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How to use Linkedin for small business?

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LinkedIn, at its core is a professional social network. It’s all about career development, professional connections and other types of business related activities. You cannot just post anything and everything you want, people on LinkedIn are professionals who are there for business.

Many people assume that LinkedIn is just for professionals and job seekers. This certainly is not true. Millions of professionals use LinkedIn to grow their networks and careers, but did you know you can use LinkedIn to grow your business too?

Well if not then keep reading. You are about to discover how to use LinkedIn effectively for your business!

  • Create an Effective LinkedIn Page and a Personal Profile

The first and foremost thing that you need to do is to create an effective LinkedIn page that is completely professional.

We all know that, ‘First impression is the last impression’. And your profile is a great opportunity to impress.

Your page should provide opportunities to your customers to know about your brand.

What is in there for them, what purpose will it serve to them are the basic questions that your page should provide answers to.

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Don’t think that your business is small so it doesn’t require a personal profile. You can show your potential clients that there is indeed a person behind the curtain and give them reasons to consider you an expert. Thus having a complete personal profile will add value to your business.

  • Redefine Your LinkedIn Profile

Your profile must be updated at all times. People must get to know about your brand as well as you, since business is a two-way process.

Keep optimizing your profile; update about your latest achievements, skills and examples of your latest work.

Keeping it real is the best way to attract more customer engagement.

  • Establish Your Goals and Audience

Be sure of what you want to achieve, this will help you target your audience. Set your goals, don’t aim very high. Take one step at a time and you will surely be able to see your business grow.

LinkedIn provides you with a vast audience, so make sure whom you want to reach out to.

  • Build Your Professional and Personal Brand

Building relationship with your client is very crucial, because people buy from those they know and trust. Being a social media platform, LinkedIn will showcase you and your business in the professional light. So keep your profile professional and complete.

Your customers should be able to learn who you aim to serve, what are you offering to them and why they should listen to you.

Your credibility is very important which can be achieved by the recommendation of the others.

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  • Expand your Connections

Grow your page followers. Invite your LinkedIn connections to follow your LinkedIn page. Use a “Follow” button on your site or blog. Promote your company page on blogs, emails and newsletters.

Follow Plugin Generator.

You can also grow your network by joining an industry group and participating in them. This will let people know that you are an active person and have business knowledge.

To enhance your LinkedIn business, you can also start a group and indulge in knowing your audience. Share your knowledge and expertise to gain customer trust which will help you improve your business tactics.

  • Publish Rich Media and Engaging Content

Post content that your target audience would want to read. Make sure to use high quality photos and captions, which attract your audience.

LinkedIn is a text heavy environment; images can actually provide you sufficient traffic to make your post famous. Your content should provide an insight on how to solve a problem and then establish you as a thought leader.

In fact videos get higher number of views in comparison to images. Just looking at a picture no one can sense the usability of the product but a quick sneak peak can generate interest among audience. This will make your product famous and people will be anxiously waiting for it.

Going live on LinkedIn can also promote huge audience participation as it gives live insight on your product and business. Live videos generate more comments than a regular shot video.

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Make sure to post relevant content which not only presents your product but also talk about it. Avoid hard selling and try not to sound too ‘salesy’.

Keep a track of what you are posting and make use of hashtags to accumulate more audience. Everyone is looking for a fresh and new idea; make sure you provide them with it. LinkedIn business works on the prospect of fresh ideas.

  • Stay Close to Your Customers

Your post will drive customers to action, which means you should be ready to provide them with answers to all their queries. Since LinkedIn is providing you an opportunity to stay as close to your customers as possible, make proper use of it.

Your content will derive questions from your audience and you should be able to satisfy them. Customers should not be kept waiting as they will lose their interest in your business. Answer them sooner rather than later.

Your interaction with the customers will build trust and loyalty towards your business. LinkedIn facilitates the opportunity of direct messaging which can prove to be fruitful to you. If

Customers are not comfortable questioning you in comments section, they can certainly reach out to you in personal chat.

Share with the customers your aims, goals and benefits that your business will provide to them. Take them in confidence and build their faith. Your business in no time will gain much recognition.

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  • Create LinkedIn ad Campaigns

Think about LinkedIn marketing strategy . Expand your network and cultivate a professional reputation for your home business.

Reach your marketing goals with more ad options. You can also use paid advertisements to get your business in front of the potential clients. You can use sponsored content to boost your content in your audience’s feed.

Update on paid LinkedIn membership might appear as costly but once it starts giving the results you want, it won’t matter that much.

  • Stay Conscious of Your Industry

You need to know about your industry which means you need to be well aware and informed about your business.

