LinkedIn is just for job-searching, isn’t it? Whoever told you that has not entered the 21st century of flying cars, hoverboards, and having an online presence everywhere – especially on the third most popular social network. But hey, you can tell that friend that LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions Blog itself said that “50% of LinkedIn members report they are more likely to buy from a company they engage with on LinkedIn.”
Aside from using a website builder to create your website, you need to be on LinkedIn as a company to reach those who are most likely to buy your products and services. This is an important step in promotion, engagement and establishing your brand through your social media marketing. Learn the necessary steps you need to take in order to create a company page on LinkedIn that skyrockets.
How to create a company page on LinkedIn
01. Create your own account
The very first thing that you need to do to use LinkedIn marketing for your business is set up your personal LinkedIn profile. In order to create a company page on LinkedIn, you need to already have an established presence on the network itself. This won’t cost you anything but a few minutes of your time. You can start by gaining inspiration from your own professional diary and extracting a playbook of your life: who you are, your work and life experiences, impressive skills, interests and more. This is your opportunity to show off your accomplishments. When people associate your company with you, you want them to see who the expert is that is waving their wand behind the magic. Now that your personal information is set in place on LinkedIn, you can create a company page by simply inserting your company’s name and a custom URL – only then are you granted access to your brand’s new kingdom.
02. Set your tone of voice
You’re eager to write content, insert photos, and get the ball rolling on your company page, but let’s take one step back. Just like you have a personality, your brand needs to have one too. Establish the voice it will carry out and decide how you want to be perceived. LinkedIn is ‘the’ professional social network, which means that many people mistake it for being boring. That’s far from true in the age we live in today. Take it from LinkedIn’s Nico Lutkins who said: “humour is an essential part of all life, including professional life” in Can you be funny on LinkedIn? Therefore, your tone of voice should be a mix of professional and playful – this is still a social network, after all. Show your personality to the world while understanding your audience’s interests and needs. Ask yourself, “why would they choose my company?” Then, act accordingly.
03. Write a compelling company description
Ready. Set. Go! You have 2000 characters to sum up all of the hard work, passion, and power that defines your brand. Now that you have a tone of voice, summarize it in the most attractive way: who you are as a company, your most significant products, and a little taste of your background story. Don’t forget that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) matters here too, as it does with anywhere people are searching online.
This means optimizing for keyword searches based on phrases that describe your brand, industry, and areas of expertise. Understanding the psychology behind Google searches will help you achieve the best SEO. Lastly, if you work across multiple languages as an international company, you should set your company name and description in each language (you can include up to 20).
04. List your strengths and specialties
Your company has so many talents and abilities that your new friend, LinkedIn, wants to hear about all of them. Well actually, they only have time for 20 (according to their platform’s limit). So pick your top skills that describe your biz to make it easier for LinkedIn users to find you in searches – a.k.a this helps you draw the customers in. For example, if you are a custom jewelry designer, your specialties might be ‘bracelet design,’ ‘necklace design,’ ‘accessories production,’ and ‘craftsmanship,’ to name a few. You know what you’re capable of, we just want proof.
05. Add your professional logo
Did you know that companies that include professional logos on their LinkedIn pages get six times more traffic? This is because a logo serves as the official seal to your brand. It’s the visual identity that provides your audience with the assurance that you’re an authentic and professional company. Plus, if you want your customers to be able to recognize your logo, this platform serves as a great place to reinforce it again and again. Why? Because on LinkedIn, it doesn’t just appear as the profile picture for your company. Your logo shows up in many other places: when someone searches for you, on all of your employees’ profiles, and alongside your posts (articles, updates, etc.).
If you don’t have a logo, you can easily create one in four simple steps with the Wix Logo Maker. Choose from hundreds of designs after answering four simple questions about your company. When putting together your logo design, make sure that it’s readable, your company name and tagline are balanced together, and that you use the appropriate LinkedIn size of 400 by 400 pixels.
06. Upload an impressive cover photo
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, right? But we instantly pick up the shiniest book off the shelf anyways because truth told, as humans we fall for attractive things. When a user enters your company page on LinkedIn, one of the first things they will see is your cover photo. It’s okay that they will form opinions about this – that basic fact is why brand image is a major factor in marketing. So, proceed by making an eye-catching and expressive cover photo.
