How To Use LinkedIn For Business Development Step by Step Guide

Many people don’t know how to use LinkedIn for business development. They think it’s just a site for working professionals and job seekers.

But, LinkedIn has many features that can increase engagement, and people don’t know about them because they’re not used to using LinkedIn in a business context.

So, I am going to show you some great ways to use LinkedIn for business development, including how to use stories and polls.

But, how?

Well, the study shows that 59% of users says that by LinkedIn marketing strategies you can generates 277% more leads than Facebook marketing for business development. 

Are you still curious?

Then, continue reading to know more about LinkedIn marketing.

Why You Should Begin Using it For Business Development

Increase visibility

You have a personal profile where your friends and family can see what you’re like. Why not start bringing in businesses that can help you expand your reach?

Businesses can see what type of people they should add to their team and understand how others perceive their company.

Connections

You have connections with people outside of LinkedIn through email addresses or phone numbers from past phone calls or meetings.

Expand those ties by adding people through the network. Once they know about your profile, they can look into connecting with you on a more formal level.

Networking

Start engaging with your network by commenting on posts, joining groups, and sharing informative or newsworthy posts.

Or, you can also use one-on-one messaging to get in touch with people in your network and build a relationship with them.

Lead generation

One of the best LinkedIn marketing strategies is to look at your competition and see what kind of companies they’re targeting.

You can decide who to contact and pitch your product or service based on that information.

Content scheduling

You can use your company page to schedule blog posts and other types of content.

Meanwhile, this will help you stay consistent with your marketing efforts and ensure you’re reaching your audience regularly.

Branding

Use your company page to build brand awareness.

As well as engage with your followers, respond to their comments and questions, and you’ll start to see your brand recognition rise over time.

Importance of LinkedIn Marketing Strategies

You need to have a strategy in place if you’re going to see any results from your LinkedIn campaign.

This includes determining a specific goal, your target audience, what kind of content you share, and how you will engage with your network.

However, you also need to decide how much time you will spend on LinkedIn.

Some experts recommend spending about one hour per week, so you can maintain your sanity while still reaping the rewards.

It’s also important to know how your business is perceived by others in your industry, which is where the option to look at your company’s page on LinkedIn comes in.

So, once you’ve added your company page to LinkedIn, you can find other business pages in your industry and look at their company information to see how you stack up.

How To Use LinkedIn For Business Development

I have included 9 ways to grow your business with LinkedIn marketing in this article.

Note: If you are a freelancer then LinkedIn is the best way to promote Fiverr gigs properly.

1- Optimize Your LinkedIn Page

Optimizing websites for brands and businesses is a common topic. But what is LinkedIn page optimization? 

Similarly, like an Instagram page, how you want your brand to be seen quickly and create a bio that describes your brand’s goal. 

In the same way, you can think about your target audience on LinkedIn and create a page that targets them. 

For example, If you are searching for new employees, share information about your team and benefits.

Most importantly, your page’s visual appearance is vital for business development and your LinkedIn marketing strategies. 

Therefore, Make sure you have a high-resolution, well-designed cover page and profile picture. Meanwhile, everything you post on LinkedIn should be aimed at setting the tone for your brand. 

However, if you want to increase your brand’s visibility and discoverability, ensure that you use relevant keywords on your LinkedIn page.

Read Also: 10 Best Email Warm up Tools – Increase Your Inbox Reputation

2- Promote Your LinkedIn Page

Secondly, promote your page if you want to get more profile visits, and followers and grow your business with LinkedIn marketing. However, creating a LinkedIn page is not just enough for your company. 

How To Grow Your LinkedIn Page Followers

Meanwhile, to promote your LinkedIn page, send an email across the company and let the employees know about your page. 

As well as ask your employees to follow the page and add it to their LinkedIn page as a workplace. Then, share it with their friends. 

The report shows that the content shared by employees is 8X more effective than content shared by brands.

You can also notify your customers and friends about the page and ask them to follow you. Therefore, use all your social media and digital platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and email newsletters. 

