Marketing your business on LinkedIn makes sense from all angles - whether you’re looking to capture more people for your B2B audience or to attract interest from potential employees.
To make full use of the platform when marketing your business you need to know the features, so we’ve put together a list of the best features for your business on LinkedIn.
1. Control the visibility of your connections.
If you’re ever worried that your competitors might look to poach your clients, parters and employees, then you might want to explore the visibility option that LinkedIn provides.
You can manage who can see the connections you’ve spent years curating with the simple click of a button.
Head to your settings and hit the visibility tab, click the connections option and you’ll find a button which allows you to hide your connections from any unwanted eyes.
2. Set your profile to ‘private mode’.
Seeing as you may want to protect your connection details from competitors who are doing their due diligence, you might also want to check out your competitors profiles without being tracked yourself. You can discover useful information by doing so, such as connections and content strategies.
You can also view profiles in private mode, meaning you can hide your visit to that profile. It can also be useful when reviewing the profiles of job candidates.
Head to setting and hit the visibility tab, from there you can click profile viewing options and choose the options provided based on how you want your profile to appear.
3. Showcase Pages to segment your audience.
If your business caters to multiple consumer segments then the Showcase Pages feature provided by LinkedIn is going to be a winner for you. These are the pages that show up on your main company page as ‘Affiliated Pages’.
Each Showcase Page can be used to highlight a specific aspect of your business, if you’ve got a certain product you want to show off then a Showcase Page is where you’ll want to do it.
Since you can target different audience segments with Showcase Pages, it opens up a whole new way to bring people to your company page by targeting their interests, preferences, profession and more.
Creating a Showcase Page is super easy, head to your LinkedIn Business Page and click on ‘Admin Tools’ in the right hand corner of the page, click the ‘Create a Showcase Page’ option and enter the name of the page and its URL.
4. Save your searches.
LinkedIn like any other social media platform requires you to use the search bar to your advantage by searching for niche topics or potential job candidates. It is part of your direct lead generation strategy.
Making sure you don’t have to conduct a new search each time you decide to use the function means that you can utilise the save search feature to quickly return to your most searched options for easy access.
As an added bonus you can setup search alerts and even get a weekly email reminder when someone matches the search criteria of your saved searches.
Create your search criteria and flick the ‘set alert’ button and the top to start saving your searches with LinkedIn.
5. Sending messages to users who aren’t connections.
A free LinkedIn account only allows you to send messages to users you have as a connection. Meaning you’ll need to connect with someone before you have the option to message them directly.
If you don’t necessarily want to connect with someone but you still want to message them then there a workaround available to you if you wanted to utilise it.
You need to join a group that this person is a part of on LinkedIn, click the ‘see all’ option on the members panel and search for the person you want to message from there. You’ll have a message option for everyone in the group allowing you to connect with someone who isn’t a connection of yours.
You can also sign up for LinkedIn Premium if you wanted an easier way to message someone you aren’t a connection with.
6. Polls
LinkedIn like most social media platforms, has a poll option as part of your marketing strategy on the platform. This is a great way to drive quick engagement and also gain valuable insights into your connections.
Use the feature to ask questions of your audience that will see interaction
The beauty of the poll feature is that you can ask whatever question you want, you can make it a serious one that is focusing on an industry topic, or something fun and light to generate some extra engagement from your audience. The power is in your hands.
7. Carousel feature for documents.
When sharing multiple phots at once it automatically places them into a gallery for you. These are typically a bit harder to navigate for users when compared to the ease of swiping through a carousel of posts.
LinkedIn unfortunately doesn’t have a carousel feature, but there is a nifty workaround for that. You can share a multi-page PDF document on LinkedIn, and it will appear in a scrollable, carousel format.
8. Post reactions
Since LinkedIn added the reactions feature to their platform, interactions have become more meaningful between users. Everyone can now do more than just ‘like’ a post, they can also:
- Celebrate
- Support
- Love
- Find it insightful
- Express curiosity
As an example, you may post about your new role at a new company and your connection can choose the ‘celebrate’ reaction to give you a clear understanding of their feelings towards your content.
9. Name pronunciation
The name pronunciation feature brought in by LinkedIn has been one of the best in recent memory. Users can record a clip of their voice pronouncing their name and add it to their profile. This allows others to say their name correctly.
The professional world has changed so much over the years and become a more inclusive place, so having a feature that allows for correct pronunciation is crucial.
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