Take Nike, for example, a brand we all know that took third place in the Best LinkedIn Company Pages of 2017. Although everyone knows their products, they still display shoes and apparel in their cover photo – driving their brand image one step further. A picture is worth a thousand words after all. Your cover photo is an opportunity to summarize your company and market your best product and services in an image. Follow through by incorporating your company’s brand colors and choosing photos that compliment your logo – as these will go side-by-side. Your cover photo should be 1,536 by 768 pixels.
07. Link to your website and social networks
An effective online presence encompasses transparency across all platforms of communication. This means linking from one social account to another in order to spread your influence across the multiple gates to the online world. This is one simple-to-implement strategy that provides your customers with an easy flow between your channels. In order to maximize your Linkedin marketing efforts, you should link your email, newsletter, blogs, social networks and most importantly: your business’ website.
Don’t have a website? It’s time to join the bandwagon as an online presence is crucial for any business. With a website, you can completely customize what you want your customers to see: allow them to shop your products, read your blog, or book your services. Begin by choosing a website builder that incorporates everything you need as a business. Wix offers a reliable CRM system, integrated digital marketing tools (like email marketing and social media) and an intuitive coding platform.
08. Set up your “Career” Page
One of the major stereotypes associated with LinkedIn is that it is the ‘job-searching platform.’ Today LinkedIn wears many different hats, but employment is still its favorite one. For this reason, LinkedIn offers the best resource for the job market: the ‘Career Page’ section. It’s split up into two sections, the ‘Jobs’ tab and the ‘Life’ tab, to help you break down who you are and what you can offer employment-wise. The” Jobs” tab is used to showcase different employment opportunities, allowing them to stand alone in a user-friendly section. Plus, this tab is automatically customized for each candidate based on their search history. The “Life” tab serves as a place to describe the culture and story of your company through the eyes of your employees. Make it both authentic and inviting by including personal employee stories, photos, videos, blog posts, testimonials and different sections for each of your products or departments. Google, for example, has an excellent ‘Career’ page that includes different tabs for each of their audiences (students, engineers, etc.), as well as photos, descriptions, employee-created blog posts, and cultural insights – like how many languages are spoken there.
09. Show off your personality with powerful content
Creating a LinkedIn business page is just the start. Next, you have to learn how to market on LinkedIn. The first thing you have to figure out is what kind of content you want to share. On your company page, there are two forms of posts:
Company updates. This is the content that takes up the core space on your page and keeps everyone current on your business. Here you can share any important company news, articles from your industry, employee stories, and blog posts from your website. For higher engagement, include images, videos, and call-to-actions (CTAs) (like a link to shop your eCommerce store). Then, share with the general public or choose a target audience based on factors like language, geography, job function, and industry. Your posts will be visible in both your company page and on the news feed. A best practice is to post at least once every day in the morning – during that golden ‘coffee and newspaper’ time.
Sponsored content. Aside from your regular post, you have the option to run native ads on LinkedIn. These are advertisements that blend naturally into the look and feel of news feeds, yet reach a lot more people. Hence, it will help you to drive results for your business goals, like reaching a certain audience that doesn’t already follow you. Easily run ads by setting your marketing strategy, budget, advertising, and targeting specific professionals that will have interest in your service.
10. Place your best products or services in the spotlight
Are you a baker with a signature cheesecake? Or a beautician whose clients repeatedly request your famous nail art designs? If there is something niche that you want to give emphasis to, this is the location. A showcase page is an extension to your company page that gives you the opportunity to display personalized content alone. Here you can promote particular products or services to certain target audiences. Your viewers will love the flexibility too, as they have an option to follow just this page if that’s all that catches their attention.
11. Engage your employees to attract more followers
Think of your employees as the ‘wingmen’ of the guy or gal you’re interested in. Of course, your employees are held to the highest level of appreciation and resourcefulness, which is another reason why you need their help in this scenario. When your employees add your company page to their profile – by adding their positions and linking to your page – it helps spread your company to more and more LinkedIn members. Other ways employees can help is by following you or tagging your company page in posts. Overall, you gain exposure through your employees every time that they mention your company page. Now isn’t that the best companion you could ask for?
12. Keep optimizing your page
You’ve set up your profile, but the hard work doesn’t stop here. Keep running forward by analyzing your performance through company page analytics. Here you can do many things, like evaluate how well your posts performed, understand your customers’ behaviors, and examine page traffic and activity. As you go through this data over and over again, you’ll learn what worked and what didn’t. It’s exciting to watch your company grow while strapped into your running shoes ready to make adjustments when necessary.