and very quick and easy to do. This personal account does not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to contain content for you to set up a strong profile for your business. However, it’s rec­om­mend­ed that you maintain both profiles, since you represent both a point of contact and a company brand am­bas­sador. Therefore, the better your personal profile looks, the better you are po­si­tion­ing your company. 

From the upper toolbar, select the ‘Work’ menu, followed by the option ‘Create a Company Page’. Next, you are prompted to enter the name of your company and select a URL, such as linkedin.com/MyCompany. This web address can also be accessed from outside of the network and is used by search engines. Take time to consider your URL, as they can be somewhat cum­ber­some and the LinkedIn ad­min­is­tra­tors are able to change them again. Fur­ther­more, your URL must be com­plete­ly unique, providing another hurdle to overcome. You also have to confirm that you are a le­git­i­mate rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the company, because, of course, anybody could hy­po­thet­i­cal­ly create a company page for any business.

The next step is to write a de­scrip­tion of your company in 200 – 2000 char­ac­ters. Your de­scrip­tion should answer the following questions:

• In which sector are you active?
• Which services do you provide?
• Roughly how many employees work for your company?
• Where are you active?
• What is the story behind your company?
• What are some of the special services you provide for customers or employees?

When filling out your de­scrip­tion, ensure that you enter the most essential in­for­ma­tion first. This is because LinkedIn reduces the de­scrip­tion to a short preview; es­pe­cial­ly when reading text, internet users can stop paying attention re­mark­ably quickly, and might be put off by clicking on the ‘read more’ button. You should therefore make sure your writing follows the inverted pyramid principle, whereby, es­sen­tial­ly, the most important in­for­ma­tion comes first. LinkedIn has more options for busi­ness­es: you can make your company’s USPs crystal clear thanks to the selection of special fields. This will also help users find you with the search tool. Some elements are mandatory, including the company website, the ap­prox­i­mate number of employees, the type of industry, and the type of business. If you wish, you can enter up to three groups in which you are most active. These all indicate the topics that are most important for your business. LinkedIn fur­ther­more enables busi­ness­es to adjust their profiles for other languages. So, if your target audience also includes people outside of the United States, you can enter al­ter­na­tive business de­scrip­tions in addition to one in English.

You can switch to your desired language in the upper section of the editing page. Once you’ve done this, you can enter the text that you have adapted for your in­ter­na­tion­al target audience. The ‘Standard language’ setting defines your original language. Once you’ve filled every­thing out and checked that it’s correct, click ‘Publish’ (in the upper right corner of the page) to save your changes to your page. If you’d like to know how your page looks to other LinkedIn users, click on ‘Go to member view’. This will show you the updated version of your profile without pub­lish­ing your changes.

You mustn’t worry about keeping your company profile up to date on your own. If you add ad­min­is­tra­tors, several people can operate and edit the same page. Ad­min­is­tra­tors must all be reg­is­tered LinkedIn users with their own LinkedIn profiles. You can also assign different access rights to different people; each ad­min­is­tra­tor can therefore take on their own role. For example:

• Des­ig­nat­ed ad­min­is­tra­tors: The creator of the company page also belongs to this group. This type of ad­min­is­tra­tor can post company updates and add more admins.
• Re­cruit­ment publisher: The purpose of these re­cruiters is to publish company updates.
• Sponsored content publisher: These ad­min­is­tra­tors can create sponsored content to be displayed to users in that network.
• Ad­min­is­tra­tors for gen­er­a­tion of leads: The members of this group can download leads from the campaign manager. These ad­min­is­tra­tors are re­spon­si­ble for per­for­mance analysis.
• Pipeline builder ad­min­is­tra­tors: Users with these rights can set up special pipeline builder target pages that can be used to target pre-defined user groups.

All company employees that are reg­is­tered with LinkedIn can support your web presence on social media. When employees enter your company in their profile, they should make sure they create a link to the right company page. In addition, your employees (yourself included) should accept the system’s sug­ges­tions in the pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ence settings. Finally, employees should be linked to the company profile. This sets a good im­pres­sion for prospec­tive employees and business partners.

