LinkedIn brand page setup & management

In today’s world most people turn to the internet to research businesses, brands and products. If we need a builder we review them on Checkatrade, if we want to buy a pair of trainers we take hints from friends on Facebook, if we want to buy a car we read the user reviews on the Autotrader website. LinkedIn marketing is another channel brands can use to monitor user generated content.

Of course many businesses need to market products or services that are less fashion and consumer orientated. If we take the example of a commercial data backup business, the chance of them effectively using Facebook to market their products is minimal. It is certainly true that the business’ customers may well be Facebook users, however, the likelihood is that these same users would rather post funny video memes to their Facebook wall rather than whitepapers relating to the best storage devices for commercial data.

This is where LinkedIn comes in. LinkedIn started as a networking tool for individuals who created private profiles much like users do on Facebook. LinkedIn profiles reflect the more professional aspects of the individual, their education, their professional experience and their career ambitions. The idea behind LinkedIn was to create an online community for business people who wanted to interact with others in order to find jobs and create business relationships to increase revenues.

Businesses then started to use the platform to advertise their products and services. This was done through business pages that talked in-depth about the brand and the products or services that they offer. LinkedIn has grown to such an extent that many business people login to the site to actively research companies before they do business with them. For example, the IT Manager for ACME Trading Ltd created a LinkedIn profile two years ago to send his CV out to recruitment agencies and other companies in order to find a new job. That same IT Manager now uses LinkedIn to review companies offering data backup and disaster recovery. This presents advertisers with a perfect platform to showcase products and services to the very people who will be signing off the budget for them.

When you engage effectively with your audience across social media you open up a direct communication channel that helps advertise and sell your products and services.

Brands doing it well

IBM

IBM leads the way with over 2 million LinkedIn interactions each year. They’re one of the most popular LinkedIn accounts for followers and interactions.

The company has some of the best showcase pages in terms of covering different products and brands. IBM manages to present highly technical content in a way that’s easy to understand. The company also frequently posts 1 to 2 content updates per day to keep its 3.3 million followers entertained.

The most common issues businesses find when trying to market themselves with social media is dedication to creating and sharing fresh content. For your brand to stand out and engage with LinkedIn users the content you offer must be fresh, exciting and interesting. Most companies fail because they create a LinkedIn page for their business or brand, they add a few photos and some text and then they do nothing more. This doesn’t constitute effective marketing but it is extremely common, we see it everyday and we understand the issue. We can address this with our LinkedIn monthly marketing work.

For marketeers LinkedIn offers two main options; Pages and Advertising. Each of these two options has specific elements which may suit your business or brand.

LinkedIn Pages

In the same way an individual creates their profile page on Facebook, businesses, organisations and brands can create pages on LinkedIn where they engage more with professionals. LinkedIn users can like a page and share it with their “connections” and most importantly receive updated news from that page in their newsfeed. Once a user has connected with a brand’s page, that brand has a direct line to them through which they can feed news and promotions.

Pages are free to set up, the content is flexible and creation is down to the administrator. The page can be branded to reflect the creative design of the business, brand or product and special attention needs to be paid to the quality of content to ensure that a user decides to connect with your page and thus receive newsfeed updates whenever you post something new. The main drawback of using pages for business is simply that users need to find your page in order to like it and share its content. LinkedIn pages are in effect “reactive” in that users find them as a result of a proactive search perhaps because they have seen your brand or product elsewhere. Pages do not proactively go and collect LinkedIn connections for you. You need to work hard to promote your content, perhaps utilising LinkedIn Advertising which are discussed in more detail in our Advertising & PR page.

We will work with you to ensure that the content you share on your page is exciting, engaging and fresh. There are many ways that we can publish content for you, either by writing it independently or by taking information feeds from elsewhere in your business. Simply by including us in your email shots, product promotions and company newsletters we are automatically being sent information which we can use to build exciting content for your users on LinkedIn. Depending on the “voice” you want your page to have we can blend your brand and product information with conversation from external sources, current affairs, industry news or other topics relevant to either your brand or your audience. Essentially, with no day-to-day input from you we can give your business a face and a voice and engage with your audience on LinkedIn.

We can work with you to find which avenues are best to explore with regards to your business. You may already be a LinkedIn user personally but with no experience using the tool for business, likewise you may already have setup a business or brand page but are finding the constant writing of content and monitoring of comments too much work. Our job is to ensure that the way you market yourself on LinkedIn receives maximum exposure at the lowest cost and with the best possible outcome for your brand. We can create LinkedIn pages and Advertising, fully branding them to match your corporate identity. We can also write fresh, engaging content and add photos and videos as required. Everything that we create as part of the setup process belongs to you so if at some point in the future you decide to take the LinkedIn marketing inhouse you can continue where we left off with all social media assets remaining in your control.