When it comes to marketing your business, LinkedIn isn’t always a channel that comes to mind.
Much of the reason for LinkedIn often being overlooked is the fact that until this point, it hasn’t had much to offer in the way of marketing functionality. Facebook’s offerings are well documented – pages, events, targeted ads and a massive user-base. Twitter too, has proven itself as a valuable B2B marketing tool.
But, LinkedIn has some helpful new features that may just make marketers sit up and listen.
Social media blog Social Media Examiner recently posted an article highlighting some of these new features. Drawing partly from this list, and adding a few of our own, we have composed a list of new LinkedIn features that we feel are most worthy of a mention. These are as follows:
Company page
Much like Facebook, LinkedIn allows you to create a page for your business, and with 85 million business members on the site, it’s worth having one.
LinkedIn company pages had a big facelift last November which dramatically improved their look and feel. If you haven’t yet created your LinkedIn company page, simply click the “Companies” tab, then “Add a company”. Please note that to do so you must be a LinkedIn member and listed as a current employee of said company.
Video support
There’s now space to add video content on your product pages and individual service pages. This is a good opportunity for video bloggers, and/or those who wish to demonstrate technical videos, products demos or training videos.
Display recommendations on your page
Good testimonials can go along way to help sell your products and services. We all know the power of word-of-mouth marketing, so use it to your advantage and promote the positive comments you receive.
These recommendations are ‘user-aware’, which means that LinkedIn will show you recommendations by people within your network if they’re available. Imagine how influential it could be to see a trusted contact recommended a service that you may be thinking about purchasing.
Better still, why not make it easier for your happy customers to bring you more customers and embed a “recommend” button on your website, for each of your services or products so your customers can recommend away with ease with the click of a mouse.
The code:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://platform.linkedin.com/in.js“></script><script type=”in/recommendproduct” data-company=”CompanyID” data-product=”ProductID? data-counter=”right”></script>
Feed blog posts and tweets to overview page
You can let your followers find out more about your company via your company blog posts. Each time you write a new post, it will filter onto the overview page automatically. This has always been possible with personal LinkedIn profiles but works as a great way of keeping the content on company page fresh and relevant.
“Follow us on LinkedIn” button
It’s hard to find a site these days that doesn’t have a social media ‘button’ of some kind – usually Twitter and Facebook, but LinkedIn also has a follow button that you can install on your site. So if you’re planning on taking your LinkedIn page seriously, this is a good way of generating some followers. Visit linkedin.com/profile?promoteProfile for codes.
LinkedIn Share button
The Share button is a new(ish) feature and does exactly the same thing as a Facebook Share button, but on LinkedIn, obviously.
The button is useful for publishers, bloggers, and businesses as it lets your readers and visitors share your content with their LinkedIn connections.
The share button comes in three flavours; vertical with a share counter, a smaller, horizontal button with the counter, or a horizontal button with no counter.
To install a LinkedIn share button on your site or blog, head to linkedin.com/publishers, select the style of button you want and then copy and paste the code into the HTML for your website (or ask your web person to do it for you.)
Advertising
Until now, LinkedIn Ads have been a bit, well, rubbish. Previously, advertisers could only target users based on general criteria such as geography and industry. However, you can now target members by up to 100 exact job titles, company name and LinkedIn Groups participation. Such precise targeting makes LinkedIn a valuable resource for B2B advertising. Find out more about LinkedIn Ads at linkedin.com/ads.
Company Page insights
On your Company Page’s Analytics tab, you can now see how many LinkedIn members are visiting your Company Page and how many are following your company. You can also see what industries, functions and companies these professionals come from. Very useful information, especially when considering your ad targets.
So there you have it, just a few ways that LinkedIn could help you and your business.
If you want to see some of these features in action, the Dell page is a great example.