Build Your Business Profile On LinkedIn

Most people think of LinkedIn as an online resume, but it is also a great tool for small business owners. With up to 85 per cent of business conducted via referral (word of mouth), now is the time to build your business profile on LinkedIn, reports YAHOO News.

There are some time honoured traditions in business – and one of the most well-known is that the best source of business is word-of-mouth (or referral).

So if you have asked a friend or professional adviser for the details of someone in business, I can almost guarantee that the next thing you will do is Google them! If you Google their name, their LinkedIn Profile (if they have one), is likely to come up on the first page of Google Search Results.

If they have also created a LinkedIn Company Profile, there is a good chance that this will also appear on the first page of Google Search Results, provided they have an active LinkedIn Company Profile. Even if they don’t have a LinkedIn Company Profile on LinkedIn, their Personal LinkedIn Profile is still very likely to come up on the first page of Google Search Results.

So it's extremely worthwhile to spend a bit of time refreshing your business details on LinkedIn. Here are seven tips to do it.

1. Add your Business Website details to your LinkedIn Personal Profile

You can add your business website in your Personal Profile ‘Contact Info’ section, but when you add your website, don’t choose the Option ‘Company Website,’ choose the Option ‘Other.’ This way you can write the name of your website in the box and then add your link in as well (great backlink).

In your current job (the Experience Section), if you have already added your business as a ‘Company’ on LinkedIn, when you start typing the name of your Company Name, it should appear as a choice in the drop down box – so make sure you choose it!

In the Description box, I encourage you to provide a brief description of your business, then describe your tasks and achievements and include your business website link as http://xyzbusiness.com. Although this box is only ‘plain text’ on a computer and the link is not clickable, this text will convert to a link on a mobile device and enable people to visit your business website immediately.

I also recommend that you add your text business link in your ‘Summary’ and ‘Advice for Contacting’ sections. If your main goal is to build the brand of your business, listing it multiple times throughout your LinkedIn Personal Profile will help.

2. Create your LinkedIn Company Profile

You may already have a LinkedIn Company Profile, but LinkedIn often changes the range of information you can include on your Company Profile. I recommend that you:

• supply very good quality logos in the dimensions requested (which are also consistent with the logos that appear on your business website and other social media)
• provide an excellent quality Company Description (up to 2,000 characters) that includes your key message, keywords and a call to action and contact details
• include the various specialties you have
• fill in all of the other requested information (Founded, Operating Status, Industry etc)

Remember that complete Company Profiles have a much better chance of appearing in search results.

3. Connect your LinkedIn Company Profile to your other online content

Every business needs to have a digital footprint that they eventually build into a digital asset that constantly generates business opportunities. If you have gone through the process of creating a LinkedIn Company Page, make an effort to link to it on your other online content including:

•  your business website (either on your About Us or Contact Us page)
• your Google+ Local Business Page (so that you can tell Google where to find your business online)
• your Google+ Personal Profile (so that you can tell Google to present your LinkedIn Company Profile in Google Search Results for your name as content on LinkedIn often performs better than your own website)
• encouraging your business clients, suppliers, stakeholders etc to Follow your LinkedIn Company Profile (so that your Company Updates appear in their newsfeed) as well as connect to you personally (particularly if you are the business owner)

Many business owners are disappointed that their LinkedIn Company Profile doesn’t always generate as much interest (via an Update) as their Personal Profile does.

For example, most small business owners have a lot more Connections associated with their Personal Profile and a lot less Followers of their Company Profile so when they send out a personal Update, it goes to a lot more people via a Personal Update than it would if it was sent out as a Company Update.

However, it is extremely important to still post Updates via your Company Profile. Anyone who is conducting thorough due diligence of your business will check you out personally and they will also visit your company profile on LinkedIn.

If you have three followers but 30 Updates on your LinkedIn Company Profile, it is a lot better than three followers and no updates.

Although you may be in business on your own right now, if or when you sell your business, you can include the number of Followers you have on the Company Profile as part of the Asset of your business – and transfer this following to the new owner – so ultimately, the more Followers your Company Profile has on LinkedIn, the better. So remember to record the number of Followers you have on a regular basis (this number is only available as a real time statistic).

LinkedIn encourages you to post an Update via your Company Profile every day. I do not recommend this level of frequency in Australia. In my view, it is better to post good quality content less often than poor quality content regularly.

Always provide content that is of information or benefit to your target audience – this may include either new original content (70 per cent), shared content from somewhere reputable (20 per cent) and if you absolutely must, sales content (10 per cent). A minimum schedule for Updates would be once a month.

5. Consider creating Showcase Pages

Once you are on your LinkedIn Company Page, there is a blue box on the top right hand side of your screen that has a drop down menu and it allows you to create a Showcase Page.

This will create a live page on LinkedIn that is highly optimised – whatever you call the page becomes your URL e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/company/description-appears-here - so if you are trying to optimise individual products or services online, this feature could be useful.

That said, it does mean that you then have to go through the process of sharing Updates here and maintaining this profile as well, so it is not always my first recommendation due to the extra time required.

6. Choose your overall LinkedIn Strategy

Web developers, marketers and advisers often suggest that as a business owner, you need to constantly create content online to build your brand, reputation and eventually leads. However, there is a lot to be said for considering some of the other business profile building options on LinkedIn like:

• liking, commenting or sharing other people’s great content (that you have fully proof read)
• tagging your Connections or saving Followers to your Contacts and giving them a Tag and setting a reminder to follow up with them at some later point
• making sure you include images and/or videos in your Updates to increase your views and conversions
• saying thank you on a regular basis (one of the most under-utilised free business tools you can use at any time)

I am a firm believer in not reinventing the wheel, so check out what your competitors or inspirers are doing.

Monitor the analytics from your Company Updates and see what performs well. You may like to consider paying for Sponsored Updates (but I wouldn’t do this until you had posted at least 50 or more Updates and had some analytics to decide what would be worth sponsoring).

Remember that LinkedIn is an amazing research tool and you can also test and try a few things to see what works in your industry and for your clients.

However, I will warn you against non-personalised script style emails or bulk messaging – these are probably the least effective ways to build your business on LinkedIn – and you may be penalised by LinkedIn or reported as a spammer. Remember that givers gain!

Completing your profiles adequately, participating respectfully and constantly providing value to your target audience will help you build your business profile on LinkedIn.