Are you using LinkedIn to its fullest potential? Brent Haeseker and Veronica Buhl return for the second installment of their Marketing with Social Media series. This time they discuss how you should be using InMail, business pages, and industry specific groups to maximize your networking abilities.
Full Transcription:
Brent Haeseker: I’m here again Veronica Buhl who is our social media expert and we’re going to talk about marketing on LinkedIn and how to use that for your business. Last week we talked about Facebook. So this week we’re going to talk about LinkedIn and how you can use that to grow your business online. So Veronica we’re gonna jump right on into it. Who should be marketing on LinkedIn? Who’s this best for?
Veronica Buhl: LinkedIn is a more professional platform than you would find for all the other social media accounts. LinkedIn is more geared towards business to business or business to consumer. It’s more for employment agencies, recruiting agencies. It’s very much for networking, for professionals to network with each other.
Brent Haeseker: So who would be some of the industries that it best serves.
Veronica Buhl: It’s best served by people in marketing, financial industries, Science and Technology, legal, I.T. or information technology, health and wellness. Not so much retail, not so much personal, small businesses. This is more medium to large corporations and individuals that are professional seeking to connect with other professionals.
Brent Haeseker: So then if you’re thinking about marketing on LinkedIn and you’re running a store, we have used the shoe store a lot as an example. LinkedIn might not necessarily be a social media service that they might want to utilize for marketing because that might not lead them to any sales.
Veronica Buhl: It’s not going to be really their market there. It’s a different type of social media.
Brent Haeseker: An attorney who is offering their services or something like that a doctor or physician.
Veronica Buhl: A marketer or somebody who’s high level coaching that sort of person is going to be more apt to do well with LinkedIn.
Brent Haeseker: So tell us a little bit about the demographics of LinkedIn because last week when we were talking about Facebook demographics we learned a lot of really interesting demographics on Facebook so tell us a little bit about LinkedIn.
Veronica Buhl: LinkedIn is like I said a very professional network. It’s not a place where people go and tell you what they had for breakfast. It’s a very professional, one of the statistics I found was one in three professionals on the planet uses LinkedIn. That is quite a lot of people. It’s very business oriented for medium to large sized corporations. The main focus of this social network is for making business connections and industry contacts for employers or working professionals. Like I said people who are looking to be hired by large corporations or medium corporations or corporations are looking for employees are generally on there.
Brent Haeseker: So if you are seeking a job, it’s also a great network to be on.
Veronica Buhl: Exactly. It’s also great if you’re trying to connect with somebody in your industry to learn more or get coaching. It’s a great place. Most of the people that use LinkedIn are of a higher income, they’re higher income individuals. Sixty percent of U.S. users make over 100000 dollars a year. Also 41 percent of millionaires use LinkedIn over any other platform. So we’re talking people who are very professional, very high income also very educated. Statistically about 70 percent of users have some college, 50 percent of those have a bachelor’s degree or higher. So it’s generally marketed to professionals high income and degrees.
Brent Haeseker: So if you’re looking to get in touch with a CEO or something like that of a company, CFO, LinkedIn is probably a good way of doing. It’s kind of like a telephone book of all the important people and businesses.
Veronica Buhl: Like the who’s who in business.
Brent Haeseker: Any other demographics that are of interest?
Veronica Buhl: One of the interesting things I found was that it is one of the most popular social networks as far as active users, which means that the people who are on here use the platform all the time.
Brent Haeseker: I would think that you know Facebook would probably be a higher activity but more people use actually use LinkedIn?
Veronica Buhl: People use it when they have it. Whereas opposed to Facebook or Twitter people may have an account but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re on there all the time.
Brent Haeseker: It’s funny because I mean I’ve had a LinkedIn account for 10 years or so at least and I’ll admit I’m kind of bad at checking it often. I’m not on it that often so I’ve always struggled to get it to utilize it. But I think it’s a cool service, but I’m surprised. Because when I get there I’m like OK what do I do now. I think a lot of people probably have that same feeling. So that’s why I was surprised to find out that the people that are on it are actually very actively using it. So obviously they’ve figured out what to do. What would be some of those things that they’re probably doing when they log in?
Veronica Buhl: It’s a great place, First of all to keep track of all your businesses or employers that you’ve worked for and it’s kind of like a running resume. Any time you’ve done something, had a project that you did that went well it’s always good to put it on there. Not only as a reminder to you but somebody may be looking for your services. And when you keep that updated with all these projects and education that you have, people find you and if they need your services they’ll find you and I think that’s what people do is they keep it updated constantly so that they can connect with the right people in their industry.
