How to Create and Engaging LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is one of the world’s largest networking platforms to date. It currently has 810 million members in more than 200 countries worldwide. While social media platforms like Facebook are ideal for catching up with extended family and old friends, LinkedIn is the ideal platform for professional connections and engaging with clients and coworkers. While any company can join LinkedIn, the majority of companies on the platform are more B2B focused rather than B2C. If your company operates on a B2B model, then your target audiences are likely already active on LinkedIn as well as your competitors. Now is the best time to set up your LinkedIn company page!

In order to set up your company’s LinkedIn page, you need to make sure that you yourself (or a trusted representative) has a LinkedIn profile first. LinkedIn wants to make sure the company page is associated with an actual employee of the business as a way to reduce spam. 

Pro-Tip: Before you set up your company page, search for your company on LinkedIn. Sometimes, when employees claim they work at the company but there isn’t an existing company page, LinkedIn will auto-generate a company profile. If this is the case, you as an employee are able to go in and claim the page.    

Here’s a breakdown of LinkedIn Company Profile: 

Header: This is where you set your profile picture (typically your logo), your business name,a tagline, and your call to action button. 

About: Share your company’s mission and values as well as any background on how the company started and what products or services it provides. This is also where you add your website, business category, contact information, location, and company specialties. 

Pro-Tip: Describe your company with keywords you want to be associated with. This will help future employees or customers find you more easily. 

Community: This is where you set up your 3 hashtag topics (ex: #digitalmarketing) that allow you to follow conversations on LinkedIn focused on these chosen topics. You can also select any groups you participate in and showcase them on your profile. 

Cover photo: Remember to set a high quality image as your cover photo that accurately reflects what your business is about.

Once you’ve got your profile up and running, it’s time to invite your connections to follow your page! By default, LinkedIn provides you with 100 invitation credits per month – with each invite “costing” 1 credit. Once an invite is accepted, the credit is returned to the pool. Credits do not roll over month to month. 

If you don’t have that many connections or are just getting started, don’t worry! You can start to build your network by connecting with coworkers, former coworkers, college classmates, clients, etc. It may feel awkward at first, but remember that’s why everyone is on this platform – to build their own personal network! 

Working with the Algorithm 

LinkedIn’s main goal is to build a professional network. In order to do that, they’ve built their algorithm to allow content to live longer on news feeds. What does this look like? You may notice that you are personally receiving notifications each time one of your connections comments on another post. Or if you look in your personal feed, you’ll see posts appear simply because one of your connections has liked or reacted to a post, whether you follow the page or not. In these ways, LinkedIn is helping to expand your network by expanding the type of content you see and from who. 

Here’s how we can make this work for us. You can up the visibility of your company’s posts by commenting, sharing, or liking from your personal profile. This lets your personal network know about what your company is up to and the services it provides. 

Pro Tip: Just as you engage with your own company profile, be sure to do the same with other industry partners or target customers especially if you’re in a sales role. Remember, you represent your company on LinkedIn and your engagement can help lead to more followers and possibly more business for your company.

When you begin planning your LinkedIn post content, it’s important to remember your audience. What do they want to see on LinkedIn? Do they want to see your funny meme you shared on your Instagram story? Depending on the meme, they likely do not. Remember to post relevant content that demonstrates your company’s mission and your company’s culture.

Types of posts for LinkedIn:

Pro-Tip: Photos and video do really well as far as engagement. Also consider PDF ‘slideshows” or carousels that mobile viewers can easily swipe through.

Content Suggestions Tool  – LinkedIn provides company pages with a Content Suggestion Tool that shares trending articles and topics based on your industry. 

My Company Tab – The My Company tab is an employee only space where they can connect with colleagues and be informed of the latest company updates. Only employees are able to access the My Company tab on the Page.

Product Page/Tab – Some company pages are able to utilize a Product Page where you can showcase the products you offer (mostly reserved for software products at the moment). 

LinkedIn Ads – Just like on Facebook and Instagram, you can boost your posts and create ads in LinkedIn in order to expand your reach and engagement. 

As one of the leading networking platforms, LinkedIn is where companies go to share updates and engage with people in their industry. There are a lot of wonderful features within the platform and can be a little tricky to get started. If you’re looking for an extra hand, contact the team at Firefly Marketing to learn how we can help you succeed on LinkedIn!