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LinkedIn Marketing – How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Your Business

Written by: Zeke Camusio

Article Overview: 1. Customize Your URL Your profile information may be indexed by search engines. LinkedIn profiles receive a pretty high rank in Google. Instead of using the default URL, customize your own by using your company’s name. If you’re a small start up, it would be better if you used a really great keyword instead of your actual name. If nobody knows you, they won’t be searching for your name, so you have better chances of ranking higher with a competitive keyword. And don’t forget to select the “Full View” option. 2. Give Your Profile Greater Visibility To strengthen the visibility of what is essentially your business profile, use your customized LinkedIn URL as a signature when you leave comments in business or industry-specific blogs.

LinkedIn Marketing – How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Your Business

3. Optimize Labels
Don’t forget to add your website, blog, or any other relevant URLs to your profile. LinkedIn allows up to three. In the section labeled “Websites”, most LinkedIn profiles use the labels “My Company”, “My Blog” , “My Portfolio”. You have the option to customize this and add your own text for the label, say your company’s name. Use the drop down menu to “Other” and just add the text. Why is this important? It’s just a detail. Not at all. As search engines crawl the web your name won’t be lost among all the “My Company”s. You won’t get massive amounts of traffic driven to your company’s website from this alone, but it’ll surely help. Once again, for this to work, you must set your public profile settings to “Full View”.

4. Use the Right (Key)Words to Define Yourself
Directly below your name you’ll see a headline. Now, this could be a little tricky. You should use words that clearly define you or your business, but, at the same time use keywords that are relevant to your industry and will allow others to easily find you.

5. Promote Your Blog
With applications like Blog Link and the WordPress App, LinkedIn allows you to sync your blog posts with your LinkedIn profile. This enables you to keep everyone in your network updated and provides greater exposure to your business or name.

6. Use the e-mail signature
LinkedIn offers you the possibility to create a custom e-mail signature in Outlook, Outlook Express, and Mozilla Thunderbird with a short version of your LinkedIn profile and a link to your complete profile.

7. Add a Profile Picture
This is not a SEO-specific strategy, but adding an image to your profile, whether it is your own friendly face, or company logo, will go a long way towards establishing the connections you want. It’ll make your profile look more credible, professional, and serious.
None of these strategies alone can guarantee increased traffic to your website or greater exposure. However, if they’re combined, they will greatly enhance your chances of improving visibility for your business, reaching the customers or business contacts you seek, and ultimately closing more deals.

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  Leverage Social Media - LinkedIn Strategies

Article Tags: blog, company logo, drop down menu, e mail, key words, labels, linkedin, mail signature, massive amounts, mozilla thunderbird, outlook express, profile settings, profiles, relevant urls, search engines, sync, traffic, wordpress



Related Forum Posts
Re: On Which Social Media Sites Are You Most Active? - I'd be curious to hear how you guys use LinkedIn. I have close to 3,000 connections and never use it. I've been told the secret is to use groups (which I don't) so I'd love to hear how you guys are benefiting from LinkedIn.
Re: Twiiter an sales - [quote="soldlab":1ycb8vnm]I guess though LinkedIn is better for actual leag generation and personal contacts. What do you think?[/quote:1ycb8vnm] I've had a lot more success (thus far) with Twitter than LinkedIn or Facebook.
Re: Social Media Effectively? - Personally, I use social media to build my company brand in order to get awareness of the various franchises I work with. I am active on LinkedIn and Twitter (@DougSchadle), always posting information about the franchise opportunities I work with. I have started discussions and basically just try to get the word out there. Also, I turned one of my clients to social media as well. I work with Doctors Express, the first national urgent care franchise, expanding their franchise base. They are quickly spreading throughout the country and I told the founder to jump on to Twitter and LinkedIn as well. He just started a few weeks ago (Twitter handle @Doctors_Express) and tells me he is loving it. He is posting different medical issues he sees and is tweeting about Doctors Express. He is joining medical groups on LinkedIn and trying to connect to other doctors. So in short, I do think franchises can be very successful with social media, they just have to put in the time to do it.
The Power of Ten - Do you want to save money and time? Make the most of your marketing efforts? The Power of Ten™ is about taking the concepts of repurposing and leveraging “to the max”. It allows you to innovate and discover new possibilities for any marketing you already have in place. Here’s how it works: Make a list of the most recent 10 marketing items you’ve created or paid to have created. If you don’t have any materials, you can simply list the pieces you plan on creating. Now pick one. It could be an article, ad, poster, anything you have used recently as a marketing tool. Take a fresh look at it. Brainstorm and free write until you find at least 10 different ways to use that piece. You can do this with as many pieces as you want, but for now start with just one. It’s amazing how much time, effort and money you can save using The Power of Ten™. Below is an example using The Power of Ten™ with this very article. Even a very short piece, such as this, can benefit from The Power of Ten™. Here are some ways I can use this tip: 1) It’s part of a new marketing program I’m creating that may be called Marketing Full Circle. 2) It’s on my blog. 3) I can tweet it (knowing that it will show up on LinkedIn and many other sites which display tweets). 4) I can go over to LinkedIn and post it to a group. 5) I can it to my ezine subscribers. 6) I will send it to my clients. 7) If it is a longer article, I can try submitting it to an Article Bank, or two, or three. It started out as part of an answer on Focus.com 9) Eventually it will be part of an eBook on marketing tips. 10) I mention the concept often at speaking engagements. (c)2010 Elevating Your Business What would you add to the list? How about your own? Give it a try and comment below.
Re: 15 Ways You Can Look Amazing on LinkedIn - I agree with GT in that this advice can be applied to more than just LinkedIn. Excellent tips!


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