Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

You just can’t grow your blog or your brand these days without having a social presence – so everyone races to create their Facebook page, and their Twitter profile, and their Instagram portfolio.

Right?

But in all the busy-ness, the one platform that always seems to be ignored is LinkedIn.

Okay, sure: it might not have the billion-plus users that Facebook has, and you won’t find LinkedIn feeds at the bottom of a television broadcast like you do with Twitter.

So is LinkedIn even worth your time? Isn’t it just for job-seekers?

As we’ll cover below, not only do I think LinkedIn is the best social media platform out there for every blogger, it’s the only one I use....

Have you heard about how effective social selling is on LinkedIn?

Perhaps you’ve been struggling to get results on LinkedIn or spending too much time with too little of an ROI?

You don’t need to spend hours every day on LinkedIn to be successful at social selling. If you follow a daily routine that only includes those tasks which further your goals, you can quickly and easily generate new leads and build relationships with potential prospects in as little as 30 minutes a day.

A social selling campaign should position you as a credible expert in your field, bring you closer to your target market and move more conversations offline, aka the place where sales actually happen....

Wouldn't it be so cool if you could drive engagement and qualified traffic to grow your business and brand from LinkedIn?

You can!

This article will show you how to get tons of likes on your LinkedIn updates and further grow your reach with LinkedIn Pulse....

LinkedIn, that workhorse of social networks, lacks a lot of the excitement of its peers. It doesn't have Facebook's 1 billion daily active users, Twitter's real-time cachet or Snapchat's undying millennial devotion.

For professional utility, however, spending a few minutes a day on LinkedIn can bolster relationships, attract talent to your organization, and support both your employer's brand and your own.

Here are eight ways I've found to get value out of LinkedIn without eating up too much of your time...

If you’ve spent any time learning about blog promotion, then you know that guest posting is one of the most popular ways to grow a following on your blog.

Publishing on LinkedIn is similar to guest posting and you can now start reaching LinkedIn’s 332 million members.

Here are a few reasons that you might want to experiment with publishing on LinkedIn....

If you only view LinkedIn as the site where you keep your digital resume and virtual business card collection, you won’t see how it really can help grow your business, expand your content’s audience, and build valuable connections.

LinkedIn is the definitive professional publishing platform and one of the largest business publishers in the world, according to Todd Wheatland, Head of Content Strategy at King Content.

In his presentation at Content Marketing World 2014, Wheatland noted that LinkedIn is often cited as the No. 1 source for new business. He pointed to content marketing phenoms Jay Baer, Joe Pulizzi, and Lee Odden, all of whom have named LinkedIn as their top source for new business as they built their multi-million-dollar companies in the last five years. It’s not just for entrepreneurs either. Wheatland’s previous employer, Kelly Services Inc., also cites LinkedIn as the top generator for new business.

Urbane clothing brand Van Heusen, one of the leading lifestyle brands for men and women, maintains a professional yet chic brand image targeting working professionals in the corporate chain.

To see a brand thoroughly understand its audience and run a digital campaign specifically on a channel that caters to that specific audience is like a breeze of fresh air. Urbane clothing brand Van Heusen, one of the leading lifestyle brands for men and women, maintains a professional yet chic brand image targeting working professionals in the corporate chain.

What better platform than LinkedIn to host a contest for professionals? After all, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network boasting of over 300 million members, approximately 26 million of which are from India....

If you haven’t had great success with social media, I urge you not to give up. You just need to keep learning and testing until you find the right tactics for the right situation. 

I’d like to give you a complete strategy filled with effective tactics that complement each other.

But to do that, I need to focus on one particular social network: LinkedIn.

I’m going to give you a strategy that you can use to produce as many B2B leads as you need (provided you have the manpower to put behind it)....

To help build out your LinkedIn strategy, HubSpot and LinkedIn created How to Use LinkedIn for Business, Marketing, and Professional Networking. From how to optimise your LinkedIn profile to advice for building relationships to which features you should be leveraging, this kit serves as your one-stop shop for all things LinkedIn. 

In terms of resources, here's what you can expect to receive:

• Three comprehensive guides: How to Optimize your LinkedIn Profile, How to Use LinkedIn for Professional Networking, and How to Use LinkedIn for your Business
• Six PowerPoint & Photoshop templates to make your profile look beautiful

• An infographic from LinkHumans that depicts the perfect LinkedIn profile -- a sneak peek of which is below:...

There are LinkedIn successes – and then you have people like Lewis Howes, who started a seven-figure business by leveraging LinkedIn in multiple ways.

But it’s more likely that you (like many others) find yourself spending hours upon hours on LinkedIn – but you don’t get the results you want (and maybe none at all).

What’s wrong? Why aren’t you getting results?

Here are seven best practices for getting the most out of LinkedIn. They worked for me, and I think one or more of these tips will help you too.

Social selling is part activity, part reputation. If you're writing insightful comments on your prospects' blogs, responding to their tweets, and liking their shared content, you've got the activity bit down pat. But if your LinkedIn profile doesn't include your three jobs and features a cropped picture of you from prom, you can't really call yourself a social seller. 

If you'd like to start a social selling initiative in earnest, then begin by revamping your LinkedIn profile. Just as you're researching potential buyers on LinkedIn to learn more about them, they're looking at your profile to judge whether they want to do business with you. Don't ruin great messaging and positive interactions with an outdated, sparse, or inappropriate profile. 

So, what exactly should your LinkedIn profile look like? We've put together an infographic that breaks down the ideal social selling LinkedIn profile, section by section. Stride into 2015 with social selling style.

LinkedIn has opened the floodgates to a world of content with their new publishing platform and it’s an amazing way to expose your writing to a highly-professional network of readers.

Top influencers are already publishing on LinkedIn, so people are seeking out content on the platform to read. This cannot be said about your typical WordPress blog.

Despite its awesome content marketing potential, The LinkedIn Publishing Platform is still new and understanding what makes a post on the platform perform well is relatively unknown....

The folks at LinkedIn are busy. They are rolling out refinements and new features at an unprecedented rate. Staying on top of these opportunities is the key to staying on top of your online personal branding. If you want your profile to stand out, start using my five favorite LinkedIn upgrades.

To many people, LinkedIn seems like a chaotic, confusing mess. It can feel like there are too many strangers trying to connect with you, too many people trying to sell you something, and too much content that isn’t relevant to you. Or, it can feel like the worst parts of high school where the popular people are interacting and by contrast, you feel ignored or rejected.

Before giving up on LinkedIn, though, I recommend taking a closer look at how other people are successfully using it to benefit their careers and businesses. I asked some LinkedIn fans to describe the details of how they use the social media site. This article is long because they had so much to say, but persist in reading it and I think you will be inspired....