Read here the Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution Strategy for your business development.

LinkedIn also allows page administrators to invite their connections to follow them. Click on Admin Tools, then next, click on Invite connections.

3- Start Creating And Sharing Content

Once you have got followers on your page, it is time to share content! But, not just every content, photo, or video performs better on social media as well as the same goes for LinkedIn. 

However, it shows that posts with pictures get 98% more engagements than those without pictures. So, pages that contain custom collages of three to four images perform better.

Read Also: What Is Email Warm Up – Increase Email Delivery By 90%

Videos are the best content type to use if you desire to stand out. However, videos get 5X more engagement on LinkedIn than other types of content. 

The videos play automatically whenever a user scrolls down to them. As well as this is why it’s an excellent feature to grab attention. However, LinkedIn’s algorithm prioritizes videos uploaded directly to LinkedIn.

Read Also: 11 Email Marketing Skills That You Need To Succeed in 2022

4- Use LinkedIn’s Features

LinkedIn has many new features that make it easier than ever for you to connect with your audience and followers.

LinkedIn Live

Live videos are becoming more popular with creators and brands. But, it’s not surprising, as live videos are a personal and digital way for creators to connect with their communities. 

Meanwhile, LinkedIn live transcends borders and can even be used to combat a pandemic. LinkedIn also states that live videos receive 24X more engagements than native videos.

LinkedIn Live is not yet available for everyone. Since users will need to fill out an application form for that. 

However, they will review your content and video creation history, audience size, engagement rates, as well as two-factor authentication needs to be enabled. 

After they approve your application, you can host live videos. But for that, you have to use a third-party streaming tool for hosting. It also lets you stream on multiple platforms simultaneously.

LinkedIn Polls

LinkedIn polls can be a great way of driving engagement in a short amount of time as well as they allow for a lot more flexibility. You can make your topic lighthearted or humorous.

For genuine feedback on serious topics and to find out the needs of your audience:

Only poll creators can see who voted and what they voted. You can view the activity live, such as the remaining time to vote, the results, as well as how votes are cast. 

Quick Reactions

LinkedIn users can now react to posts with various expressions similar to Facebook reactions.

These expressions were created with professional updates in view. You can use the “Celebrate!” reaction to announce promotions, new businesses, or team members.

This new feature allows for faster engagement and also allows for more creative marketing ideas. 

5- Use LinkedIn Analytics

LinkedIn analytics will help you determine what things are working and what are not. Furthermore, you can view the number of people who visit your page and which tab they’re most interested in.

You can also see their demographics, including their location, job function, and industry. However, it will let you know your audience better and make adjustments if needed.

LinkedIn can provide individual post analytics in addition to visitor analytics. Click on a post and then click on “View Stats” on the top right. You can then see your content performance.

This information will assist you in customizing your LinkedIn marketing strategy to increase your success. By seeing, what kind of content are your followers most interested in?

6- Define Your Audience and Goals

Targeting is crucial, whether you’re trying for brand recognition or generating leads. However, it’s much easier to identify your audience once you have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve.

Suppose you sell a social media productivity tool. Here you will need LinkedIn for your business development.

In that case, your goal has to be brand awareness with LinkedIn members who have job titles such as “social media manager” and “social media lead.”

Meanwhile, a good understanding of your audience guides to a better lead generation.

7- Highlight Your Best Content 

To boost the content to your audience’s feed, use sponsored content.

• Increase your followers by sharing your updates with more people    
• Make use of LinkedIn’s extensive targeting tool to reach the right audience
• Test different versions of your message by using Direct Sponsored Content
• Use conversion tracking to track the leads that you get from your ads.

8- Create LinkedIn Ads Campaigns

LinkedIn allows you to set up self-service ads using Sponsored material, Dynamic ads, Message ads, and Text ads. Therefore, the campaign Manager is LinkedIn’s advertising platform that combines these features.

LinkedIn Campaign Manager lets you set a budget as well as select goals (impressions vs clicks).

