LinkedIn:

LinkedIn For Business - How To

Generate More Leads, Build A
Relationship With Your Clients And
Significantly Increase Your Sales!
Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 – Your Profile Speaks Volumes
Chapter 2 – Network With Your Employees First
Chapter 3 – Connecting With Likeminded Industries or
Those Who Seem Like They Need What Your Selling
Chapter 4 – The Importance of Search Functions
Chapter 5 – How to Boost Your Social Media Presence
Conclusion
Introduction

LinkedIn is the business world’s response to Facebook. While many companies

do have Facebook profiles, as well as Twitter accounts and the like, they neglect
to take advantage of what LinkedIn has to offer.
However, this powerful marketing tool should not be overlooked.
LinkedIn as a company was founded in 2002, and the website launched in 2003,
predating the popularity of other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Due to its formal nature, particularly when compared to these aforementioned
sites, it took some time before its popularity took off.
Due to an IPO (initial public offering) in 2011, the company behind LinkedIn
received a cash infusion, allowing it to purchase other related companies, such as
Slideshare and IndexTank, thus boosting the options that people – and
businesses – have to search out people or companies that they know or are
related to by operating type and category.

This has greatly increased the sites usability.

Taking advantage of this usability, and allowing the search functions to help
potential customer and clients find your business through your company profile
is easy if you know how.
If you don’t, then you’ll need a little advice, the most useful of which is in the
following pages of this book.
Included tips range from how to properly set up your company’s LinkedIn
profile, to how to boost your sales and find important leads (or how to best let
others find you.)
Current estimates place the number of LinkedIn users at over 300 million. These
people are located in over 200 countries (and related territories) all over the
world.
It would be a shame to overlook this important resource, and not use your
business’ profile to your advantage. Just think of the increases you could see
once your LinkedIn profile is properly set up!
Chapter 1 – Your Profile Speaks Volumes

A well-prepared and professional-looking profile will draw in potential

customers and clients. It makes it look as though your company knows what it is
doing, and has plenty of expertise in your chosen field or fields.
Because of this, you need to take the time to fill everything out properly.
There are several components in the standard LinkedIn profile. In order for your
profile to be complete, and therefore, at its utmost effectiveness, it needs to be
fully filled out.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the standard LinkedIn profile, there
sections are: basic information, categories, images (both header and logo), and
products. Here’s a quick breakdown of what each section does, complete with
tips on how to maximize them and your profile:
Basic Information
The basic information required on each profile consists of your businesses
address, phone number, website, size, the year it was founded, and the amount of
employees that it has.

Address: Make sure that this is your business address. If you are a freelancer, or
a company of one that works out of a residence, you may want to get a P.O. Box,
and use that address in your LinkedIn profile.
Otherwise, you may get unwanted visitors. However, if you are a larger
company with a distinct building (that isn’t a house) use your building address.
Keep in mind that your customers will need to find you, so ensure that this is the
correct address.

Phone number: Just like with the address, your clients or customers will need to
contact you. You may need to list more than one phone number. This is
particularly useful if you have a large-sized company with more than one
department staffed by employees.
A customer service phone number, a sales account phone number, and general
reach every department phone number are just a few examples of the ones that
you may have. However, if you have more than this, feel free to list them. The
more ways for a customer to reach you, the better!

Website: Your web address is very important, as it legitimizes you. Although

just about every company in this day and age has one, if your business does not,
you should set one up before setting up your LinkedIn profile.
Your website does not necessarily need to be complicated in design, but it
should look nice and be completely functional. If you already have a website,
check it over before adding it your profile, and handle any little edits that need to
be made beforehand.

Company size: LinkedIn categorizes your business by not only what you do, but
by its size. Now comes the tricky part - determining how many employees that
you have. Yes, you should count part time employees, as well as full time ones
(although that sounds like a given.) That number does matter.
However, if you are business of one, for example, a freelance graphic designer
or writer, do not feel ashamed for listing only yourself.
You need to be honest here, as lying about your company’s size will hurt you in
the long run.

Year founded: This is another important part of your profile where you need to
be honest.
You should list the actual year that your business was founded. To do otherwise
would make your company look dishonest, particularly if you have a short
company biography (complete with founding year) listed on your website.
Customers and clients will look at the two, see that things don’t quite match up,
and will avoid patronizing your company.

