iPay88 has previously written about 6 reasons why you should use Instagram for your business.
We have also spoken about why your business should use Facebook, and what benefits X (formerly known as Twitter) could bring to your business growth as well.
Today, we continue our social media series and we’ll talk about the importance of LinkedIn for business.
So what is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business and professional community.
The ultimate goal of this site is to allow registered members to build a network with the people they know and trust professionally.
LinkedIn members’ personal profiles consist of their personal skills, employment history, and education, and has a professional network of news feeds where they can see the latest industry news from their preferred circles.
People tend to view LinkedIn as a social media website for job hunters, and as a platform to grow their professional network, however, this is not entirely true.
Why is LinkedIn important for business?
LinkedIn is also an equally effective and important tool to generate new business leads just like any other social media platform.
In the 2013 sales and LinkedIn study, it was reported that 84% of users generated several business opportunities from the use of LinkedIn.
Business owners who don’t have a company profile page on LinkedIn, are encouraged to have one. The question is why?
Other than generating quality leads, you need to encourage your audience to make contact with your company.
It will help your company to be perceived as more reputable and trustworthy. Below are some more of the importance of LinkedIn for business.
Reason 1: Finding right and suitable job candidates
LinkedIn profiles usually reveal valuable information about the people who seek jobs at your company.
The information such as the record of their successful accomplishments and their passions for what they do are just a few examples of information that can help you in the hiring process.
94% of recruiters use LinkedIn, followed by Facebook at 66%. But 79% have hired candidates found on LinkedIn vs 26% for Facebook.
There are a few examples of how to find the right and suitable job candidates:
- You could search for potential employees by previous or current employer
It means that you could potentially employ people with relevant or similar skills and experience that you seek for your company, - You could search for a candidate amongst LinkedIn members by searching keywords
For example, you could search the keyword “content writing” in your search bar, and find relevant candidates with similar skills above.
Reason 2: Checking on what your competitors do
According to B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America study found that 94% of B2B marketers utilise LinkedIn to distribute content, making it the most used social media platform.
By visiting the company’s page, it is easier to monitor the changes in your industry and you can keep track of what your competitors do and what they have accomplished.
Besides that, you could also keep track of the movement or transitions of employees and monitor the social media content strategies of other companies on a regular basis; this will help you to identify the trends and opportunities to grow your business.
Reason 3: Improve your company’s ranking in the search engines
The most widely used search engine “Google” and other search engines rank LinkedIn company pages and posts high in the search engine results.
To improve your organic Google search appearance, add updates regularly to your company page and optimise posts with search engine optimization (SEO).
By doing it, you could see an increase in visitor traffic to your website in Google Analytics, if the links in your posts on LinkedIn lead back to your company’s website.
Reason 4: Perfect targeting
The campaigns on LinkedIn will also help you to catch the attention of the right audience that best suits your goals and objectives because LinkedIn advertising offers very detailed options for audience targeting.
As of September 2017, Facebook updated self-reported profile targeting options. It meant that the targeting capabilities allowed advertisers to reach people based on self-reported entries for education and employment.
Facebook removed more than 3 million terms as targeting options that were derived from self-reported profile fields such as school, field of study, employer, and job title.
Now, following changes on Facebook advertising policies, you could make full use of LinkedIn advertising.
For example, you sell business payment solutions for SMEs or corporate customers and you need reach out to the decision makers such as CTO, CEO, CFO, etc.
You are able to target them perfectly as LinkedIn offers targeting by occupation or title.
Reason 5: Increase exposure
Companies can create a LinkedIn company page, which features or showcases their company products or services.
This will increase the exposure for your company because there is another location on the web where potential customers, can find out the information about the range of your product or service.
With all this in mind, remember that LinkedIn is a professional social media site, that allows you to build credibility, enhance networking, and gain insider knowledge and expertise from established experts within your particular industry.
It is time to build LinkedIn page
If you have not started to build a LinkedIn company page for your business, it is time to do so now. After all, there’s no additional cost to create an account, unless you start to advertise on it in the future.
Feel free to follow iPay88 on LinkedIn to get the latest industry, job, and company updates from us.