Additionally, you will have complete control over any campaign timeline. The platform includes many features that will help you achieve your advertising goals as well.

9- Refine Your LinkedIn Profile

Your profile is an excellent option to make a first impression. So, one of the best ways to increase your contact ratio is to keep your profile up-to-date because Your audience is not just interested in your brand. 

Profiles are important in B2B platforms because people do business with each other.

• Be as complete as possible and strive to improve your profile
• Add achievements, examples, and skills of your latest work
• Your personality should be displayed as well as Authenticity can be as crucial as experience

How To Set up a Company Page on LinkedIn

First, you need to create a business account.

After that, you can create a page by navigating to the top right of your LinkedIn dashboard, clicking “Work,” and then choosing the option “create a company page.”

Then, click on the “company” on the next page. 

After that, you’ll be asked to provide basic company information, like address, industry, and company type.

Once you’ve done that, you can start filling out your company profile.

But, the first item on your profile is your “Tagline” because this is the first thing people will see when looking at your page.

So, make sure your “Tagline” is solid and concise and something that will make people want to stay on your page.

Next, you need to add your products and services.

Unlike a personal profile, where you have a summary, you need to list your products and services in an eye-catching and informative way.

However, you can also add your team members, which will show up on their personal profiles, and you can add a photo.

When you add a photo, be sure to include your logo. As well as, it’s important to make sure everything on your page is consistent with your branding.

Important LinkedIn Marketing Tips

Your profile

Your profile is the first thing people see when visiting your page.

So, ensure that it accurately reflects who you are and what you do. 

It’s also important to note that you don’t have to be a senior-level employee to have a profile on LinkedIn.

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a freelancer, or a part-time employee, you can still have a profile.

Company page

Once you’ve added your company page to LinkedIn, you can use it as a platform for recruiting, marketing, and branding.

However, you can also use it to post job openings to help you find qualified candidates.

And you can also use it to schedule and publish blog posts, which can help you stay consistent with your marketing efforts.

Content

The best LinkedIn marketing strategy relies heavily on content.

You can share blog posts, images, articles, and videos on LinkedIn to help build your brand and increase engagement.

Or you can also use LinkedIn groups to increase engagement and interact with other professionals in your industry.

4 LinkedIn Marketing Tools

ReputationDefender

You can use ReputationDefender to monitor your online presence, including your presence on LinkedIn.

This way, you can see if there are any negative or false comments on your profile, and you can take the appropriate action.

Meanwhile, you can also use this tool to help you monitor your brand and ensure that your company name, products, and services are consistent across all platforms.

SamCart

You can use a tool like SamCart to help you generate leads. It allows you to create a web form on your company page and start collecting leads from the people who visit your page.

Quuu

You can also use a tool like Quuu to help you curate content, including blog posts and articles, from around the web.

This way, you can stay consistent with your content while still searching for quality content that your audience will like.

Hootsuite

You can use a tool like Hootsuite to help you manage all of your social media platforms, including LinkedIn.

So this will help you stay on top of your social media presence and allow you to manage other platforms from one place.

Conclusion

Businesses, individuals, and career change professionals use LinkedIn as a way to increase brand visibility, engage with potential clients, and find new career opportunities.

With more than 200 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is the largest professional network, and it’s the perfect platform for B2B businesses seeking to grow their network.

So, the best way to use LinkedIn for business development is to optimize your profile, create a company page, and engage with your network.

As we stated before, LinkedIn gets 1.30 billion monthly visits, as well as 50% of B2B web traffic originates from LinkedIn.

It has more than 750 million active members. Meanwhile, more than 30.75% of its visitors are from the USA alone. 

Additionally, 94% of social media and B2B marketers use LinkedIn for business development.

On the other hand, 59% of B2B marketers say that 80% of B2B generated leads come from LinkedIn, among other social platforms.

So, now you know how to use LinkedIn for business development and how much you can get from these LinkedIn marketing strategies.

I hope you found this article helpful, and feel free to ask your question in the comment.