Brent Haeseker: Now if you’re following some good people, some good heavy hitters in the industry, you can see when they’re posting articles and blog posts and things like that so it’s a good place to find information there. And really industry specific news that’s not filled up with videos of cats and stuff like that on Facebook. It’s very focused on business so it is a good place to have a news feed where you’re following a lot of really useful information without having to worry about all the silly stuff that you deal with on Facebook. Well, I know with Facebook they have the ability so you can have a personal profile and then you can also set up pages for your business. I know with LinkedIn, you’ve got your personal profile. And then there’s also the company page that you can set up. Tell us about how this works in relation or in parallel to Facebook, what the differences are, and what the similarities are there.
Veronica Buhl: Similarities are with any social media account that you have, they require you to have a personal account. This is obviously for safety reasons because anybody could go set up a business account and it would be hard to track. So you have to have a personal page which is just personal data about you, who you are, what you do. If you want to set up a business page, then you go up to the right to the corner of your screen and it says work. And if you click on that and you go all the way down at the bottom it says create a business page. And you just click on that, and you set it up just like you would your personal account except it’s all geared towards your business so it would have your business logo, what products and services you have. And you would just set it up the same and then now you’ve got a business account that people can follow and it’s instead of just following your personal page which is good when you have a brand or industry that you’re in that your company is in that you want people to find.
Brent Haeseker: And then other employees can be attached to that business page as well so if you’re on a company you can find a figure out all the people that at least have an account and are attached to that particular business page. So with Facebook I know you can set up multiple pages. Can you do that for multiple businesses or for the same business and would that actually make sense or is that dumb?
Veronica Buhl: Yes you can and just like with Facebook where you can have more than one business page you can also do it here at LFgroinkedIn, but again just as we said with Facebook is plan ahead and really think about do you need that extra page because the more pages you add, the more you’re watering down each one. So if you have a business that has two clearly defined brands then yes I would say definitely have a page for each of those. If it’s just a company and we have a bunch of brands but that’s just kind of all encompassed in that thing, I would say keep it simple and keep it one page. So you have to really think about, it is it really necessary to have more than one? Really plan it out before you do it because it can damage you more to have too many and people can’t find you than to have just one solid business page in my opinion.
Brent Haeseker: OK well what are some of the marketing tools that LinkedIn gives to its users to be able to actually market and do things and connect and grow their business online
Veronica Buhl: Well like most of the social media things you can have ads. They have several different types of ads that you can focus on with your business and you can shake them up, do a little here and a little there. They have things called sponsored content. Sponsored content is where you pay to have your content whatever it be. Whether it be a promotion for a product or a blog post. It’s what normally shows up in the feed just like in Facebook. You can sponsor that post so that it shows up in more people’s feeds not just the people who are following you. Then they have something called sponsored Inmail. If this is just basically the same as Facebook Messenger, it’s LinkedIn’s version of it. And when anybody follows you, even actually if somebody hasn’t followed you and you’re looking at their account you haven’t connected yet. There’s a little button underneath their profile that says in mail. And you can click on that and send them a personal message. So there are ads where you can actually have it sent directly to people instead of in the timeline instead of the feed. So that’s what that is, it’s a sponsored email.
Brent Haeseker: So they open the their email and they’ve got an ad from you?
Veronica Buhl: Yeah. And it usually times it too. It won’t pop up in their Inmail until they’re actually pn LinkedIn. So it looks like it just happened when they come on.
Brent Haeseker: So that triggers “Hey, I’ve got something, I’ve got mail,” and then they look and they’ve got an ad, hey thanks.
Veronica Buhl: Then they have something called text ads which is more of a pay-per-click advertising platform. So that’s available. That drives new customers to your business. So these are looking for people that fit within your demographic of who you sell to and it advertises to them, not just into the news feeds people who are already following you. And then they have something called Dynamic ads. These are very interesting. They actually learn from who’s following you. And they will choose who will best fit your ad. So these are the four different types of ads that they have on LinkedIn. And I think there’s another one but I think it’s more geared towards corporations. So I didn’t include it here. I mean like large corporations, we’re talking Coca-Cola or something like that. But these are the four types of ads and they all have just slightly distinct differences. So that’s one way is obviously ads. Each one has a different purpose for how you’re going to use it. And you can probably mix them up.
