3 Reasons Business Owners Should Leverage LinkedIn

Have you ever wondered if having a LinkedIn profile is worth your time? Or if it would even benefit your business?

The short answer is YES!

With over 774 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform. It was even rated “#1 most trusted social media platform” for three consecutive years. 🏆

But, if you still need a little convincing, then keep reading. 👀

I’ll be covering the top 3 Reasons Business Owners Should Leverage LinkedIn. 

Let’s get into the topic of hiring top talent, building awareness with smart ads for the right people, and building your business’s credibility and reputation.

1. Hiring top talent

Finding top talent for your business can be a time-consuming and arduous process. But gone are the days when you needed to use flyers, newspapers, and wait for people to walk in and give you applications. 

LinkedIn is a platform that offers candidates at your fingertips. All you need to do is leverage the tools to hire top talent. 

Understanding the Basics: Digitized Resumes and Business Cards

This makes a lot of sense when you realize that LinkedIn is a digitized way of sharing personal resumes and business cards.

Personal profiles are like digital resumes. When filled correctly, personal profiles will feature past work experiences with associated positions, descriptions, and company names. 

Company profiles are like digital business cards, but way better. They almost look like a website, with a menu that lets you navigate information about the company, job opportunities, and the people who work there (who are on LinkedIn). 

This rich resource of personal profiles and business profiles means that you can easily search the platform for potential talent and people can search for companies they want to work for. 

The basics: start with ensuring you have a business profile, and encourage as many of your employees as possible to help “liven up the page” by creating their own personal profiles and adding the business profile as their workplace.

Ways to Search for Talent 

There are many ways to conduct a LinkedIn search for talent. Here are two examples: cold outreach with a manual search, and using LinkedIn Work Tools.

Cold Outreach with a Manual Search

You can use the search bar at the top of the platform and use keywords that will help you find talent you’re looking for, and that could be a person or a business. Let’s say you’re looking for a “digital marketing manager” to fill a vacant position. You can write those words in the search bar and click on the position itself, which will list a bunch of people who are marketing managers. This can be considered a “cold outreach” however, because they may not be looking for a job. 

Once you initiate the search and start browsing profiles, you can review their digital resumes and click the “connect” button. This action will let the user know that you’re looking to chat with them on LinkedIn, and you could send them a personalized message explaining the position you’re looking to hire for. If they accept, you’ll be able to share private messages on LinkedIn’s messaging system and further your conversation. 

Use the Work Tools and LinkedIn Products 

LinkedIn offers a whole suite of tools to help you find talent. When you click on the work menu option in the top bar, you can use the following features: post a job, talent solutions, and post a job for free. Note that some of these are paid solutions whereas others are free. 

U7 recently used the post a job for free option to hire a senior website developer and we received over 50 very strong applications. It was an incredible success. 

2. Smart Advertising for the Right Audience

Online advertising is crowded, but the pro tip is to speak to the right audience. 

Some platforms are simply better than others when it comes to capturing information that will let you target the right people. This is crucial if you want to ensure your advertising dollars are spent effectively, and LinkedIn Ads helps you do just that.

Here are some impressive statistics found by the Analytics Partners Study: 

• In technology, LinkedIn generated 2-5x higher Return On Ad Spend than other social​ media platforms 
• In financial services, LinkedIn generated 7x more incremental​ customer sign-ups than display media
• In education, LinkedIn was​ 2-4x as effective as other display media 

Speaking to the right Audience

LinkedIn offers a wide range of ad types such as single image ads, video ads, event ads, direct message ads, and more. On top of this wide variety of ad types, there are more than 200 targeting characteristics available from job experience, to education, and interests. LinkedIn is simply a smart tool to use if you’re looking for a way to reach specific audiences. 

What about the hefty price tag?

Yes, it’s true, LinkedIn’s cost for advertising is higher than other platforms. Compared to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn has a higher price tag per click, which might not sound appealing to businesses with a tight social media advertising budget. BUT, by being able to customize your ads with LinkedIn’s extensive list of targeting characteristics, the return on your investment could be greater than a cheaper (less targeted) alternative. 

Keep in mind, if you still think your target audience is “everyone”, or you’re not too sure who your audience is, then it would be a good idea to define your target audience before getting started with targeted advertising. 

3. Credibility, reputation building

A huge part of running a successful business is building a reputable, credible, and authoritative brand. One of our digital strategists wrote about this concept in an article on Digital Psychology, if you want to read more about why it’s important. For this article, I will share three ideas on how to achieve this with the help of LinkedIn.

Write and Request Recommendations

The most common feature that can help influence your credibility and build your reputation is the recommendations section on personal profile. Remember that even if you’re trying to build your business’s reputation, your own personal credibility can go a long way in helping achieve a credible brand. Same goes for anyone working at the company. 

Recommendations show up on personal profiles only, and allow for users to write recommendations to one another. Similar to Google My Business or Facebook reviews. However, because these are done on personal profiles, rather than company profiles, they tend to be a lot more personable and positive. 

To help build this section of your profile, you can click the “ask for a recommendation” pencil and then select a connection that you have – this can be a coworker, manager, client, really anybody you have a LinkedIn connection with. The pop-up will ask that you define the relationship with a strict set of drop down options, and what your position was at the time of your connection or work together. Can you ask for “old recommendations”? As in, recommendations for work you may have done years ago? Absolutely! Don’t be shy to reach out to older connections to get your recommendations growing. 

Pro tip: sometimes you must give in order to receive. Write a recommendation to the person you wish to ask prior to your request! 

Write Articles on Your Personal or Business Profile 

Another way to help build credibility on LinkedIn is by publishing articles on either your personal or business profile. 

You can think of articles the same way you would think of blogs. Writing articles can help reinforce your recommendations by demonstrating to others that you know what you’re talking about! In our day and age of short character limits on Twitter and fast videos on IG, it can be refreshing for many to enjoy a well-written article. 

High-quality articles are also a great way to grow your network. Over time, you might even become a go-to authority figure in your field. Meaning, people will follow and seek out your articles for valuable information and insight. 

So head over to your homepage, and get started with this feature: 

Advertising Positively Impacts Brand Perception

Not only do LinkedIn ads vary in types and targeting capabilities, they have been shown to positively impact brand perception. More specifically, making brands seem more professional, intelligent, higher quality and more respectable. 

Alexandra Rynne said it best: “We’re living in a time where accurate and credible information has never been more valuable, nor harder to find. LinkedIn offers a setting where people can ground themselves and find reliable insight. Marketers and advertisers on the platform benefit from a “halo effect,” meaning that content is perceived in a more positive light because of the surrounding environment.”

The desire for users to trust their sources is high and the fact that LinkedIn ranked No. 1 among social media channels in Legitimacy, according to 2019 Business Insider Digital Trust report, is a plus for business brand perception. 

Need help with your LinkedIn strategy?

From hiring top talent, to advertising, to building your reputation, establishing your presence on LinkedIn is a great investment and can get you valuable leads in the future. 

Whether your existing LinkedIn profile needs sprucing up, or you haven’t created an account yet, U7 Solutions can develop a LinkedIn strategy that suits your needs.

Schedule a free consultation with us today to get started!

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