Employees: While you have already counted your employees (that is an entirely
different category) you should take advantage of the chance to link your
company LinkedIn page with the ones of your employees. We cover this more
extensively in the next chapter.
Company Description
Yes, you have already filled out the profile information requirements, as listed
above. However, you still need to write a little something about your business.
You can use the official biography off of your company website for this, or
come up with another 100 to 200 words describing what you do (in the case of
freelancers) or what your company does. Just keep in mind that punctuation and
professionalness matter.
The LinkedIn biography needs to be grammatically correct, as well as
informative.
However, since it is on a social media site, it shouldn’t be too lengthy. Anyone
who wants the official details on your company’s founding or its full history, can
go to your website to read it.
Categories
LinkedIn profiles have two essential categories that should not be overlooked.
The first determines where your company is located. The options here are
broken down by geographical area.
For example, the Greater Los Angeles Area, the Greater New York City Area,
Greater Chicago, Illinois Area, and on.
This will tell your customers and clients exactly where you are located, so if they
are searching for a business in a particular location, yours will come up in their
results.
They can narrow that down further with your exact address, which is also in
your profile, as explained above.
The other category described what your business does. Do you sell plumbing
parts? Are you a graphic design or a writer and editor? All of those – and more –
are potential options.
Again, make sure that you are honest here, as you don’t want to place your
business in the wrong category, just because that other category sounds better.
Potential clients and customers are counting on your honesty, and will skip over
wrongly categorized businesses as those that they do not want to work with or
purchase things from.
Header Image
The header image is a new addition to the LinkedIn site. Each profile, whether
you are a business or a single person (read: employee) is allowed to edit theirs.
These are similar to the header images on Facebook, and take up space at the top
of the profile, going horizontally across the screen.
The main image or logo (more on that below) and some basic information, such
as name, area and category, float over the top of these images in a separate bar.
Because of this, you can add a picture of any kind to your header, without
altering the legibility of your overall profile.
The header image should be professional looking, and should reflect the type of
business that your company is in. For example, if you own a trucking company,
then use a shot of one of your company trucks, with the side logo visible, for
your header image.
This will make it evident what type of business your company does before
anyone looking at it moves their eyes down to the section with pertinent
information.
Logo Image
The smaller square on the top of each LinkedIn profile is where a sized to fit
copy of your company logo should be placed. In personal profiles, this is where
the headshot goes.
However, if your business has more than one employee, you do need a logo for
this space.
If the only .jpg or .bmp (electronic photo file types) images that you have are not
sized properly for the space, or are too vertical or horizontal, then you should
have your logo redesigned for the exact specification of this space.
A logo that is obviously squashed or not meant for digital reproductions will
look unprofessional, and may deter people who want to do business with you or
your company.
Products
This is the section where you list the products that your company sells. This is
particularly useful if you have a web store, since the people who view your
profile can purchase their items right there.
You won’t lose a sale due to lag time. However, if you don’t have an online
store, you can still utilize this section. List several examples of what you sell, for
example, your most popular items.
If you are in the graphic design business, include some of your works. This is
where people will look to see if you can do or if your company has what they
want or need.
Administrative Duties
Also, you will need to set up the admins on your LinkedIn account. These are
the people who are able to edit the page, add links to your press releases, and
handle other duties.
Obviously, the amount of admins that you add depends on the size of your
business, as well as how active you plan to be on the social media site. If you
have a public relations department, then one or more of those people will need to
be an admin.
But, if you are a smaller company with a secretary or office assistant who
handles your social media and other publicity, then that person will be your
admin.
If you are a company of one, such as a freelancer, then you, obviously, will be
the admin of your own page.
Chapter 2 – Network With Your Employees First

