“Are you on LinkedIn?” is a phrase many of us have heard at an industry or networking event.
And hopefully by now, your answer is yes.

With 12.75 million LinkedIn users in Australia alone, LinkedIn is the go-to social media platform for the most professional versions of ourselves. It’s unlikely you’ll find unflattering photos of you at your cousin’s wedding here. Nope, it’s all headshots, industry insights, positions vacant and career achievements on LinkedIn.

With a wide range of B2B clients, we work on the LinkedIn platform every day. To help get the most from the time and energy you invest into LinkedIn, we’ve compiled some solid advice for you that goes further than simply uploading a great profile image.

Business profile vs personal profile.

On LinkedIn you have the option of creating a personal profile to represent you as an individual, or a company page which is designed to represent an organisation.

A personal profile features your name, bio, area of expertise, career history and so on. You can post content as yourself, engage with companies and other individuals and expand your professional network.

Company pages on LinkedIn are exactly what they sound like and present the opportunity to foster a LinkedIn presence for your business using its unique brand voice. With a company page you can post content but you can also run ads and access more in depth analytics on your page’s engagement and growth.

You can have both a personal profile (for personal branding) and a business profile (for professional business branding), but keep in mind to have the latter you will require the former.

Get active for outcomes.

Rather than a case of ‘build it and they will come’, like all social media platforms, LinkedIn won’t do much for you without you putting in some effort regularly.

As they say, you get out what you put in.

And if you’re putting in consistently, the LinkedIn algorithm will reward you handsomely.

Say you want to grow your presence, improve engagement and generate leads — regular, consistent posting of high value content that’s relevant to your audience is essential.

On the other hand, you can just be there to be there, which doesn’t really require much ongoing input at all and will mean that if your name is searched your profile will pop up (just make sure your profile presents well — first impressions and all).

Pay to Play on LinkedIn.

It’s no secret that while social media is free, the pay to play element is ever-present.

As with other platforms, if you want to maximise the reach of your content and expand your brand awareness to more people in a short period of time, paid advertising is there for you.

It must be noted that LinkedIn paid ads are more expensive than other platforms.

Not great for those on a tight budget, as you can definitely find a lower cost per click elsewhere. However, they can be super effective, especially when your target audience is corporate or B2B.

And stats have shown that 65% of B2B businesses have gained a customer through LinkedIn paid ads.

There are a variety of avenues to explore when sponsoring your LinkedIn content. You can choose for your ad to appear in the LinkedIn homepage feed of your target audience, for better engagement and awareness. Job ads can help improve your recruitment strategy, using specific audience targeting. You might even like to show up as a message ad, where figures show your ad will have a 40% conversion rate (not bad at all!).

Navigating LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Speaking of pay to play, LinkedIn has created a prospecting and sales tool that is focused on supporting businesses to track down leads.

It’s designed to give you greater access to prospects on LinkedIn — you gain the ability to access extended search of their database using exceptional targeting filters. Plus, you can send a set number of InMail messages to individuals outside of your network, create lead lists and see who has viewed your profile over the last 90 days.

Sales Navigator has free 30-day trial options for individual sales reps (Core Edition) and for sales teams (Advanced Edition). After that, pricing starts from A$109.99 per month.

Is it worth it?

Possibly! If you have a top notch communication strategy that sparks curiosity and starts conversations, then you could get some really impressive results. If you don’t, it might be worth putting in some work there first and tap into the free trial.

Link up with LinkedIn.

As with all social platforms, LinkedIn has its own special place in the digital marketing sphere, and there’s a lot to learn.

If you’re not yet on LinkedIn, it’s probably time to get involved, even if it’s just the bare minimum initially. If you don’t know where to start or want to get a strategy in place for how you’ll tackle it to get results, we can help.