LinkedIn Marketing

Strategies forSmall Businesses

Introduction

Can you believe that LinkedIn is one of the oldest social networks?

Founded way back in 2002 (that’s pre-YouTube, pre-Facebook, and

pre-Twitter), LinkedIn had just 4,500 members when it launched.

Today, LinkedIn has more than half a billion users – gaining two new

members every second of every day. While LinkedIn may not seem

as hip as Snapchat, nor as massive as Facebook, its lineup of robust

networking features makes it more than just a tool for job seekers and

recruiters. It’s not a top-5 social network for nothing.

If you boil it down, LinkedIn is the digital version of a HUGE, souped-

up mixer with 500 million party-going professionals. In fact,

LinkedIn may actually be the most perfect platform for building and

nurturing professional relationships – including new leads and your

customers!

But many businesses aren’t taking full advantage of its most

sophisticated networking capabilities – and curated marketing

opportunities. LinkedIn offers native publishing and promotion, a

web-based educational platform, a slide-hosting platform with over 70

million users, and a heck of a lot more.

It turns out that there’s more to life than Facebook! Use this guide

to get to know LinkedIn a little better, create an amazing Company

Page, and see how far LinkedIn can take you and your business!

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Learning to use LinkedIn effectively for your business and personal brand can open new doors that you might never have known about otherwise.

CHAPTER ONE

Why LinkedIn is actually important for small businesses

We get it: LinkedIn is probably the least “sexy” mainstream social

network out there. But that doesn’t make it any less valuable – in

fact, when you’re running a business, a lack of “sexiness” can make a

social network MORE valuable.

Here’s what we mean:

LinkedIn is designed specifically for professional networking and

job hunting, which is why its potential to promote a business is often

overlooked. But that’s actually a good thing, because there are SO

MANY potential strategies to reach a relatively untapped large and

engaged user base – starting with creating a Company Page.

Whether you’re a business with hundreds of employees or an

independent proprietor, the benefits of having a Company Page are

many:

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Why a Company Page is amazing for your business

• Prove you’re legit: A LinkedIn Company Page adds an additional

layer of legitimacy for your business – as much as having

dedicated office space and a professionally designed website.

Tell your story, showcase your success, build your brand, help

potential employees and customers find you, nurture a stellar

reputation, and flaunt your company culture in front of a massive

community.

• Feed SEO: Unlike personal LinkedIn profiles, your Company Page

is publicly visible, giving you a tremendous opportunity to nourish

your SEO with fresh, valuable, keyword-rich content. And yes, this

means distributing all that quality content you create on LinkedIn.

(Don’t worry – Edgar can help with that!)

• Build a hub for your company ambassadors: Whether it’s your

employees building up your good name, or other fans praising

and tagging you in their status updates, all those good vibes tie

back to your company. Give future fans, advocates, and leads

a place to find you on the network. Add your website to your

Company Page, so the most qualified peeps can find out more.

• Get LinkedIn to promote your content, too: LinkedIn’s built-

in publishing platform allows you to share content directly on

LinkedIn – with advanced tagging and distribution features that

help get your articles seen by your fans. LinkedIn prioritizes

content first published on their platform, too. Once you get started

on the LinkedIn content train, your updates may find their way into

the regular newsletters LinkedIn sends to its members!

As you can see, the benefits are MANY – not least of which is taking

advantage of the boost in social influence that LinkedIn can provide

to your business. And if you need some help getting started, check

out our blog post: “Anatomy of an Amazing LinkedIn Company

Page”

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CHAPTER TWO

How can a LinkedIn profile help promote my business?

Whether you’re an entrepreneur who only has a personal profile or

you maintain a Company Page for your business, it’s a good idea to

have an active and conspicuously up-to-date LinkedIn Profile.

Here’s a handy checklist of ways to keep your presence fresh and

make sure your Profile showcases what a rock star you are!

Make sure your Profile has All-Star status.

LinkedIn profiles have a gauge that gives a visual representation of

how your Profile compares to others in your industry. Use its helpful

skills suggestions to fully complete your Profile and raise your status

on LinkedIn!

Make your Profile easy to find.

LinkedIn uses a search function similar to search engines like Google,

which means that you can actually optimize your LinkedIn Profile with

keywords just like you would a web page. When you’re filling out

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your Profile, choose a few keywords that are highly relevant to your

profession – words that people use when searching for pros like you.

Post frequent status updates.

The advantage of LinkedIn’s news feed, as opposed to Facebook’s

or even Twitter’s, is that it is populated with articles and information

exclusively according to your business interests. To help, we’ve built

an automation tool to help you easily customize and schedule your

updates, no matter where you’re posting.