You should be conscious about your competitor’s actions. Staying one step ahead of your competition will be beneficial for your business.

Do something that other brands won’t do, assist other brands to get exposure and recognition. This will not only prove you generous but also that you are bold enough to talk about different brands.

This in return will work in your favor as well. As this will encourage other brands to publish about your business in return. This creates a never-ending cycle by which everyone gets benefited.

Conclusion

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LinkedIn is a social media platform which helps in making connections, establishing partnerships and generating brand awareness.

With the resources above, you should have all you need to get started with your small business marketing on LinkedIn.

Author :

AASTHA SINHA

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LINKEDIN

3 ways to recruit engineers who fly under LinkedIn’s radar

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3-ways-to-recruit-engineers-who-fly-under-linkedin’s-radar-|-techcrunch

Sergiu Matei is the founder of Index, a platform that helps teams find and hire world-class remote software developers and be globally compliant from the get-go.

We’ve recently been bombarded with news of job surpluses, including predictions that the number of software developer roles will increase 22% by 2030. With the need for nearly a quarter more developers, recruiters are having to scale their search and look under the stones that have previously been left unturned.

It’s easy to assume in the digital age that job candidates are waiting at the end of a mouse click, but the online hiring space isn’t as encompassing as we think. Less than 10% of people on LinkedIn don’t have an education that surpasses high school, despite 87% of developers having taught themselves a new coding language, framework or tool without formal education.

People who live in emerging markets use LinkedIn less frequently, even though these locations harbor some of the world’s most promising tech talent.

Some developers choose not to have a LinkedIn account because it feels like another social media channel to maintain. This aversion makes sense considering engineers focus more on hard skills rather than their online personae.

This week, LinkedIn announced it would start offering its services in Hindi, which will allow the service to reach 600 million people globally. People who live in emerging markets use the platform less frequently, even though these locations harbor some of the world’s most promising tech talent.

Companies can’t let how they’ve hired in the past influence their approach today — doing so means missing not just the quantity of developers, but the quality and diversity of them. The remote revolution didn’t just broaden where we can recruit, it’s expanded who we can bring on board. With that in mind, these are the best ways to tap into the hidden developer gems.

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Open up your content, chats and code

No recruiter should think of hiring a developer as the same process as selling a product or service. As Adam DuVander explains in “Developer Marketing Does Not Exist,” resonating with developers requires more education and less promotion than the majority of companies currently provide.

The content you publish can organically pique people’s interest, as long as it has a strategic purpose and doesn’t overly mention your brand or services; for example, blog posts about upskilling, industry trends and exclusive data insights. You could also host events like webinars, round tables, quizzes and hackathons that are less for recruitment purposes and more to showcase the team and culture. Don’t be afraid to be lighthearted with your content, either. Memes, GIFs and videos are a great way to demonstrate that you don’t take yourself too seriously. And once you remove the promotional positioning, developers in the shadows will start to come forward.

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LINKEDIN

People Buy People On LinkedIn Not Companies: Here’s Why

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On LinkedIn, people buy into other people, not companies. LinkedIn is all about you, the leader. When people make decisions, it is based on who you are, how they feel about you and other emotional, sometimes intangible feelings. This is true for social media and in real life.

Gut reactions, good vibe, rapport — people build up a trust with you, or not as the case may be. That’s why authenticity is key. People will find out if you’re fake. And since people on LinkedIn buy into other people, that’s why the best course to get more business is to market your company through your personal page on LinkedIn.

I’ve written before about what I call “the Richard Branson effect,” which can easily be replaced with the Elon Musk effect, the Bill Gates effect or any other public figure in business. These types of company leaders have more engagement and followers on LinkedIn than their respective companies. One hundred times more people follow the leader and founder of Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson, than the company itself.

People buy people. People follow people, not companies. Even when leaders like Michael Dell have fewer followers than their company page, they actually have more engagement levels for their posts.

As another example, if you look at the Microsoft company page on LinkedIn (and bearing in mind that they own LinkedIn), the company has 14 million followers, but sometimes its posts get literally zero comments. They tend to be boring company updates about diversity, the environment, Azure, the Surface products. Who cares?

So, you have to wonder, if Microsoft often gets such little engagement on LinkedIn, then how do small companies have a chance? You have to keep in mind that when the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, posts, he routinely gets hundreds of thousands of engagements. People buy into Satya, and when he talks about Microsoft, people listen.

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They see more authenticity in Satya. It feels more personal. You can’t take the company to the pub, cafe or restaurant but you can take the CEO or Founder.

