Linkedin has many pur­pos­es. As dis­cussed in Har­ness­ing The Full Poten­tial Of LinkedIn As A Con­nec­tion Tool, LinkedIn start­ed as an online resume tool, but it has evolved into a con­nec­tion tool, as well as a brand­ing tool. LinkedIn can be used for all social media pur­pos­es, includ­ing brand­ing. When it comes to brand­ing on LinkedIn, it is real­ly impor­tant to not see Linkedin as a bill­board, but as a tool that will help you show how knowl­edge­able you are or your busi­ness is. By show­ing that knowl­edge, your brand will grow and flour­ish.

Think About Your Audience

The most impor­tant ele­ment in brand­ing, mar­ket­ing, and PR is your audi­ence. Who are you tar­get­ing? Which peo­ple will receive your mes­sages when you start broad­cast­ing on LinkedIn?

When it comes to social media plat­forms and brand­ing Twit­ter is best com­pa­ra­ble to a bill­board, you put your mes­sage out there and you hope peo­ple will see it. Face­book is more tar­get­ed, like a mag­a­zine on a cer­tain top­ic: it might get you atten­tion, but peo­ple might flip through it quick­ly. LinkedIn how­ev­er is a bit dif­fer­ent. On LinkedIn you are tar­get­ing a very spe­cif­ic group of peo­ple with spe­cif­ic expec­ta­tions. They see LinkedIn as a human con­nec­tion tool, which means, they won’t be respon­sive at all to a mes­sage from a brand, unless they trust the brand. How­ev­er, they might respond to a mes­sage from a per­son, espe­cial­ly if they know that per­son. It’s like the local busi­ness club. Peo­ple trust what is said, and if the trust fails, they won’t look at the source again. So both as a brand and a per­son you want to built trust.

This means that when using brand­ing for LinkedIn you have to keep one thing in mind: do not use it as a bill­board. Make it per­son­al, be trust­wor­thy and make it worth the time of those you are tar­get­ing. If not, they won’t give you a sec­ond glance.

Where Brands Go Wrong On LinkedIn

Unfor­tu­nate­ly I still see too many brands (and peo­ple) mak­ing this mis­take on LinkedIn and treat­ing the ser­vice as a bill­board. They con­stant­ly post links to their own web­site in groups, they send out mass e‑mails to their LinkedIn con­nec­tions talk­ing about their ‘great prod­uct’ and they keep adding new con­nec­tions with­out even look­ing at who they are.

Wrong!

If you real­ly want to use LinkedIn as a brand­ing tool and make it work, you need to think first. Think about your audi­ence and think about what you can give them to make them bet­ter.

Branding Using LinkedIn

In essence you can say that there are two ways you can use LinkedIn for brand­ing: brand­ing as a busi­ness (your com­pa­ny) and per­son­al brand­ing, mak­ing sure you look good for new job options or busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties (more on this top­ic in tomor­row’s post).

Findability

One real­ly impor­tant thing to keep in mind when it comes to brand­ing: search. LinkedIn’s search func­tion­al­i­ty is a much used func­tion­al­i­ty. Peo­ple use LinkedIn search for sev­er­al dif­fer­ent rea­sons – they’re look­ing for jobs, for pages, and for peo­ple.

You want your brand to be found when peo­ple start search­ing. That is the first step of brand­ing.

Advanced search on LinkedIn is espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing. Here peo­ple can fil­ter down to dif­fer­ent lev­els, from peo­ple and jobs, to posts, groups, and regions.

The essence here is that in every tac­tic you use (some of which are being dis­cussed below), you must keep in mind how find­able you can be for the dif­fer­ent ele­ments of search in LinkedIn. Use the right key­words, cre­ate the right con­tent, and make the right con­nec­tions. (A nice addi­tion­al ben­e­fit for this is that you will also start rank­ing bet­ter in search engines!)