Have you ever heard the saying that your business is only as strong as your
employees? The same is true for your business’ LinkedIn profile.
While you cannot demand that every single one of your employees have a
LinkedIn profile, you can link to those who do, right on your company’s profile
on the same site. This provides you with extra marketing power, while adding
some legitimacy to your employees’ profiles.
Just as people can be fired over what they post on Twitter or Facebook for the
world to see, they can be given accolades and help your business through
positive attributes and important connections on LinkedIn and other social media
sites.
In most cases, LinkedIn will automatically link their profiles to yours. Once they
add their position with your company to their profile, the program will pick up
all of the relevant details, including your company logo, and add it to their
information.
However, you do want to make sure that their profiles are worthy of this linkage,
since what they have written out can directly affect your business.
There are several ways in which your employees can boost their LinkedIn
profiles (and in turn, the company’s). These include:
Having a professionally written profile – This doesn’t mean that they need to
hire a professional writer to fill it in. But, they should pay attention to things like
grammar and punctuation. Make sure that the job descriptions and titles are
accurate.
All of this reflects on your company, so you don’t want misspellings to reign
supreme on their profiles, because it will make your business look bad.
Using a professional-looking headshot – It’s too easy to fall into the informal
picture trap. After all, Facebook allows for just about any type of main profile
picture, and it really doesn’t matter there.
But, on LinkedIn, it does matter. Your employees should have professional
pictures on their profiles. These include simple headshots with properly styled
hair and/or makeup, such as those taken with a camera phone, as well as actual
professionally taken pictures, for example, ones taken on a specified date, in the
office building itself, like a grown up version of school picture day. Make sure
that your employees have good pictures on their profiles. These details matter.
Including all of the important details – Where did your employees go to school?
What other training s have they had?
Do they go to related conferences to learn new skills? All of these things should
be included on their profiles, as they show not only a willingness to learn, but
also the amount of training and expertise that goes into working for your
business.

How can you ensure that your employees look good on your company’s
LinkedIn page? Start by:
Hiring qualified people for the job – This seems like an obvious thing to write,
but it is absolutely true. Hiring the most qualified people, with the best
credentials and proper levels of education, will help you business, not only with
its social media and LinkedIn profiles, but also in general, with its day to day
operations.
Take advantage of your employees’ connections here, via the other companies
that they worked for, and use them to your advantage. Everyone connects to
everyone else eventually!
Hosting LinkedIn and social media seminars – If you have employees who are
reluctant to use social media, you should not force them to. However, hosting a
seminar on its importance, as well as how to use these sites (LinkedIn included,
obviously) properly, might help both those who are reluctant and those who
already have profiles on them.
This, in turn, can help your business, since you’ll have social media savvy
employees using their skills for positive things.
Consider having a professional photographer appear to do the headshots – You
can use these pictures for many reasons – the company website, marketing
materials, and, of course, your employees’ LinkedIn profiles.
While you cannot make them change their profile pictures, any good employee
worth their proverbial salt will take advantage of the opportunity and will update
their pictures accordingly. Sending them the digital image file results of this
portrait session will help give them a nudge in the right direction.
(Tip: the best way to get good pictures is by informing your employees of your
photographic intentions at least 30 days beforehand, as well as by reminding
them several times in the weeks leading up the event.)
Including employee information (biographies and the like) on your business’
website – If you want your employees to have professional job and duty
descriptions on their LinkedIn pages, then it helps to have this information on
your company website.
Your workers can simply copy and paste their job descriptions over to their
profiles, or use that information to paint an accurate picture of what they do.
Offer consulting and other help – Have people come in during the work day for
the sole purpose of offering LinkedIn profile assistance.
This is different from the seminars listed above, as it places trained consultants
in the building for a period of time, such as an entire work day or a several-hour
period. If the employees want help, they can sign up for a time slot and meeting
with the expert one on one.
Chapter 3 – Connecting With Likeminded Industries
or Those Who Seem Like They Need What Your
Selling

A standard LinkedIn profile allows people to connect with one another. They
can find job connections, company openings, and use the site like a virtual
resume (which it actually is, for the record.)
Along those lines, a company LinkedIn profile can connect you with similar
companies either located nearby, or, regardless of area, in the same industry.
For example, if you are located in Baltimore, your business can connect with
others in the area, or if you sell bricks, you can connect with other brick makers,
no matter where they are located in the world.
Both of these have advantages and disadvantages, including:
Connecting With Local Companies
To put it simply, local companies are those in your general geographic area.
Even though your business may sell items that are quite different from the others
around you, you can still use LinkedIn to connect with each other.

Advantages
1) Forming symbiotic relationships. This is a relationship that benefits both of
the companies involved. Here’s a good explanation: your company sells
shipping materials, including cardboard boxes, foam padding and other items. A
local company that you connected with through LinkedIn needs those items.
That particular company sells items with company logos on them, such as
notepads and pens – promotional items, as they say.

You buy your branded items from that company, and they purchase shipping
materials from your company. If it weren’t for LinkedIn, you never would have
discovered each other.
2) Garnering ideas for new products. Sometimes your business gets stuck in a rut
and you can’t find inspiration anywhere – and then you look at the LinkedIn
page of a local company and take a good look at their product offerings.

Do you see something that your company lacks that may work well with their
products? Take this inspiration (without copying their items directly, of course)
and run with it.

