The main focus of LinkedIn is the individual business professional, but a big part of your professional story relates to the organization you work for and how you help people in your role at the company.
Here are five strategies to help you effectively share your company’s story as part of your overall professional story.
1. Profile Headline, Summary, Experience (jobs)
Use exact company names (be careful with divisions, departments, etc.), products, processes, and services. Keep in mind that the more times you use the same words or word combinations, the higher you’ll rank in the LinkedIn search results for those words.
2. Your Professional Gallery
This special feature (available in your Summary, Experience, and Educational profile sections) is a great place to display video, audio, and pdf files that highlight company accomplishments, projects, customer testimonials, awards, history, and products. Access this feature by clicking the Add Media icon.
You can also reference these documents in your Summary section; for example, “Watch the video below to view our full line of products and specialties.” 3. Websites In the Contact Info section of your profile, you can include links to three websites. In addition to your company website, you could include product videos, email sign-up sites, surveys, etc. You can use up to 26 characters to describe the website. Be creative. You’re trying to encourage people to click through to the website.
4. Status Updates
LinkedIn power users consistently use status updates to share company happenings, articles, white papers, and expertise. Sometimes they ask their network questions about potential new product and service offerings.
I recommend you lay out a calendar of what you want to share on a day-to-day or at least a week-to-week basis, remembering that you can re-post some of the best information from time to time.
Not everyone reads everything every day or remembers everything they’ve read. So don’t hesitate to share information again if you found that it resonated the first time you posted it.
As long as it is spaced apart significantly and is still relevant to the time of year or current situation, post it again. Check out “Your Definitive Guide to LinkedIn Status Updates” for more information.
5. Company Page
This may seem like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many companies are not represented at all on this part of LinkedIn. In addition, many of the companies that are represented present their information in a poorly written manner.
Think of this as a free Hoovers, Yellow Pages or other business directory on the Internet. Take advantage of this LinkedIn feature, and be sure to load it with the keywords you think people are using to find companies like yours.
Download my free ebook “10 LinkedIn Mistakes Companies Make” to discover some great strategies for maximizing your organization’s LinkedIn company page.
LinkedIn is mainly a personal branding and networking tool. However, if you use it strategically, you can obtain substantial results for your company as well.
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Does Your LinkedIn Profile Help or Hurt Your Company’s Brand?
September 29, 2013
Categories: Uncategorized
Wayne Breitbarth