Why You Should Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Business

Serious online networking power, laser-focused targeting for ad campaigns and the largest distribution platform for professional content on the web. What that could be?

Linkedin. The third world most popular social network with 414 million users and a rate of 2 new members joining the platform every single second. Are you using this goldmine to build your business?

LinkedIn is a social network primarily centered around careers and professional networking. It enables individuals to connect and share content with other professionals, including colleagues, past business associates, or potential new employers, get recommendations, or simply apply for a job. For businesses, it is a fantastic sales & marketing tool. Still think that LinkedIn it is only for recruiters and job seekers? You will change your mind with these 11 Powerful Reasons Why You Should Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Business. Before we kick off, though, let’s have a quick intro about LinkedIn itself.

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is like Facebook but for professionals. Started out in the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman in 2002, the site was officially launched in 2003. Popular particularly in the US (124+M users), India (34+ M users), Brazil (23+M users), the UK (20+M users) and China (16+M users), the network is #1 place to be for individuals seeking to build their careers and for companies looking to establish new connections, generate leads, and build their brands. While it can bring substantial gains for all businesses, LinkedIn is a real game-changer especially for B2B (business to business) brands. Here are the Top 11 Reasons Why You Should Use LinkedIn To Drive Efficiency For Your Brand.

Why You Should Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Business

1. Attract More Affluent Customers

LinkedIn plays an important role in social selling and LinkedIn’s users are likely to be affluent customers. Recent AddShoppers study reveals that purchases influenced by LinkedIn had the biggest average order value – $206.95 worldwide – much bigger than Facebook and Twitter, with $164, 76 and $162,52 respectively. This might be because the business-oriented platform is more and more popular among affluent Millennials (people aged 25-34) as a recent comScore report confirms.

2. Reach New & Professional Audience

People come to LinkedIn to consume rich, professional content. “People are there to do business” repeating after Joshua Graff, UK Country Manager & Senior Director of LinkedIn EMEA. Give LinkedIn users reason to follow your LinkedIn Company Page and grow your brand reach by publishing relevant Company Status Updates. No matter if you are a B2B or a B2C (business to customer) company, LinkedIn is a fantastic tool to make your potential business partners, clients or new employees see that you have a brand that they might be interested in.

Take Coca-Cola as an example. Coca-Cola’s LinkedIn Page regularly shares content from Coca-Cola Journey, the company’s digital magazine, to highlight what is great about their business. This generates a massive scale of interactions from company’s 981,060 followers on LinkedIn. “LinkedIn is a huge traffic driver for us,” explains Coca-Cola Co-Managing Editor Jay Moye. “That’s obviously a different audience. It’s a professional audience. It’s professional social network versus more of a social network”.

3. Generate New Leads

LinkedIn users are less willing to click on a LinkedIn ad, comparing to Facebook or Twitter users, but those who do, are actually much more likely to buy.  LinkedIn has relatively low click-through rates – only about 1 in 500 impressions result in a click, compared to 1 in 250 on Facebook and 1 in 100 on Twitter – but this low click-through rate is compensated with the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate (2.74%) of the top social networks, almost 3 times higher than Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%) altogether [ data from 2012 ].

4. Build Traffic

A 2013 study by Econsultacy found that LinkedIn sends nearly four times more people to your homepage than Facebook or Twitter. 64% of all visitors reached corporate websites through LinkedIn while only 17% and 14% via Facebook and Twitter respectively. Of course these numbers are like to have changed during the past 3 years, however, there is no doubt that LinkedIn continues to drive significant traffic and is a proven way to reach the audience that truly cares about your brand.

5. Launch New Products and Services

Linkedin is now #1 social media site used for product launches among B2B marketers worldwide as reported by Regalix. An impressive 81% of B2B businesses say they use LinkedIn for launches, compared to 71% who opt for Twitter and only 54% that choose Facebook.

6.  Get Another Shop Window to Your Store

Your Linkedin Page is your “store window to the world”, borrowing the words from Tim Hughes, an expert in Social Selling and UK Commercial Industries Business Development Director at Oracle UK. And while people still make purchases in traditional point of sales, they make purchase DECISIONS online. Increase your chances to be chosen as a product/service provider by highlighting in your LinkedIn Company Page the end points of your business, that is the benefits offered to your potential clients or partners such as: “quicker transport”, “lower stock”, “increased revenues”.

7. Track Your Industry News

Get relevant knowledge, keep in touch with news, updates and understand current trends that are taking place in your industries with the LinkedIn Pulse section located under Interests in LinkedIn’s top navigation. “Discover More” link (found at the bottom of the Pulse hamburger menu) gives you access to the most popular content on LinkedIn marked as Top Posts and to all Inflencers contributors you should keep an eye on.

8. Increase Brand Search Visibility (at no cost)

A properly optimized LinkedIn Page increases your brand’s search visibility at no cost. Wayne Breitbarth, a LinkedIn consultant and an expert, calls it “FREE MONEY”, that can be particularly useful for small and medium businesses. He argues that as “Google generally reports LinkedIn company pages within the top 1-2 pages of results”, it is crazy to not create and use a LinkedIn company page for business.

9. Distribute Content Effectively

A 2014 study by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs confirmed LinkedIn to be the most popular and also the most effective content distribution platform of the top social networks for B2B marketers. 94% B2B brands turn to Linkedin to share their content online while Twitter and Facebook are selected by 88% and 84% respectively.

10 . Get a Laser-focused Reach for Your Content

LinkedIn, unlike Facebook, has no algorithm to filter the feeds. This means, that any of your LinkedIn posts and updates has the potential to reach all of your followers, regardless of how often they have interacted with your previous posts (it does not mean all your followers are on the platform when you post, though, so you should post regularly). With recent Facebook algorithm changes that make almost impossible to generate truly incredible organic success on Facebook, LinkedIn laser-focused reach can be pure gold for social marketers.

11. Listen and Gain Insight

Last but certainly not least. As we already know social listening can significantly improve your business and LinkedIn is a perfect place to listen, ask questions and gain insights about your industry, competitors and finally your customer. It is an exceptional database available to us free of charge. Are you now convinced to use it for your brand?

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