3) Getting to know those in your area. Even if the other local companies have
nothing in common with yours, and neither of you have items that you can sell to
each other, it’s always good to know other businesses in the area.

For example, you may need to work together to push government legislation
through, or battle for or against changes to local infrastructure. In these cases,
it’s good to have those types of relationships.

Disadvantages
1) You may run into the competition. If your company is in an industry that is
very competitive, running into the competition online can be tricky. You don’t
want to give too much away, and at the same time, you need to be careful that
your products don’t resemble theirs.

There is a fine line between a relationship and outright hostility. Make sure to
keep your communication cordial.

2) One screw-up might haunt you. Let’s say that your business accidentally
orders the wrong product, doesn’t realize it, sells it to customers, and then has to
recall it.

While other companies around the world may get over your mistakes quickly
and move on, those located near you may remember it for years to come.
Sometimes memories can be long, particularly when they involve your local
reputation.

3) Their reputations may be compared your company’s. Speaking of

reputations, those of local companies may affect the way that other people see
your business.

If you live in an area with a lot of corruption, even if your business isn’t corrupt
in any way, this reputation may rub off on you.
Thankfully, a properly maintained and set up LinkedIn page can go a long way
towards combating some of these disadvantages.
Most people will look directly to your business to find out the truth, so make
sure that everything is transparent and your company will be successful.
Connecting With Shared Industries
A shared industry is one that sells a product that is related to yours in some way,
shape or form. Trucking companies, no matter where they travel – some only
travel locally, others go all over the country – are all part of a shared industry.
In short, this means that you’ll be connecting with your competitors on
LinkedIn. This clearly has its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages
1) Learning about up and coming trends and materials. Sometimes you can’t
make it to all of the trade shows or read all of the trade magazines, so you rely
on others to help you determine what the new trends are or what new research
has been discovered.

This can have a direct impact on your business, so learning about it through
shared social connections is very important.

2) Built in marketing research. You can look at the LinkedIn profiles of similar
companies and see who they are targeting with their marketing, advertising and
direct sales attempts. This information can be used for your own business, as it
may show you new ways to approach different markets.

3) Participate in shared national legislation efforts. Just like the local efforts,
described above, sometimes you need to band together with likeminded
companies in order to get a national bill or law passed.

Or, on the other side of things, prevent that bill or law from becoming a part of
the official legislature. Establishing a relationship with other companies via
LinkedIn can help quite a bit here.

Disadvantages
1) Comparing your company to others can be a bad thing. It can be easy to get
discouraged if your company is not doing as well as others in your industry. This
can be due to many different factors, including location, product diversity or
marketing efforts, so don’t take this information to heart.
In fact, follow the advice above and see if you can adjust accordingly in order to
improve your business’ bottom line.

2) Industry secrets may be made visible. Some industries are incredibly

competitive, and what makes your business thrive might be “borrowed” by
others selling the same thing or offering the same service.

In this case, you may need to be a bit more secretive – and cautious about what
you post on the products section of your LinkedIn page.

3) They may turn to your for advice. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing,
sometimes you may find yourself spending so much time giving out advice to
other companies that you don’t have enough time to run your own.

You aren’t running a consultancy (unless you are, in which case this isn’t a
disadvantage), so be aware of how much time you spend mentoring similar
companies that are just getting started.
Chapter 4 – The Importance of Search Functions

People can use your business’ LinkedIn profile to find you, or you can use their
information to find them. Either way, your profile information can help you get
more sales.
Making Sure that Others Can Find You

It’s all about the keywords. When you set up your LinkedIn profile, you’ll need
to determine two important things: which industry you are in, and what
keywords you can use to describe what it is that your business does.
While the former is easy, since LinkedIn has a number of pre-written categories
for you to choose from, the latter can be a bit tricky.
Before you begin to set up your LinkedIn profile, take a few minutes to
determine exactly what your company does. Do you sell packaging? Graphic
designs like logos and related images?
Truck items from place to place? All of these have important keywords that can
connect your company to those looking for it.
Come up with a short list of keywords that are no more than two words in
length. To follow one of the examples above, if you run a trucking company,
those keywords can be: trucking, shipping, logistics, material handling, overseas
contained, local hauling, hauling, deliveries.
These are the words that people may search – and if those words are in place in
your profile – your company will be one of the ones that appears in their search
results, bringing you the business that you desire.
Finding People Who May Want What You Are Selling