Branding For Businesses

With a lit­tle work, your brand can become more vis­i­ble with­in LinkedIn. It all starts with fig­ur­ing out what you want to be vis­i­ble for. Is it to attract new per­son­nel? To show the world how knowl­edge­able your com­pa­ny is? Or anoth­er rea­son?

This deter­mines which of the tac­tics you will use. As always, it’s strat­e­gy before tac­tic.

Here are some brand­ing tools LinkedIn pro­vides to help brands reach their full poten­tial.

Company Page

The LinkedIn Com­pa­ny page has seen a big make over in the past few years. Where before it was just show­ing your­self, where­as nowa­days it’s much more. One thing to keep an eye on is the infor­ma­tion you share and how you look.

There is the stan­dard infor­ma­tion you have to fill in. Make sure you fill in all parts. When doing this, think about what peo­ple might be search­ing for (espe­cial­ly when decid­ing on the spe­cial­ties)!

Also be sure to use the right logo (think about the sizes) and be sure to cre­ate a beau­ti­ful head­er. Just like on Face­book and Google+ as a busi­ness you now have the option to show­case who you are using a ban­ner. Try chang­ing these ban­ners around and adapt them to cur­rent sit­u­a­tions. See for exam­ple how brands like Apple use it.

Your com­pa­ny page will also show your updates. Many brands still make the mis­take of only shar­ing com­pa­ny news. Here you have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to show how knowl­edge­able you are, so make sure to com­bine the news about your com­pa­ny with inter­est­ing (rel­e­vant!) infor­ma­tion from oth­er sources as well.

Career Pages

When try­ing to be a “cool” com­pa­ny, careers are impor­tant. Even if you aren’t look­ing for new staff, those check­ing out your LinkedIn Page will have to be impressed.

If a com­pa­ny takes care of its employ­ees it after all is much more inter­est­ing for busi­ness as well. The career tabs again can be nice­ly designed and you can add valu­able infor­ma­tion to it, like for exam­ple videos. Again, take a look at how Apple does it.

Showcase Pages

Show­case Pages are so-called “niche pages” that are direct­ly con­nect­ed to a com­pa­ny page. These pages can be fol­lowed sep­a­rate­ly from the com­pa­ny page, which gives you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to seg­ment for the dif­fer­ent types of audi­ences you serve.

One exam­ple of a com­pa­ny that has been very active on com­pa­ny pages is Microsoft, which made pages for dif­fer­ent prod­ucts.

You can cre­ate up to 10 show­case pages. With that comes a nice set of ana­lyt­ics that will show you engage­ment, trends, and demo­graph­ics of your fol­low­ers.

Groups

Mil­lions of LinkedIn Groups have been cre­at­ed, but lots of them hon­est­ly aren’t that inter­est­ing, sim­ply because busi­ness­es set it up and then either leave it as it is, or use it as a bill­board: spam­ming the crap out of the mem­bers.

As a busi­ness you can set up a group and it can work, as long as you do it prop­er­ly: don’t over­do it, be very tar­get­ed on the top­ic (don’t cre­ate a group for your busi­ness, but for a top­ic that relate to your busi­ness), and make sure that with­in the group you act as a thought leader – show what you know!

Advertising

Like all social plat­forms, LinkedIn also offers adver­tis­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. These are still quite inter­est­ing because they are afford­able and you can tar­get rea­son­ably good. You can for exam­ple try to get cer­tain group mem­bers to fol­low your com­pa­ny or ser­vices, or even bet­ter, you can ask them to rec­om­mend you or share your page.

Standing Out: Have A Strategy

Final­ly, when it comes to brand­ing your busi­ness on LinkedIn, the most essen­tial part is your strat­e­gy. Think about how you want to be seen, think about what your poten­tial audi­ence wants to see, and cre­ate con­tent around that. Use your employ­ees in this: have them pub­lish arti­cles, have them “present” you, and make sure you tell your sto­ry.

Are you using Linkedin as a bill­board, or as a tool to help show con­sumers how knowl­edge­able you are or your busi­ness is?