Brent Haeseker: I know a couple years ago **LinkedIn** started offering the ability to do blogs on the platform. Tell us a little bit about that, and why you might want to use LinkedIn blogs versus having a blog of your own.
Veronica Buhl: You can use both. With LinkedIn you can write your own blogs there. What most people do I think is connect their actual blog for their company or their personal blog to it. So whenever they post something it automatically gets posted to both places and it shows up in the feed. Then again you can always boost one of those with an ad, a sponsored ad or something. A few other tips that you can use LinkedIn to generate more business. It’s really important to keep your company page current. Because if you don’t, first of all people start thinking are they really still in business?
Brent Haeseker: Just like your Web site or any other social network.
Veronica Buhl: Exactly it puts doubt in people’s minds like “they haven’t been here in like a year. So probably. They’re probably gone.” So you always want to keep it updated fresh and new. You can change pictures so people see that you’re there frequently. I wouldn’t change it every day, but You know, keep it fresh. Make sure all your information is updated: business hours, the address, phone number, contact details, and everything like that. Always keep it updated if there’s a new product that you had come out. Make sure you make them make the changes there. As well as if there’s a new project that you finished that you’re proud about, make sure that shows there. Just constantly keep it fresh.
Brent Haeseker: It’s almost like an online resume. For either yourself on your profile or for your business. And I know they’ve got groups too. So how does that work on LinkedIn.
Veronica Buhl: Just like Facebook you can create a group for a specific industry, you could create it for a certain topic. If you find that a lot of your customers have the same key needs you could create a group around that. And this way people can talk and ask questions and you can be on there and giving them answers. It creates good engagement between everybody, it’s very much networking.
Brent Haeseker: So for example I know a while back I was following a lot of marketing groups on LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn I followed a lot of marketing groups in the past and found them to be very useful and very helpful to learn about a lot of new stuff that was happening at the time. Especially years back when social media was still relatively new and following a lot of the people that were really on the cutting edge of that time really was helpful to kind of get a grip on what was going on.
Veronica Buhl: It definitely gives you an edge on your career as well. Even if you’re already working for a corporation that you’re excited about these groups that you can join and blogs that you can follow. Give you a lot of information to give your career a boost and push you in the right direction. So definitely a good thing to do.
Brent Haeseker: And obviously with LinkedIn, like any other social network you’re going to want to have good high quality photography with any of the stuff that you’re posting. And making sure that all your visuals are very sharp, very good, high resolution because it’s a visual world out there.
Veronica Buhl: I was going to say people are very visual. I am as well. And they’re attracted to really good visuals really good pictures, quality videos so you know think twice before putting something up there that’s not quite of sharp quality because that’s what attracts people.
Brent Haeseker: And also make sure your profile because it’s a professional network, you want to make sure that your goofy picture of you making funny face or something like that or whatever, you want to use more your business photo for your profile photo versus you on a skiing trip in Montana or something like that that you might have on Facebook. And so I think we’ve kind of covered a good amount, is there is there anything else that you really can think of that we need to know about LinkedIn, I know we’re just kind of doing a quick skim through, a summary overview of the service. Anything else we may not have touched on?
Veronica Buhl: Just a reminder that it’s a great place to touch base with people in your own industry. You can get mentors there, if you have any problems in your career or your industry that you can’t quite figure out. There’s a lot of people on here, as we said in the demographics a lot of people that are very professional, very high income, very highly educated, and they have knowledge that they can give to you and as well as you can give knowledge to them. Just becaus you’re in the same place. So seek out people for answers to questions you have or challenges you have. There’s lots of coaches up there on LinkedIn, and most of them are CEOs and CFOs. They know what they’re doing. So it’s a great place, a great resource. Another thing is when you’re on there, it’s a very professional network. This isn’t Facebook or Twitter where you know casually throw stuff out there and can get silly. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a sense of humor on here. People appreciate that. But be very professional and very serious on this. Because that’s the audience that’s there for you. So you don’t want to push people away.
Brent Haeseker: Think business on LinkedIn.
Veronica Buhl: Yes, think very business-like when you’re there.
Brent Haeseker: OK great. Well thank you for all the information you’ve shared again. Appreciate it. Thank you for watching. If you need any assistance on your social media, especially with LinkedIn or any of the other networks that are out there, feel free to give us a call. The number to reach us is 1 800 7 0 9 3 2 4 0. You can also visit us online at netsourceinc.com. Thank you for watching and have a great day. Bye