LinkedIn Marketing for Small Business
Targeting and reaching professionals and prospects
LinkedIn represents an important vehicle to help build awareness and demand for your small business, particularly when you know how to use it to target the right people and connect with professionals and prospective customers. Here are some simple tips on using LinkedIn to promote yourself and your small business.
LinkedIn marketing for small business
Why it’s important
LinkedIn is the fastest growing social media platform globally, and is the world’s largest professional social media site. It has over eight million users in Australia alone. Many small businesses use it to create connections with their customers and share high quality content about how they can solve buyer problems. When done consistently, this can significantly boost credibility and trust with your target audience.
However, before you can target and connect with the right people, professionals and prospective customers you need to make sure your personal profile and company page is in order. Here’s how…
LinkedIn Marketing – Step 1
Make your pages stand out
Individual Professional Profile
With millions of users on LinkedIn, it is worth putting the time and effort in to make your professional profile page stand out to your customers. Here are some tips to make sure yours best in class:
Descriptive headline with keywords
Be specific and descriptive in your headline. A generic job title, such as “Business Development Manager” does not have as much impact as listing specialty areas or industries you operate in. Think about the keywords your customers may be using to enhance your search engine optimisation.
Headshot and imagery
It is worth investing in professional photography for you and your employee’s headshots on LinkedIn. Also, you can make use of the background image (next to your headshot) to further promote your brand and business.
A powerful summary
Most people who view your profile will only scroll down as far as your career summary (particularly if viewing on a mobile device), so make it a powerful one. Once again, make sure it lists the problems you solve for your customers and keywords that people might be searching for to find someone with your specific skills.
Consistency
You wouldn’t want your employees handing out business cards in differing formats would you? The same rules apply online. It makes sense to ensure there is consistency across all employee LinkedIn profiles.
LinkedIn Marketing – Step 2
Make your company page stand out
Company Page Profile
Your LinkedIn company page represents another opportunity to market your small business – what you can offer and what makes your business unique. Here are some examples of potential content to share on your company page:
- Product announcements
- Company successes and wins
- Employee rewards and recognition
- Knowledge sharing (e.g. New research, whitepapers, infographics)
- Community activity (e.g. Employee fundraisers)
First take the time to update and refine your personal and company page on LinkedIn and then look out for Part 2 of this blog on small business marketing with LinkedIn. Part 2 will cover how to build and engage with your network, how to target professionals and prospects and how to generate leads using LinkedIn. We will discuss using high impact content and networking strategies and provide advice on how you can better use this tool to help grow your business.
Think of it this way, it’s important to get your house in order before the open for inspection! So make sure you update your personal profile page first.
Tennille Wong
Marketing Consultant
Small Chilli Marketing
Tennille Wong is a senior marketing professional with over 20 years of experience. She has worked in managerial roles for IBM and Motorola Solutions Australia and has led marketing campaigns for large and complex information technology and telecommunications solutions. She is passionate about marketing and understands all aspects of industry, product and channel marketing across both traditional and digital mediums.