LinkedIn is probably the most professional of all the social media platforms out there. It’s not only a great tool for you to connect with other professionals in your industry, but it also has many benefits for your business as well. For example, you can use it to find new employees, get customers, and build your brand by publicizing information about your company and its products and services.
If you don’t already have a LinkedIn Company Page, it’s pretty easy to set one up. You just go to your personal LinkedIn profile, click the Interests tab at the top of the screen, and then click Companies in the drop-down menu. When the page refreshes, click the Create button on the right side of the page to create a new company page.
To create the page, you’ll need to enter some details about your company, such as the type of business (whether it’s a partnership, public company, etc.), the number of employees, your company website’s URL, and a short description up to 250 words. You also have to select the Main Company Industry from a drop-down list.
In the Company Specialties section, there are fields where you can type in the main areas of your company’s focus. Although these are not mandatory fields, it’s a good idea to complete them as this gives others a better picture of what your company does.
You can also upload a cover image and a company logo to your company page. The logo’s dimensions must be a minimum of 300 x 300 pixels and must be not larger than 400 x 400 pixels. The photo file must also be smaller than 4 megabytes.
You can also assign Designated Admins when creating your company page. You will need to do this if someone else at your company or a third party will be managing your LinkedIn posts. Prior to assigning someone else as an admin on your company page, they must have a LinkedIn account and be “connected” to you on LinkedIn.
Once your company page is created, be sure to post to it on a regular basis. If you don’t have a paid social media manager, you can enlist colleagues or other employees who understand customers’ needs or have specific content creation skills such as knowing how to put together a short video. Visual content like videos and infographics are great to use on LinkedIn and often attract and hold an audience’s attention longer than text.
Be sure to post to your company page when new content is added on your website. This includes blogs, news items and digital newsletters. This can drive potential customers to your website and also helps you to get the most from the content that you’ve already paid someone to create for your website.
It is also a good practice to create a social media calendar for the entire month in advance, which outlines what your posts will be. You can also pick a different theme, specialty area, product or service to focus on each month.
Not all the information you post on LinkedIn has to be original planned content, of course. In addition to scheduled posts, be sure to peruse the websites of publications, associations and organizations related to your industry. The Pallet Enterprise website (www.palletenterprise.com) has lots of content that is applicable to the pallet industry and your customers. Also, the Pallet Enterprise has a free forum/group on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8133689. This is a good place to learn about and comment on industry trends.
When you find an interesting article, write a comment about it and share the article on your LinkedIn company page. You can also share posts made on your company page from your personal LinkedIn profile and encourage your followers, colleagues and employees to do this as well.
It’s also important to build up your company page’s followers on LinkedIn so your posts get a wider audience. To do this, be sure to add a link to your LinkedIn company page to your website. Also, have everyone at your company add the link to their company email signature with a message that says something like, “Follow Us on LinkedIn.”
