Why Businesses Must Add LinkedIn to Their Marketing Strategy

Think LinkedIn is just to market business-to-business or to search for a new career opportunity? Think again, LinkedIn has some pretty terrific marketing potential for just about any business, B2B or B2C.

90% of LinkedIn Users make household decisions. 41% of users in the United States earn $ 75,000 or more per year. The estimated “value” of each user is $ 84. This provides a good resource for your business to tap into a new market.

Businesses should be using LinkedIn to showcase their products and services, share industry information and should be posting their blogs and updates at least 20 times per month. Posting at least 20 times per month will reach 60% of your audience, one post only reaches 20% of your audience. Most of the top LinkedIn users post at least 3 to 4 times per day.

Studies show that posting between 8 am and 6 pm is best to reach LinkedIn users. A few other important stats to note:

• Only 4% of LinkedIn users share their blog posts.
  
• There are 4 times more visitors to your homepage on LinkedIn than on Facebook or Twitter.
  
• There is a 2.74% visitor-to-lead conversion rate on LinkedIn, versus 0.77% on Facebook and only 0.69% on Twitter.
  
• Only 13% of LinkedIn users do not use Facebook (so you need to be there too!)
  
• LinkedIn has 450 million total users, 128 million in the U.S. and 106 million visit every month.

LinkedIn marketing is no different than any other Social Media Marketing, provide quality information, establish branding and visibility to improve brand awareness, engage with followers and keep it consistent.

Basic Roadmap for LinkedIn Marketing

• Ensure your profile is well-written and complete.
  
• Build an awesome company page and keep it active, establish other employees as managers and get them to post frequently as well. Just keep it interesting and active.
  
• Join groups and participate as an industry leader. Share valuable content with other group members and participate in conversations.
  
• Post quality content, make sure it is useful, interesting and valuable to your audience.
  
• Post content at least once per day, more would definitely provide better benefits and results.
  
• Avoid the direct sell, LinkedIn users want to connect, network and learn; don’t ambush them with nothing but sales messages.

Social Media Marketing isn’t going anywhere, it is expanding. Companies are going to have to start focusing their efforts on the Social Platforms if they want to stay relevant and be successful. LinkedIn is just one piece of the puzzle.

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