Why Having a Business Page on LinkedIn Is So Important?

Social media has become the heart for all businesses today. What if your heart stops beating? Or what if you don’t have a heart at all? Your journey will end even before you embark on it. It has almost become mandatory for every small or big business to have a social media presence if they wish to survive the intricate competition. Not having a social media page in this technologically fast-moving world is like expecting to survive through the black hole. Which is literally impossible. You have to keep a considerable amount of budget aside especially for social media marketing when you strategize for digital marketing. If you have not been doing that already, you may be facing the repercussions by now. So it is high time you start building your social media presence.

But the point is there are a lot of social sites out there in the market, which one would be the best for your business? Most of you might have gone through this confusion. It is right that the ocean is full of all kind of fishes, but probably the best catch for businesses would be LinkedIn. This social media platform is a powerful tool for both individuals as well as businesses. With the help of this tool, you can build a connection, build your brand awareness and also generate leads. What more...It is a boon especially for those dealing in B2B marketing.

562 million users, yes that is the number that LinkedIn boasts about proudly and this number is increasing every day. LinkedIn is not only about knowing and building your connections but also getting in touch with other’s connections too. According to the data, LinkedIn has surpassed Facebook too and is ranked as number one site for businesses. 79% of B2B marketers see LinkedIn as the best source for lead generation. It is undoubtedly the best platform to spread word of mouth publicity.

Do you make a visible existence on LinkedIn? Heavy question for any business. Only being on LinkedIn is not enough. You have to have a noticeable presence. Many of you who are already on LinkedIn might be struggling to achieve this. The reason for this may be not so appealing profile. A complete and detailed company page gets twice as many visitors as those compared to an incomplete company profile. Let us dive in a little deeper and treasure trove few reasons for the importance of having a business page on LinkedIn and how the page should be.

1. Branding of Company –One of the most important thing about having a company page on LinkedIn is, it does branding for your company. The two main reasons, why people use LinkedIn is, one to grow connections and second to be up to date with the industries or businesses they are interested in. You have to capture those people who might share the same interests as you. Having a professional business page on LinkedIn will improve the chances of your company being discovered. Your connections will grow. The people connected with you will tell about your company to others, this will increase awareness about your company and you will be automatically branding for your business. There are quite a few ways, by which you can increase your page visibility:

• Post Content – Post meaning full content on your page. Dig in a little deeper to understand the interests of your followers. Once you are able to capture their attention to your content, half the battle is won. Share content that has your website link. This will increase visitors to your site and generate more leads. All the content that you share is visible on your news feed to all your followers. Whenever anyone likes, comments or share your content, it is visible on their news feeds as well. This again increases your brand visibility. 91% of marketing executives have ranked LinkedIn on the top to get quality content.
• Increases SEO –Your company page is visible to all, this means that all the content that you share can impact your SEO ranking as well. Make sure to include keyword-rich content, this will improve your presence online. But before this, there is another thing that you need to keep in mind. Use relevant keywords in your company page too, so that your page is visible, which will ultimately result in all your content gaining popularity and your company building credibility among the visitors.

2. Public Relations Opportunity –Having a company profile on LinkedIn also increases the chances of having better public relations opportunity. One reason for anyone to follow your page is, sharing the same interests as you or having intriguing instincts about the industry you operate in. Well, whatever may be the reason, the bottom line is interest. The top five reasons to follow any company on social media are:

• Promotions and discounts
• Latest products information
• Customer service
• Engaging content
• Ability to offer feedback

So if you have any news updates or launch of new product or services or anything related to your domain, you can post it on your page and it will spread like a forest fire. As an added public relation technique, you can showcase about new hires, events, success stories, company milestones, achievements and anything that is about your company and your followers may be interested in. One feature of LinkedIn that can help you build trust amongst your followers is the ‘recommendation’ feature. You can ask your old clients or customers to recommend your products or services. The more recommendations you have the more opportunities you build for generating leads and conversion. More than 50% of vendors have agreed that they generate more leads on LinkedIn in comparison to any other social site.

