7 Reasons Businesses Should Use LinkedIn for Social Media Marketing

Many inbound marketers steer clear of LinkedIn as a social media marketing channel in favor of Facebook and Twitter. I never quite understood why, until I started fielding questions about LinkedIn and marketing. It appears that marketers that don’t use LinkedIn themselves are uncomfortable with including it in their offerings or inbound marketing mix. This is certainly understandable, but there are seven reasons below that hopefully will convince them to use LinkedIn as a social media marketing channel.

1. Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) – Google gives LinkedIn company and personal profiles high authority and generally ranks them well for queries that include a company name, brand or employee’s name.  The more real estate you can control on the first page of Google, the more insurance you have to protect your company, brand and employees from search engine reputation management issues.
2. Increase your brand’s visibility – By your employees and executives adding connections, answering questions and participating in group discussions your company’s brand will be much more visible and your employees may be considered thought leaders , industry experts or go-to people in your industry.
3. Lead Generation – By actively participating in the LinkedIn community you will have the opportunity to offer up your content with the purpose of helping people solve their problems.  If your white paper helps answer someone’s question in a group forum than provide a link to your white paper download.  LinkedIn users that download your white paper are now in your lead nurturing campaign.
4. Decision Maker Lead Tracking – Once you’ve generated leads and connected with decision makers on LinkedIn, they may move to another company.  As these contacts change jobs or switch careers, you’ll be able to track where they go and reach out to them at their new company, generating yet another lead.
5. Targeted Ads – LinkedIn will allow you to place text ads in front of the individuals whom you’d consider to be the most qualified prospects – i.e. CEOs, CFOs, Human Resource Executives, etc.  You can target them even more by choosing specific industries.  
6. Recruiting new talent – LinkedIn is a great place to find highly qualified future employees.  It is easily searched via keyword, profile, geography and company.  Studies show that LinkedIn decreases the time it takes to fill a position by 50%.
7. Product Feature – In addition to profiles, companies can now list their products and services with links back to their websites and YouTube videos.  Also, companies can have existing clients review their products and/or services on LinkedIn.

Learn How to Make LinkedIn an Important Part of Your Inbound Marketing Mix