Post LinkedIn Pulse updates.

Pulse is the LinkedIn content publishing platform that you can use

as a secondary outlet for your business-related content. Pulse can

unlock new and engaged audiences that you may not have access

to on your blog. Establish a few key employees – or yourself – as

thought leaders that can publish content on Pulse – you can even

hire writers to help produce the content if you don’t have the time!

Get your “boilerplate” on point.

A “boilerplate” is a prewritten company description. Make sure yours

is powerful and consistent, and ask your team to include it on their

own Profiles – it communicates a strong value prop for your business.

Looking for more LinkedIn marketing strategies? Check out our blog

post: “Easy-to-Miss LinkedIn Strategies That Can Give You That

Extra Edge.”

LinkedIn Tip

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CHAPTER THREE

Why are LinkedIn Groups more valuable for

small businesses?

If your company is not taking advantage of LinkedIn Groups, you

could be majorly missing out.

LinkedIn Groups have been around for a while, but they’re still one

of the best ways for people in the same industry (or with the same

interests) to share content, answer questions, network with other

professionals in their field, and establish influencer status within their

industry – right on LinkedIn, where their professional histories are just

a click away.

Here’s a fun fact about Groups: People who actively participate in

LinkedIn Groups get an average of 4x as many profile views as

people who don’t.

So starting your own Group – dedicated to your particular area of

expertise – and joining other established Groups are awesome,

proven ways to get more exposure for your Profile and your brand.

Here are some advantages to doing both:

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Participating in other people’s or entities’ LinkedIn groups can give

your business a boost in unexpected ways, by letting you:

• Engage in social listening. Leverage Groups to learn more about

your industry (or related industries or interests). What unanswered

questions, frustrations, and trending topics are popping up? How

can you use these insights to answer key questions for your

business? How can you leverage your insights to help others and

build rapport?

• Network in a trusted space. Thought leaders are spending their

downtime with their peers in Groups. If you’re looking for valuable

mentors or simply a new connection, use Groups as a people

discovery tool. As Groups may be invite-only, trust can be built

quickly and more thoughtful, valuable conversations can take place.

• Be the pro you are! Whether you own the Group or you’re a

member, contribute and engage! It’s all about adding value – if

you can do that on the regular, you’ll stand out from the rest (and

drive leads). Just avoid spamming with links to your own blog – a

Group isn’t really the place for that.

Starting a Group of your own can help you more directly connect

with others in your industry – and directly connect with people

interested in your company or services.

• If you start your own Group, commit to it! This means actively

recruiting members, posting interesting and relevant content, and

getting your team involved as Group managers and contributors.

Keep the conversations fresh, build trust by positioning yourself

as a helpful expert in your field, and don’t hesitate to start and

participate in discussions!

• Be sure your Profile is up to snuff! When people join your Group

they will see your LinkedIn Profile information automatically – and

they will see your Company Page, too. Be sure you give your info

an overhaul and are updating it regularly. Which reminds us:

• Have you optimized your Company Page? Your Company Page

gives customers, leads, and potential hires a place to learn about

you. Spend the time to make a clear, compelling, and professional

Company Page to help tell your story and share company updates

– which in turn markets your business to the wider LinkedIn

community. Make sure it is the best representation of your

business that it can be!

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Joining a LinkedIn Group

Creating your own LinkedIn Group

CHAPTER FOUR

Creating a Company Page that stands out from the rest

With 4 million Company Pages and 500 million members, there are a

lot of companies on LinkedIn vying for the attention of a lot of people!

All the more reason to make sure your Company Page is a lean,

mean marketing machine that’ll help you:

• Recruit talent

• Drive brand awareness

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• Engage your audience

• Attract customers

• Promote events, products, and services

• Prove your expertise

• Pump up your SEO

• And more!

Here are some tried-and-true methods to make your Company Page

stand out from the rest.

• Optimize for search. Google and other search engines index

LinkedIn pages in their search results, giving you yet another way

to be discovered! So make sure your profile is complete, that

you’re using keywords in a natural way, you’ve customized your

LinkedIn URL, and you’re linking back to your company website.

• Write interesting (and useful) content. If you’re putting energy

toward driving people to your LinkedIn Company page, make

sure you have some content for them to check out. LinkedIn

can’t emphasize enough how important regularly producing and

sharing quality content is – they recommend updating at least

once per weekday (which is totally NBD if you use an automation

tool like Edgar), so get cracking!