It’s often the best place to do business in a bar. This is where the real action happens and where the real “you” comes out. You have a drink, you relax, you build a rapport and you share. You then start trusting one another and that’s how business is done. You can’t take a company out for a drink.

I closed my physical office in Singapore, and I have all my meetings at the W Hotel’s WooBar. I invite people to come and meet me there as it’s a break for them away from their home or physical office in the business district.

Their decision of whether to outsource to my company is often based on how well they get along with me. It can of course go both ways. The ones who enjoy my sometimes polarizing personal brand often become my clients. The whole process is based on social selling, not hard selling.

Build a relationship socially with potential clients. Share the good, bad and ugly about yourself on LinkedIn. You then gain permission in other people’s view to share your company through your personal page on LinkedIn. People will come to trust you and buy your service because of you.

Ultimately, selling is about people, trust, rapport and relationships, and you can’t do that through a company website or a company page on LinkedIn; you can only do it through you and your personal page and brand.

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So, my advice is don’t waste time on your LinkedIn company page, and instead focus on your LinkedIn personal page to see results. The examples of successful business personalities speak for themselves.


Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?


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8 Tools that are a Must for LinkedIn Automation – Times News Express

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8-tools-that-are-a-must-for-linkedin-automation-–-times-news-express

When it comes to social media platforms, LinkedIn might come across as Facebook’s older, more responsible, and infinitely more boring sibling. When it comes to functionality, however, it is an invaluable resource to professionals all across the globe. As of 2021, LinkedIn has more than 774 million registered members from more than 200 countries, and savvy HR and marketing-minded professionals would be wise not to overlook the vast array of resources it offers.

From networking to brand building, to publishing, LinkedIn can provide a multitude of services.  However, all of these options and the wealth of data can potentially hamper efficiency and productivity.

Here are the seven must-have Linkedin automation tools that will help get the results you want in less time.

Lead generating software that responds at the click of a button is good. Software that runs in the background while you accomplish tasks elsewhere is even better. For example, Castanet can manage single or multiple LinkedIn profiles and continuously run to automatically generate appointment requests, connection invitations, and skill endorsements.

Searches can be precisely filtered by LinkedIn profile characteristics in order to seek out quality clients who are more likely to have an interest in your company and the products or services you offer. When you have a connection with your clients, it means better leads and less wasted time on undesirable prospects.

​​Dux-Soup is a sales tool focused on automated lead generation. Based upon the parameters you set, it automatically contacts sales prospects selected on LinkedIn. It can also send direct messages, endorse skills, send personalized connection requests. A handy feature is its ability to schedule multiple, delayed, personalized messages.

Crystal is an excellent source of information for both sales and HR professionals. It is able to mine data from LinkedIn profiles to predict communication styles and personality types and therefore give you a better idea of how best to approach customers, coworkers, and prospective employees.

Using the DISC personality method, Crystal also offers various training courses to show you how to implement your acquired data into the most effective processes for team building, hiring, and sales generation.

LeadFeeder uses web tracking technology to identify what companies visit your website and are potentially interested in your services. It is beneficial for gauging the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, as it also tracks how visitors find your website and the path they take. It can even offer data on the specific portions of your website being viewed.

One strange downside of LinkedIn is the overabundance of users and potential sales opportunities. LeadFuze uses powerful filters to narrow down prospects, generate lead lists, and acquire verified personal email addresses to initiate contact.

On the HR side, LeadFuze can run filters to search for potential candidates across LinkedIn who are not actively searching for a job. The LeadFuze search allows hiring managers to find contact information for quality individuals who would be unlikely to apply for posted job offerings independently.

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator is added via a simple Chrome extension. It allows you to view LinkedIn profile data if you are emailing someone with a corresponding Gmail account. The LinkedIn Sales Navigator account gives you additional information about them as you’re engaging in direct contact, making it easier to tailor your communication to the specific individual you’re dealing with.

When trying to gather as much information about a potential client as possible, it can sometimes be an arduous process to search throughout the various social media platforms for the same individual or company. Discoverly streamlines that process by gathering all the information from the most commonly used social media sources and compiling each person or company’s social media presence all in one place.

No more logging into five different places to get a comprehensive view of a prospective client’s web presence. Instead, Discoverly lets you toggle between all the platforms in one location for quick searching abilities.

Conclusion

Whether you’re using LinkedIn to build your brand, generate sales leads, or expand your hiring search, the actual platform can contain so much data that streamlining is necessary.  These after-market tools and plugins can help you navigate LinkedIn and make the most out of all the resources at your disposal.

Image Credit: pixabay; pexels; thank you!

The post 8 Tools that are a Must for LinkedIn Automation appeared first on Calendar.

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