8/9/2010
10 Reasons Your Business Should Be on LinkedIn, Part 2
Five More LinkedIn Benefits
In Part 1, we discussed the first five valuable incentives for businesses to use LinkedIn. Even if these five were the only benefits the site had to offer, LinkedIn would still be valuable to your company. Fortunately, however, the site offers other benefits, as well. The second five benefits of using LinkedIn follow:
6. Build business referrals.
LinkedIn is the go-to place to get online referrals. Not only will people with whom you’ve done business in the past be able to recommend you right on the LinkedIn site, but you’ll also be able to garner referred traffic from other websites along with organic search engine traffic, which can lead to new business connections and further referrals. As you consistently expand your LinkedIn network by remaining active on the site, you should find your business on the receiving end of a growing number of business referrals.
7. Increase traffic by linking to your site from your LinkedIn page.
LinkedIn can help you vastly improve traffic to your website by allowing you to place a link to your site on your profile or company page. Since LinkedIn is a high-visibility site, this can only benefit your business or professional brand. Because LinkedIn’s outbound links are no-follow, however, they will unfortunately not pass on page rank to your site. Nevertheless, their traffic value will more than make up for this PR lack.
8. Attract quality people.
Other LinkedIn members who are seeking employment will be able to locate your company when doing job searches, which can help you attract qualified job prospects to fill your vacant positions. Through your LinkedIn company page and/or profile, you’ll be able to advertise your company’s existence, philosophy, methods, accomplishments, and objectives. Through creating LinkedIn Groups, you’ll also be able to gather a following around a particular aspect of your business and, if desired, use this group to announce open positions within your firm. If interested, you may also post your job openings right on LinkedIn for a fee.
If you are an individual entrepreneur or freelancer, you’ll also be able to forge connections that can prove valuable in finding other qualified professionals with whom to collaborate or to whom you may sub-contract projects when needed.
9. Research companies and/or business opportunities.
LinkedIn makes it easy to do extensive, business-related research all in one place. You’ll have no trouble finding information about companies you may be considering dealing with, and through LinkedIn networking you may even learn of business opportunities of which you may have been previously unaware. You’ll also be able to research the competition and learn a great deal that can help you improve your own business methods and help you stay on the leading edge of your market.
10. Build mutually beneficial relationships through LinkedIn Answers.
LinkedIn Answers http://www.linkedin.com/answers is a helpful resource you can use to get answers to your own business-related questions while at the same time responding to others’ questions based on your own areas of expertise. This can help forge mutually beneficial business relationships by creating a dynamic give and take between business peers who can help one another meet desired business goals. Connections made through LinkedIn Answers can also potentially blossom into joint business ventures in the future, making them that much more valuable to your business. Never underestimate the possible reach of a simple gesture such as answering a fellow professional’s business-related question. It could eventually provide a tangible benefit to your company’s bottom line.
Link Up with Valuable Resources on LinkedIn
The ultimate value of LinkedIn may take years to accurately measure and assess. Yet, there’s little doubt that such value exists, and today’s businesses can begin taking advantage of it absolutely free. For those who choose to take LinkedIn’s services to the next level, paid LinkedIn advertising may offer even greater benefits. But, the best part is that the service itself is free, meaning those who don’t choose to advertise can continue to reap the benefits that accrue from simply joining and/or starting a company page on the most popular professional network on the Internet.
Can you think of other benefits of LinkedIn that I may have left out? In what specific ways do you use LinkedIn to build your professional brand?
