Should You Be Using LinkedIn To Build Your Brand?

Brand awareness represents how familiar your target audience is with your brand. The exact definition is, “the extent to which consumers are familiar with the qualities or image of a particular brand of goods or services”. 

If you’re a business owner who likes to measure their success with neat and tidy numbers, this might seem like a slightly vague concept. And to be honest, it is. 

Brand awareness may be a metric you can’t perfectly determine, but that doesn’t mean it contains no value. In fact, some of the most established brands in the world wouldn’t be as recognised as they are today if it wasn’t for their online presence. 

Even though this article is about LinkedIn, it doesn’t just apply to B2B companies… LinkedIn is a B2B platform but many B2C companies are using it as a powerful tool to establish their authority in front of their digital audience. Just take a look at Amazon or Starbucks for example. By posting regular content specifically created to engage their target audience, they have successfully mastered the art of content creation to build their brand awareness in front of the 546 million members on LinkedIn.

How Do You Measure The Results?

Unless you’ve directly implemented a system that measures which leads are coming from where – you’re not going to know. Contrary to popular belief, that doesn’t mean it’s not working! I can tell you from firsthand experience that before I started regularly posting content on LinkedIn and engaging with my network, I didn’t have a steady flow of sales and my engagement was poor.

Businesses love statistics, that much is certain. And that’s why a lot of businesses and business owners shy away from social media content. They want exact numbers and exact statistics; they want to know whether or not the money they’re spending is best serving their interests.

Truth is, it’s impossible to accurately measure the results.

Monetary ROI Or Social ROI – Which Is Better?

Even if it’s not phrased like above, a common issue that business owners face is – where should I put my money? We all know brand awareness works, but why should we choose between monetary or social ROI?

If it’s a toss-up between directly being able to measure your input vs output with paid advertising or building an awesome network with whom you consistently post value and engage with, most would opt for the paid ads. But, some of the most effective online strategies combine the two. If you set yourself a solid foundation by building your brand online first, you give yourself a much better chance of converting your leads into clients. If you're pooling your target audience together in a place that paints a glorious picture of your qualities and expertise, you have a much better chance of converting peaked interest into sales. That's the power of branding.

To try and explain this more clearly, let me give you the “blind date” analogy. I want you to imagine that there are two people:

The first is someone you’ve received no information about. You don’t know any physical characteristics, anything about their interests & passions, or any commonalities you both share. 

The second one you’ve been shown a photo of, you’ve been given a list of their hobbies and interests, and you know you have a few things in common to chat about.

Which person would you feel more comfortable meeting?

Unless you chose option one and ruined the point of my analogy, I would like to draw a parallel. It’s the same with your LinkedIn profile. If you have a barren profile page that briefly outlines what you do, but doesn’t really cover all the dimensions that are important to representing you and your business, do you think prospective customers are going to trust you with their money?

Why Choose LinkedIn?

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C brand, there is definitely a way you could be monetising from brand awareness. You may be asking yourself, why should I choose to use LinkedIn? The answer? Because it’s a place that is filled with abundant opportunity.

You’re connecting directly with the people that actually matter. You’re interacting with people whose salability you can determine in the space of a few minutes. And if you can use these facts to your advantage, you’ll be able to gain a solid foothold in your niche and project your brand in a way that makes everyone aware of your presence in your industry. 

The one question you must ask yourself is: does the message you’re sending resonate with your market?

Natasha Vilaseca is a digital marketing consultant who's primary focus is to help Marketing and Advertising Agency owners implement LinkedIn strategies to dramatically increase the amount of high-quality leads they are generating. Connect with Natasha on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Youtube.