3. Easy Reach To Target Audience –Defining a target audience before you jump into marketing is most essential for any business. To reap benefits and earn a good return on investment you need to be sure, you are reaching out to the right kind of people. If you do not have this mapped out, probably all your efforts would be worthless. There are different ways to capture the attention of your target audience, but the best of them is through social media. LinkedIn is the best platform for marketing executives, it is also the best platform to reach to your target audience. With access to the huge global community of professionals on LinkedIn you have numerous opportunities available. With the help of your company page on LinkedIn, you can seek potential customers, through networking, building business relationships and virtually interacting around the globe.

Another feature of LinkedIn that is absolutely handy to connect to your target audience is an option of sharing with the selected audience. When you post on LinkedIn through your company page, you get the option of sharing it with all your followers or specific targets. You can choose to share it with a target audience from the drop-down list before posting. This option will take you to another window where you decide who exactly you want to share your post with. You can choose your target audience based on the following criteria:

• Language
• Location
• Job function
• Gender
• Industry
• Company size
• Seniority
• Experience
• Other businesses

There are a lot of parameters to choose from. This gives you the best opportunity to connect with the specific target audience to want to share your posts with. This not only builds credibility but also increases lead generation.

4. Gain Insights Through Analytics –One of the benefits of using social media is getting access to analytics. Social listening can be significantly beneficial for your business. With the help of analytics, you can always keep a check on all the activities on your page. From the number of visitors to getting the details of your visitors, you have an open passage to all the information. What more...The exceptional data is available to you all free of cost. You can ask questions related to your industry, get insights from your counterparts, people sharing the same interests and obviously your customers. With this useful feature, you can access the crucial marketing data for your ads, how your posts are performing, a number of visitors for videos or text posts, user engagement, likes, shares, demographics and everything else. Once you have knowledge of all this information, you can compare your success rates and understand the places you are lacking in. Company page analytics are much more powerful and useful, compared to a personal profile page. Through company page analytics, you can also compare yourself with your competitors. By regularly monitoring your analytics you have better chances of improving and getting more followers and leads. Keeping an eye on the dashboard, will make it easier for you to create more compelling and engaging content. This will also help you to make more data-informed decisions, which will ultimately give you salubrious results.

5. Valuable Recruitment Decisions –LinkedIn is a one in all packages for business. Not only you can grow and endorse your connections on this platform but also find some esteemed company persons. LinkedIn in detail showcases the information about people seeking jobs. This platform tells you about any candidate's stability, accomplishments, experience, referral resources, endorsements etc. Hiring and retaining such professionals can be a plus point for you and your company growth. Some interesting facts and figures about LinkedIn recruitment are:

More than 90% of the recruiters use LinkedIn regularly seeking best candidates.

• More than 40 million students and recent college graduates are on LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn has over 26 million companies and 15 million active job listings.
• Currently, there are over 3 million MBA graduates on LinkedIn.
• There has been an increase of 40% In mail conversation between recruiters and LinkedIn members.
• 3.5 million LinkedIn users have enabled the open candidate feature.
• 46% of recruiters only use LinkedIn as their social outreach platform.
• 122 million people received interview call via LinkedIn. Out of which 35.5 million were hired.
• 40% of the candidates hired through LinkedIn are likely to stay longer in the company, compared to others.

Although job portals and career websites have been the top channels for job search, but the above statics show that trends are changing. LinkedIn has seen a 73% boost in job recruitment usage. This social networking platform can be the best to get you the type of company persons you have been searching for frantically. Having the best of employees definitely increases company growth and reputation.

LinkedIn has far beyond passed all the criteria for being the best social networking sites for all types of businesses and individuals. By now you must have understood the importance of having an impeccable company profile on LinkedIn. The important traits your profile should include are:

• Details of your company
• Description of your products and services
• Should encompass your company logo and banner
• Showcase your accomplishments
• Should be authentic
• Should be search engines optimized
• Should be updated regularly

What are you waiting for, build your company profile on LinkedIn right away if you have not till now. And enhance it more for better results if you already have one.