Re­gard­less of which strategy you use for your LinkedIn marketing strategy, you should always monitor, measure, and analyze your per­for­mance. The network has a range of tools for this purpose. When you select the ‘Analysis’ tab on the company profile, you will see three per­for­mance measuring cat­e­gories: visitors, updates, and followers. The first option examines your web traffic, dis­play­ing a graphic with a visitor count, broken down into mobile visitors and desktop users. Fur­ther­more, LinkedIn provides busi­ness­es with key de­mo­graph­ic data on visitors, according to local factors (i.e. country/region) and pro­fes­sion­al char­ac­ter­is­tics, such as job position, size of the business, and sector. You can also find out similar in­for­ma­tion about your followers: A graphic il­lus­trates the number of sub­scribers and their de­mo­graph­ics.

As pre­vi­ous­ly mentioned, LinkedIn is a business net­work­ing site. This fact cannot be stressed enough, as it should inform all your marketing efforts and posts on the platform. While most of Linked­In's users are also likely to use Facebook and Twitter, users visit different social media sites with very different in­ten­tions. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest emphasize users’ personal interests, while LinkedIn is as­so­ci­at­ed with pro­fes­sion­al pursuits – and user behavior adjusts ac­cord­ing­ly. The network can be used for in­no­v­a­tive purposes that would be com­plete­ly in­ef­fec­tive on other platforms; for example, b2b marketing and re­cruit­ing work far better in a business context such as LinkedIn, as users are specif­i­cal­ly looking to further their pro­fes­sions. Keep this in mind when designing your content; ensure that users stay informed about relevant issues. With this network, you benefit from sharing expertise and in­ter­est­ing in­for­ma­tion, rather than through funny posts.

Blog posts serve as LinkedIn’s primary marketing tool, and can be used in more than one way. Not only can these posts be used to share company updates, you can also inform users about achieve­ments and new products, and announce future col­lab­o­ra­tions and part­ner­ships. You can inform your followers about de­vel­op­ments in the industry or share ideas for in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Es­sen­tial­ly, you can dis­trib­ute any kind of content you like, as long as you keep your focus on the business. Generate fresh ideas with a well-co­or­di­nat­ed content curation strategy. You can increase the impact of your content strategy by en­cour­ag­ing your employees to get involved using their personal profiles. Ask your employees if they would be in­ter­est­ed in spreading your content or creating your own. If you do this, however, remember that everyone has their own profile to maintain, and it is not up to the company to dictate what goes on a personal profile. In addition to a company page, you can also create focus pages. In principle, these are struc­tured like and generated in the same way as company pages. They serve the purpose of high­light­ing specific posts from you. In doing this, you can devote a separate page to your brand, a product, or a special service. With LinkedIn Ads, you can extend your outreach even more. The platform provides three options for this:

• Sponsored content: if you advertise your posts, they will also appear to LinkedIn members outside of your immediate community, sig­nif­i­cant­ly expanding your outreach.

• Ad­ver­tis­ing: With LinkedIn, you have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to use more tra­di­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing methods. This will appear at the top or right of the website.

• Sponsored InMail: With this option, you can send your target audience updates that appear directly in their LinkedIn inboxes.

As a career-oriented net­work­ing site, LinkedIn is an effective re­cruit­ing platform. By placing job ad­ver­tise­ments on this platform, you achieve far less scatter loss by reaching spe­cial­ized users directly. The job ad­ver­tise­ment is displayed in your company profile and suitable can­di­dates are invited to submit ap­pli­ca­tions.

To advertise a job, go to the menu of your private profile and select ‘You’ and then ‘Job offers’. The next page will have your company details au­to­mat­i­cal­ly filled out for you; all you have to do is fill out the job title. The system will offer some sug­ges­tions for this. After this, you need to enter the job de­scrip­tion. You are also prompted to specify up to three areas of interest so that LinkedIn can recommend the job to the most ap­pro­pri­ate users. You also need to enter the kind of em­ploy­ment (full-time, part-time, in­tern­ship, etc.) and the career level, as well as a detailed and in­for­ma­tive job de­scrip­tion. Finally, you should state your contact details and publish the ad­ver­tise­ment.