• Pin your best content to the top of your Company Page. All

that time you spent writing that announcement about your new

service offerings? Make it the first thing that catches a visitor’s eye

on your Page! LinkedIn allows you to “pin” your most valuable

updates to the top of your Page’s “Recent Updates.”

• Make it visually awesome. Creating compelling visuals (that

means your header image and logo, too) is crucial across all social

media, including LinkedIn. In fact, companies with logo images get

six times more traffic to their pages!

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Looking for a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your Company

Page? Check out our blog post: “Anatomy of an Amazing LinkedIn

Company Page”

LinkedIn Tip

CHAPTER FIVE

Why SlideShare might be the best LinkedIn feature, ever

With 70 million users, LinkedIn’s sibling platform is the ultimate

social media marketing double whammy – one part fresh format

(think YouTube for slideshows) and one part distribution channel.

This gem of a slide-hosting platform is the “sleeping giant” that all

content marketers should befriend. There are 40+ different content

categories on SlideShare, so the competition for your particular niche

is probably fairly small – providing you with a relatively uncluttered

distribution channel.

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Also, 80% of SlideShare traffic comes from search engines. If this

doesn’t set your SEO happiness-receptors aglow, we don’t know

what will!

Using SlideShare is a no-brainer. With minimal effort, you can even

upload slide presentations you’ve already created in a variety

of formats, adding HD video and audio narration for that extra

professional polish.

Here are some quick tips to get more traffic to your SlideShare

presentation:

• Integrate images, video, audio narration, and even infographics

• Use keywords in your title and keyword section for SEO

• Entice your readers with a catchy headline

• Backlink to popular posts on your site

• Include a click-worthy CTA

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When you’re an entrepreneur, finding the time and bandwidth for yet

another content marketing channel isn’t so easy.

Fortunately, you can use SlideShare to take an existing piece of

content and repackage it as a presentation to attract new audiences

Want to know what SlideShare is REALLY great for? Resharing your best content.

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that prefer a more visual or interactive format.

If you’re worried about repeating yourself… don’t be! With tens of

millions of potential eyeballs who have never seen your content (on

LinkedIn alone!), and ever-shorter online attention spans, resharing

is a tried-and-true tactic that helps extend the life of a valuable piece

of content – and the longer a post is live, the more opportunity it has

to move up in search engine rankings.

Resharing content starts new conversations with a wider audience,

which in turn keeps your brand or product top of mind.

Almost any type of marketing content can be repurposed and

reshared on SlideShare: archived webinars or Q&As, product demos,

infographics, Twitter chats, and (of course) blog posts – especially

those popular, evergreen posts that have visuals, lists, quotes, or

charts. (If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’re probably sitting on

a goldmine of evergreen blog posts that aren’t getting the traffic they

deserve.)

All of these content types can be turned into professional anthologies

of your business expertise on SlideShare – all while taking advantage

of LinkedIn’s awesome search engine traffic!

Looking for ideas on how to repurpose your best evergreen content?

Use these handy tips to repackage blog posts and more!

LinkedIn Tip

CHAPTER SIX

What are some strategies that can give me an edge?

There are plenty of LinkedIn features to use that can optimize your

presence on the platform. Here are just a few ways that are often

overlooked by marketers, but together can create some serious next-

level LinkedIn clout.

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Add a Showcase Page. Got a project you’ve been working on

that you’re ready to share? Do you have a “side brand” you want

to highlight to your customers and your network? Show it off on a

Showcase Page to share it far and wide and/or promote to a targeted

segment of your audience.

Showcase Page

Try out Sponsored Content.

Raising awareness and building

relationships can all start with

Sponsored Content – and can fit

with most any budget. Sponsored

Content at LinkedIn can give the

content you’re most proud of a

major boost, by getting it into the

News Feed of a more targeted

audience, instantly.

Become a LinkedIn Learning instructor. LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com

in 2015 to create an indispensable “learning library” that leverages

LinkedIn’s ridiculously awesome network of influencers and thought

leaders – including Oprah, Bill Gates… and you! Click here to see how

you can apply.

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Sponsored Content

Creating your own LinkedIn Group

Looking for more ways to level up your company’s LinkedIn

presence? Check out our blog post: “6 Essential LinkedIn Features

Your Business Should Be Using”

LinkedIn Tip

The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Marketing

The Twitter Marketing Guide

The Facebook Marketing Guide

The Social Media Optimization Guide

Looking for more help?

MeetEdgar’s Social Media Guides

MeetEdgar’s LinkedIn Marketing Guide | 16

Put Edgar to work on your

LinkedIn marketing for

less than $2/day!

Get started now!

www.meetedgar.com