Happy birthday to LinkedIn, which celebrated its ten year anniversary this past week! Since its inception, LinkedIn’s been considered first-rate for professional social networking and using the site effectively can have incredible results. As business professionals, we spend significant time on our personal profiles. But, just as much effort should be put into your organization’s LinkedIn Company Page and its status updates.
Forty six percent of LinkedIn audiences are following current industry discussions and forty three percent are learning about companies. Does your business have its piece of the LinkedIn pie?
Here’s what you should consider when evaluating your Company Page:
Make Sure Your Profile is Optimized
Assuming you’ve got the basics covered – company description, specialties, location, website URL, etc. – be sure to complete the additional profile options such as Products & Services. Use keywords and terms that are directly associated to your business, products and services.
With almost three million companies on LinkedIn, it’s important your company page ranks well within the search engines. If you have a unique company name, you’re off to a great start as you’ll be competing less with other search results. Both unique and more generic named companies should focus on the content they have in their company profile sections and posted updates. Utilize trending industry buzz words and terminology to build search relevancy.
Post Updates Often and Post Early
LinkedIn is a great platform to showcase your organization’s expertise and key takeaways on what’s going on in the market. Whether or not you’re creating your own content or reposting, it shows your followers your passion for the industry and your brand’s drive to behave like a thought leader. Your posts should relate to ideas, innovations and happenings related to your industry as well as your business. That’s because sixty percent of LinkedIn users are looking for industry insights in addition to updates about a specific company. Make your posts engaging; encourage followers to like and share or offer their two cents to create and engage in meaningful discussion.
Once you have good content, make sure to post at the right times, that is, the busiest times for LinkedIn traffic. This means Monday through Friday, morning to midday. Also consider frequency of posting; LinkedIn research shows that twenty percent of followers are reached through a single post, so posting as frequently as four times per day could boost your reach among target audiences.
Publicize Job Openings
When you have an engaged audience, you have a bigger potential employment pool. Beyond that, the posting of new hires signals to your audiences that your company is growing and expanding – who can’t appreciate and admire that?
Have Your Employees Get In On the Game
Making sure your employees have up-to-date information regarding their employment with your organization can affect your company’s page. With every completed and updated profile, your company’s page reflects the top skills of your workforce, former employers and the average years of industry experience – boosting the credibility of your company.
