LinkedIn can do wonders for your business by generating leads

It’s not an online CV!

Are you using LinkedIn? Sure you are, but are you using it properly? For a lot of people LinkedIn is like a nifty online CV or just another conventional online network they’re linked to as a standard ‘just to cover the lot’ routine online marketing strategy. But for those who are serious about building up a network of potential business partners/contacts/prospects, LinkedIn has literally opened up a worldwide web of opportunities and it’s constantly growing. Now this isn’t new information, but it’s quite often forgotten, or rather just not engaged in with appropriate determination. Of course, LinkedIn provides a great way for generating leads, and it does take some work ─ but we all know that hard work is rewarded and that patience pays off. The opportunities are endless with LinkedIn advertising and with a good LinkedIn marketing strategy in place.

So how are you using LinkedIn?

Are you dynamically making connections with and reaching out to prospective clients? Are you announcing new product launches and offerings, researching your prospects, building awareness and sharing valuable content as you do with all your other social networking platforms? Are you advertising on LinkedIn? Yes, no, maybe?

Those companies who have realised the value of the business potential they can tap into are making full use of LinkedIn to promote themselves. Surveys have shown that of all the social networking sites, LinkedIn generates the most customers for business-to-business companies.

But how are businesses and professionals making proper use of LinkedIn to extend their reach, how do they go about it and WHY LinkedIn?

You already know how important it is to create and distribute great content to boost up your online brand authority and it goes without saying that LinkedIn is the ideal place to share your content as it is rapidly generating a reputation as a reliable platform for exchanging and promoting content among B2B companies and professionals.

LinkedIn puts relevant information in the form of headlines and news items from its vast network of professionals in front of its audience in relevant industries, which means the content shared by your business and your employees (and LinkedIn!) will reach a targeted group of people from which can be shared again among their connections. How? By growing your network of industry groups on LinkedIn, you’ll get more exposure to a wide range of businesses and professionals.  This means you will have to join quite a few groups and really get involved.

You and your business can become visible in groups by being positioned as experts:

• You can pose relevant questions
•  Answer other people’s industry queries
•  post your expert advice
• Start discussions
  

Check out this nifty LinkedIn advertising guide.

When your aim is to generate more leads

The importance of becoming a contributing source for valuable and useful content will gain people’s trust and make your business stay front of mind with your current and potential customers. Always remember that content that is useful and informative gets more respect and therefore will be most likely shared. It’s not like posting a funny picture on Facebook to get more likes ─ you’ll be sharing your white papers with interested parties and prospects.

LinkedIn is now also rolling out Facebook-style linked mentions of companies and people in status updates, so it will be worth being mentioned, and that only happens when you say/post something worth mentioning.

We’d love to help you get the most out of LinkedIn Marketing. Contact Semantica to get started.