When asked, ‘’Which social media is best for business?’’ most answers would be Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. But there is one platform that most people forget: LinkedIn.

Most people think of LinkedIn as a job posting board. And why would they not? It was a job posting site in 2010. But things have changed drastically since then. With so many features such as LinkedIn Pulse, Ads, Groups, and InMail, LinkedIn today is a pure goldmine for those who pay attention to it.

With over 740 million registered users, LinkedIn is one of the largest social media sites for professionals. And when it comes to professionals hanging out online, LinkedIn is their jam. Not Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube, but LinkedIn.

If you have a business that serves other companies or a business where creating connections with clients is important, it’s time to open a LinkedIn account.

LinkedIn offers various ways for businesses to deploy it for companies, from creating job offers to generating leads. Whether you are updating your LinkedIn profile or creating a new one, here are some of the things to consider building your B2B brand on LinkedIn.

But, before we get started with tips, using LinkedIn as a B2B marketing tool, take a look at your LinkedIn profile.

Your LinkedIn Profile

Your profile is the most important element on the site. It acts as a glorified business card. So, keep it interesting and cliché-free. Your profile will decide whether people want to follow your business or not.

#1: Create and Optimise Your Business Page

Many businesses on LinkedIn create business pages. But rarely do they embrace the opportunities it can bring them. Business pages can be a goldmine for generating industry connections. So, if you haven’t yet created a business page, it’s time to create one.

It’s a straightforward procedure. Just visit your LinkedIn profile and click on the Work icon at the top right corner. At the bottom of the dropdown list, you will see the option Create a Company Page and click on it.

Now that you have created a company page, it’s time to fill in all the information, including a logo, cover picture, company overview, and other information such as company website, etc. Also, add keywords to optimise it so that people can find your business efficiently.

#2: Post Engaging Content Regularly

You have a business profile, but how can you stand apart from your competitors? The answer: By creating engaging content.
LinkedIn gives you various formats to create content such as polls, text posts, and videos.

A study found that companies who post as little as once a week see 2x lift rates on their post and page engagement. What’s more, if you’re already creating content for your website, you can share it on LinkedIn.

Visual content on LinkedIn gets more engagement than simple text. Videos get as much engagement as typical text posts. And LinkedIn Live Stream gets an engagement rate of 24x times.

So it doesn’t matter what you are sharing, whether a recent company update, a blog post or industry insights, try to make it visual for more engagement.

Also, don’t forget to post at the correct time. Each social media platform has a different audience, and each of them has a popular time to post. So, you want to publish your LinkedIn posts at what’s popularly known as ‘drive time.’

According to Crazy Egg, the best time to post on LinkedIn is from 7 am to 9 am and 5 pm to 6 pm. The best days to post on LinkedIn are generally Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

#3: Create and Leverage Your Own LinkedIn Group

Can’t find a community for your industry? Create your own!

LinkedIn groups can help you connect and interact with like-minded people and industry leaders. One of the best ways to expand your brand and recognition is to create your own focused LinkedIn group. By doing so, you can make loyal followers, who you can ultimately convert. Moreover, LinkedIn groups are not affected by social media algorithms, so you have complete control over what your members see.

LinkedIn groups are sure-shot ways to blow up your professional network quite easily.

On the other hand, if you want to join other popular groups in your industry, just type in the search bar and request to join. Once accepted, start by talking to industry leaders.

There, you have now created your community and engaged with leaders for absolutely FREE.

#4: Use LinkedIn Ads to Generate Leads

We all know that social media sites are pay-to-play platforms. If you want to use them to your maximum benefit, you will need to pay. Fortunately, LinkedIn has paid tools that are totally worth trying if you are a B2B business.

One of these is LinkedIn Ads. There was a time when LinkedIn ads sucked. But not anymore! Today, LinkedIn ads have an option to collect the leads of people who clicked on your ads or interacted in any other way. This is a powerful option for B2B if lead generation is the ultimate goal.

LinkedIn offers several types of advertising types such as sponsored content, text ads, dynamic ads, and sponsored messaging.

In 2017, LinkedIn added a Matched Audience feature. This feature works like Facebook’s custom audience feature. LinkedIn is full of CEOs and executives, some of whom are notoriously hard to reach. But with the Matched Audience feature, you can easily target them if you have their data.

With so many advanced features, LinkedIn ads are worth trying to get full advantage of the platform.

#5: Take advantage of InMail

Not many people know this but, InMail has a reply rate of 3 times more than a traditional email.

But there’s just a small catch. InMail is not free. You will need to pay $79 per month to use this feature that is pure gold. With InMail, you can contact literally anyone on LinkedIn.

Imagine how many leads and sales you can generate if your response rate suddenly triples. Moreover, InMail has inbuilt analytics to help you tune your messages.

You can reach out to anyone in the world without a barrier. Overall, it is a powerful tool that every B2B business should have in its arsenal.

Wrapping Up

As a B2B business, having a LinkedIn profile has become more important than ever.

LinkedIn is no longer a job sourcing platform. Today, it is much more than that. You can use it to generate leads and sales, create authority in your industry, interact with your audience, and so much more.