By Debbie Gregory.

The mission of LinkedIn is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.  Over the last few years LinkedIn has grown to be one of the most widely used social platforms for business. It is currently the third most popular social site, right behind Facebook and Twitter. If you are not yet on LinkedIn, you are missing out on a huge audience for your recruiting efforts, business networking, and potential new customers.Below is some information on ways to use LinkedIn to expand your Small Veteran Owned Business:

1.) Craft your Profile and Pages with SEO in Mind:

LinkedIn is a valuable source for business to business (B2B) marketing and other business-related connections. As with your website or blog, your LinkedIn profile and pages should be optimized for SEO purposes.

Areas of Focus:

• Include a title along with your last name in the name field. For example, instead of listing just Jill Brown, make changes to it reads: Jill Brown, Sales Professional. In this manner, Jill Brown’s profile will pop up when someone performs a search for a salesperson.
• Add keywords to your headline too and not simply your title. For example, instead of Sales Professional list something such as “No. 1 sales professional in the city of Portland for the last 3 years.”
• Make sure to include other keywords in your summary in a more natural fashion. Yes, LinkedIn has a specific place in your profile to list up to 50 skills (make sure to ask for recommendations on your skills too) but you should also try to pepper them into your summary text.

2.) Make Sure to Create and Optimize a Page Dedicated to Your Company:

A business page on LinkedIn is a powerful marketing tool. Make sure that your business is easy to find on LinkedIn and that all visuals on your page match the look and feel of your other online presences (website or other social channels).  Additionally, keep it up to date with regular posts!

Basics for your page:

• A concise, yet engaging, company description and overview.
• Your company logo.
• An attractive banner image.
• A call to action.

3.) Put Together Showcase Pages for Products or Services:

Once you have your business page ready to go, you should consider adding showcase pages for specific products, services, or separate arms of your core business to help users better find you and engage with the parts of your business that most interest them.

4.) Promote Your Page:

Your page will not help your business grow if no one is looking at it! Once your page, and showcase pages are setup to be robust, and compelling, your next step is to promote it and gain followers. Of course, you can simply run paid ads on the platform to boost your visibility, however, there are other ways to promote your page that will not cost you anything.

Free Ways to Promote Your Page:

• Add the page to your own LinkedIn profile.
• Add a “follow” button to your main website to drive traffic from there to your LinkedIn page.
• Promote the new page(s) in your company newsletter, blog posts, and other social media pages.
• Add a link to your LinkedIn page in your company email signature.
• Ask current employees to promote the page on their own LinkedIn profiles.

5.) Join LinkedIn Groups or Create Your Own Group:

LinkedIn groups are intended to connect like-minded individuals and similar businesses with one another to foster camaraderie and to expand knowledge. You can join existing groups and actively engage in conversations.  You may also create your own group to help establish yourself as an expert in your industry. We strongly recommend that you consider both options to make sure that you are active in the group and provide valuable tips and add robust posts.

As you can see from the information in this blog post, LinkedIn offers a variety of ways for businesses to network, market themselves, and connect with new customers. These are just a few of the ways to join in and start reaping the benefits of LinkedIn for your business.   One last kernel of information, a regular account on LinkedIn is free.  They also offer premium accounts at a reasonable cost.   Start your engines and join LinkedIn today or enhance the profile you have already set up to promote your Veteran Owned Small Business.

VAMBOA, the Veterans and Military Business Owners Association invites you to join as a member.  There are not any fees or dues.   You may also proudly display the VAMBOA seal on your website and collateral.   We provide several articles on our blog weekly with all types of valuable information.

JOIN TODAY here:   https://vamboa.org/member-registration/

By Debbie Gregory.

In Part 1 of this article we share some interesting information including some statistics about who is on LinkedIn and why, This article will provide you even more information including why marketers and sales professionals use this site and why advertising with the platform is makes a great deal of sense.

11.) LinkedIn for Lead Generation for Business Marketing Professionals:

Approximately 89% of all business-2-business (B2B) marketeers on LinkedIn use it exclusively for lead generation. About 62% of them also say that they successfully generate new leads from LinkedIn. That is over twice as much as on any other social platform.

12.)  LinkedIn for Content Marketing for Business Marketing Professionals:

Currently, 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing because this platform is viewed as more trustworthy for delivering accurate and worthwhile business-related content than any other social platform. With LinkedIn, your company is not forced to fight with parties, opinions, vacation photos, or personal updates to be seen. LinkedIn is free of most of that since it is widely viewed as a place where people expect and seek out work-related content.

13.) LinkedIn for Sales Generation: 

Over 59% of sales professionals surveyed count on social platforms to sell their products and services. Sales professionals know how important networking and networking platforms are to their success.  Most of them, 70 percent use LinkedIn more than any other platform.  This is quite a testimonial for sales generation.

14.) LinkedIn For A Cost-Effective Way to Place Ads:  

Did you know that LinkedIn also has ads? Not only is their audience primed for your messages, the cost per click or lead on LinkedIn is, on average, 28% lower than other popular pay-per-click (PPC) ad platforms inlcuding Google AdWords.

15.) LinkedIn Offers More Bang for Your Buck:

An ad on LinkedIn has the potential to reach approximately 12% of the world’s population over the age of thirteen years of age and costs 28 percent less than other ad platforms.

16.) Linked In has Better Performing Email Campaigns:

LinkedIn offers a wide variety of different ad placements and formats.  Their InMail offering is one that is quite interesting. On average, their sponsored InMail campaigns have a 52% open rate, which is more than double the average for a traditional email campaign on any other platform (MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc.).

17.) More People Will View Your Content on LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is not simply a recruitment platform anymore. It is also a place where professionals go to connect, educate, and inform themselves. Content posted to LinkedIn typically has 15 times more content impressions than any other posts. This means LinkedIn is very valuable to content marketers, especially those in B2B content marketing.

18.) LinkedIn Allows You to Specifically Target Decision Makers:

Part of the appeal of LinkedIn for professional marketers is that LinkedIn gives them the ability to target people by their job or title instead of simply their basic demographics. Currently, four out of every five users on LinkedIn are the people in their respective companies that are the decision makers who drive business and purchasing decisions.

19.) Majority of LinkedIn is From Mobile Users:

Currently, there are approximately 57% of all LinkedIn users access this platform via mobile devices. Even though this number is lower than other social platforms, such as Facebook with approximately 98% mobile users, it is an excellent idea to optimize all of your posts for mobile and not just desktop.

20.) LinkedIn Continues to Grow and Gain Steam:

Engagement and use of the LinkedIn platform has increased 50%, year after year, over the last several years. It has evolved from a simple recruiting site into a full-featured business connection site. This platform continues to add more and features every year and is a great tool for businesses to share their content on.

As you can see, LinkedIn is a great tool for businesses, and it is still growing by leaps and bounds. If you are not yet on LinkedIn, stop what you are doing and join now.  Remember that a regular profile is free, and the premium membership is very inexpensive. –  Do it NOW!

VAMBOA, the Veterans and Military Business Owners Association invites you to join as a member.  There are not any fees or dues.   You may also proudly display the VAMBOA seal on your website and collateral.   We provide several articles on our blog weekly with all types of valuable information.

JOIN TODAY here:  https://vamboa.org/member-registration/