LinkedIn for Business

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a business-related website mainly used for professional networking. Another way to look at it is as a huge database of professionals both looking for jobs and looking for future employees. LinkedIn has over 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories, and covers 10 different languages.

1. You can use the "Social Outlook Connector" to quickly and easily build your network using "Microsoft Outlook".
2. LinkedIn is now mobile. You can use the LinkedIn mobile phone application for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and Palm.
3. LinkedIn allows you to place "Targeted Ads" in front of the individuals whom you’d consider to be the most qualified prospects. You can now target them more by choosing specific industries.
4. 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 or services on LinkedIn.
5. You can use widgets to integrate other tools, such as importing your blog entries or twitter stream into your profile.
6. You can do market research and gain knowledge with surveys, polls, and Q&A sections.
7. You can now purchase a "Direct Ad" that only your target market will see.

Why use LinkedIn?

While Twitter lacks profile depth, and Facebook is all over the place demographically, LinkedIn provides as a great search tool to allow you to pinpoint the person or business you are looking for professionally, depending on a number of specific factors.

Some benefits of using LinkedIn:

1. On LinkedIn, you can share and acquire expertise. There are more than 900,000 groups on LinkedIn that you can join and each one has its own discussion board, news board, and job postings.
2. LinkedIn gives you a chance to effectively research your prospects before meeting or contacting them.
3. LinkedIn is a great place to recruit highly qualified future employees. Studies show that LinkedIn can decrease the time it takes to fill a job position by 50%!
4. LinkedIn standardizes information entered by users into predefined "Profile Headline", "Summary", "Education", "Company", etc. categories, and helps you search more effectively.
5. When your business or employees add connections, answer questions, and participate in group discussions, your company’s brand will be much more visible.
6. You can track your contacts. Once you’ve generated some leads and connections, 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.
7. You can now easily share web pages with your professional network and groups straight from your browser even when you’re not on LinkedIn

Who should be using LinkedIn?

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from using LinkedIn.  Regardless of what product or services you offer, LinkedIn can help get your brand out there, establish a purely professional network, and even find highly qualified future employees.

Where would you use LinkedIn on your website?

A great way to incorporate LinkedIn to your website would be using the logo link similar to Facebook’s "like" button or twitter’s "follow us". LinkedIn provides you with the proper instructions for introducing this feature to your website. It is strongly recommended that the link is best used on your index or homepage, where it can be clearly located and accessible.

When to use LinkedIn.

Start using LinkedIn for business immediately! Begin by planning out a couple basic goals you’d like to achieve by using LinkedIn for your business, and then get to work!

How do I get started?

At Coastal Web Services, we offer training for all social media use for businesses. This includes account setup with basic information, and training on where everything is located and how to use it. Contact us now at 800-566-1468 or email us to get started!