You can also use LinkedIn to search for people or companies who may want to
buy what you’re selling. The keywords matter here as well. Follow the
instructions above, only instead of coming up with keywords to describe your
company, come up with those that describe your customers.
You can also the metrics on your LinkedIn site (which keep track of who looks
at your profile) to determine who you will target.
After your keyword list is complete, do a search on LinkedIn, then narrow that
down by age or other metrics until you have a comprehensive list of those in
your target market. You can then send those people or companies an email, or
use other marketing materials to reach them.
However, you do need to be careful about one thing – you don’t to harass others
on LinkedIn. It can be all too easy to send out email after email on there,
attempting to contact those who might use your services or buy your products.
But, if you do this too much, they may block you, or have LinkedIn threaten to
delete your account. The way around this is by reaching out to the people on
your target list on a one on one basis.
Get their email addresses, and set them up on a list serve or marketing campaign
account. This prevents you from having to send out emails solely through the
LinkedIn platform.
Chapter 5 – How to Boost Your Social Media
Presence

Using social media to your advantage is easy – in fact, it is the number one way
to boost the amount of sales that your company has in any given calendar year.
Linking your other social media sites to your LinkedIn profile is quick and
painless; it will allow customers and clients to find you when they need to. They
can also follow your other sites to your LinkedIn profile.
Connect Your Social Media to Your LinkedIn Account

LinkedIn makes this very easy. Plus, there are platforms that allow you to
connect all of your social media together, so when one is updated, it goes to all
of them. For example, if you post a relevant picture of a new product on your
company’s Facebook page, it also gets sent to Twitter and to LinkedIn.
You can also link your blog to these sites, so when a new blog post goes out,
everything is updated.
There is a section of your LinkedIn profile that allows you to add in your social
media accounts. It can even add updates to those accounts at the bottom of your
profile in a scrolling manner.
However, if you send the same updates to every account, you only need to set up
one in the scrolling section, otherwise, you’ll have triplicate updates appearing –
and no one wants to see that!
However, you do need to set up a simple link to all of your accounts, simply so
people can see that you have them.
Send Out Relevant Tweets and Updates

The social media updates that you send out matter. Make sure that they are
directly related to your business and/or industry. Anything else would throw
your account off-topic, and make it look like you do not know what you are
doing. You also want to avoid sending out controversial tweets and comments.
Sometimes businesses do this thinking that any publicity is good publicity, but
this is not the case at all.
Stick to the business at hand, and your LinkedIn profile, as well as your entire
social media profile, will remain professional.

Examples of things to send out to your social media followers are:

1) New products
2) Updates on pre-ordered items
3) Company milestones (anniversaries, sales numbers)
4) Related news on your industry
5) Links to press releases
6) Links to blog articles
7) Interesting factoids about your business and/or industry
8) Information on expansion efforts
9) News about updated logos or color schemes
10) Respond politely to complaints and inquiries
11) Anything else that you can come up with!

If you stick to these, and other related items in your social media, then you won’t
have to worry about creating controversy.
Remember that it’s important to keep your business current in the social media
world. People will view your company in a positive light, and will patronize it,
as long as you do so.
Conclusion

There are many advantages to having a LinkedIn profile for your business. You
can use your account for general marketing purposes, targeting others who seem
like they might purchase the things that your company sells.
You can also maximize your profile to help them find you when they need to
buy something.
This type of social media site is a proverbial two-way street. By connecting with
other companies, those who sell things that you need, you can make important
connections that lead to them buying your goods – in essence, a reciprocal
arrangement can be had.
However, before your LinkedIn profile can be used for these purposes, it first
needs to be set up properly. The information included in chapter one breaks
down the company profile, step by step, helping you set up a powerful profile
that looks professional and acts like a marketing tool.
Your employees (and their profiles) also matter here, as do your connections
with other businesses.
Thanks to the 2011 LinkedIn IPO and the companies that it purchased with those
funds, there is a massive amount of information to be found, as long as you use
the right keyword searches.
This, when combined with your networking prowess and overall social media
presence, can result in a very useful marking tool that can help your company
take advantage of the 300 million plus other users and companies that are on
LinkedIn. You’ll be surprised at what you find once you get started.
In short, using LinkedIn can either hurt or help your company. A poorly filled
out profile, lack of keywords, and improper profile information can hinder your
progress, as it will scare people off before they have a chance to see what your
company can do for them.
However, a professional-looking profile that is constantly updated and linked to
your social media accounts, as well as other companies, can only help you in the
long run. This important marketing tool disguised as a business based social
media site should be overlooked or neglected.