Close your eyes and count to one (trust us, just do it). Okay, open them. Now, in the time it took you to count to one, two new professionals joined LinkedIn.
Today, LinkedIn is the largest professional network with 175 million users from 200 countries. More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages and every Fortune 500 executive has a personal LinkedIn profile.
So how do these statistics impact your business? Alloy has helped several clients grow their LinkedIn presence, engage employees and reach prospects – turning LinkedIn into a powerful lead generation tool. In fact, one of our clients has seen LinkedIn become a top three referrer to its corporate website!
Here are some tips and tricks that you (and your coworkers/employees) should implement to maximize your online reach, touch new prospects and drive interest in your company’s products and services:
Put your value proposition in your headline, not your title (e.g., Results-oriented, technical sales representative for fast-growing software startup)
Include your company’s relevant keywords in your job description (i.e., cutting-edge software, agile developer)
Ensure your privacy settings are set to public
Upgrade to LinkedIn Sales Navigator ($15 to $75/mo) so you can organize your contacts into “folders” to build your pipeline
See who’s viewed your profile and send a follow up note
Update your status with useful articles and resources to appear more frequently in news feeds
Add your LinkedIn URL (or QRcode) to your email signature, business card, trade show gear, etc.
Ask for & give recommendations and endorsements to increase your exposure on others’ profiles
Once you’re comfortable with these best practices, we also recommend looking at these engaging LinkedIn applications. Install the ones that best fit you and your job function.
Stay tuned to our blog for best practices on corporate LinkedIn pages. Questions? We’re here to help. Connect with us on LinkedIn!