How to Utilise LinkedIn to Maximise Business

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, LinkedIn is a great platform to generate sales. So it’s definitely worth the time developing your profile, presence, and personal brand. But where do you start?

Make sure all your information is correct, and up-to-date
We’ve all heard the horror stories about people who have been locked out of their LinkedIn accounts just as they’ve tried to update their profile before a job interview. So, make sure your profile is always updated when anything relevant happens.

In your LinkedIn profile, include as much detail as possible about what you do and what you can offer potential customers or clients. Also, fill in as much detail as you can about your previous experiences, but don’t go too crazy, you don't need to list absolutely everything, especially if it's not relevant to the work you're currently doing or looking to do.

But first, let me take a selfi- respectable, and smart profile picture
We’re sure that you and Tina from school look great on a night out, but this isn’t Facebook. Get a profile picture that’s clear, professional, and represents you. For example, if you’re applying for a creative role, something bright and fun would work well. However if it’s something more corporate based, then maybe go for a professional headshot.

Why not use this as an opportunity to take LinkedIn’s new photo editing feature for a spin?

Talk of the office? Get it on paper
Well, get it on the computer. Ask for a recommendation or endorsement from your colleagues and clients.

Endorsements are super easy, simply click, and done. Recommendations can be a bit harder to get, but mean a lot more. Especially if you’ve got any big-name clients, or anyone who really really loved your service (or even you). And if you’re too shy to ask, head over to their profile, click the three dots on the top right hand corner and request one.

Include ya publications
LinkedIn allows you to include links to your published work, use this to show what you’re capable of! Upload presentations, videos, and projects to your profile. You can also upload blogs, to show your potential clients what an expert you really are.

Join in the conversation
So your profile is all ready to go. Now we wait for the leads to roll in, right? Wrong. Spend a little time on your newsfeed everyday talking to people, whether it’s simply an opinion, or something you can help out with.

Although, avoid unsolicited selling. Think of it as a networking event, you wouldn’t walk in, put your card in everyone’s hand, take a croissant and then leave. Spend some time in conversation with potential clients, be genuinely interested in what they are doing, and highlight how you can help when the time is right.

Quality content
Make the most of how easy it is to get organic reach through LinkedIn. Whenever someone likes, comments, or shares your content on LinkedIn, it will appear in their connections’ newsfeed as if they were following you themselves. Whereas on Facebook, posts will only show up in friends’ news feeds if the content has been shared.

Good content, on any platform, can help to generate leads for you and can show up in search engine results, and LinkedIn is no exception.

Using LinkedIn to generate business does require some effort, but it needn’t be a big job. Spending a few minutes each day interacting and engaging will be worth it in the long run!

Want to find out more on how to ramp up your sales through social media? Book your free BoffinBulb today.

So long #ad, Instagram is launching ‘Paid Partnership’ tags

There’s no doubt that influencer marketing, and, ahem, the less graceful ‘paid posts’, has dominated Instagram. And with over 90% of celebrity endorsements being in violation of rules around influencer marketing, something needed to be done.

How cool is this party we are hosting with @bumble? It's snowing in the desert! Having the best time here at the #WinterBumbleland party! #ad ❄🌴🐝

A post shared by Kylie (@kyliejenner) on Apr 15, 2017 at 4:43pm PDT

Soon, we'll start to see a new “Paid partnership with” tag on posts and stories. This feature will enable influencers to show when they are working in partnership with a brand (or when they’re being paid to promote tea.)

While Instagram does not *yet* have a way to enforce that influencers and brands use this new tool, users who do will have access to additional metrics. The sponsor and influencer will be able to view Insights to track exactly how their content is performing.

Facebook introduced a similar system last year, which enables verified Pages to share branded content on by tagging partner brands in their posts.

However, there is an element Instagram hasn’t taken from Facebook. This is an increased reach based on the tagged partner. On Facebook, when you tag a brand in a post, the algorithm then uses your tags to increase the likelihood of your content being shown to a group of people who are mutually interested in both you and the Page you’ve tagged. There’s no current word of this happening on Instagram yet, this may be as it’s a new tool, and could possibly be brought in in the future.

“Launching this branded content tool is the first step in ensuring transparency of paid partnerships on Instagram. As we continue to learn how our community engages with the product, we'll be able to gather important feedback.” - Instagram

What do you think of this update? Should social media platforms be stricter on influencers and paid partnerships? Let us know on Twitter! @DigitalBoffins

#SocialMediaDay: What are the big benefits of social media for your business?

Long gone are the days of social media as a place for personal and private interaction, social media is now being harnessed by businesses, big and small, to reach target audiences.

Customer service
If a customer has a complaint to say about your brand, they will say it regardless if you’re on social media or not. If you’re on social media, you have the opportunity to track, monitor, and reply to any comments made about your brand. If you’re not on social, however, this gives your competitors, and any potential customers, the chance to see the comment, and reply.

When customers complain, they generally do it because they want to be heard. Replying to negative comments gives you the opportunity to find out more about the situation, so you can improve, take note, and make sure the customer knows that they’re being listened to. If they feel like they’re being ignored or their voice isn’t being heard, they’ll probably take it to the next level and do whatever they can to be heard. Which is a sh*t storm you generally want to avoid. 

Talking to your customers, and answering their questions and queries allows you to build a relationship with your customers, and gives them a reason to trust and be loyal to the brand.

A good example of this is LinkedIn’s Twitter account dedicated to customer service. LinkedIn has no phone lines, and is pretty impossible to get hold of any other way. So to make up for this, their Twitter customer service is pretty damn incredible, and they reply from as early as 6AM! 

Because of their quick and consistent communication on Twitter, they often get a lot of praise from the people that were initially having an issue, which then goes on to be seen by their followers.

Brand awareness
Social media gives you the ability to generate organic reach, and therefore grow brand awareness. It also allows you to share your brand voice and message.

To keep your branding consistent, it’s always good to have a similar profile and header picture, along with a similar ‘About Me’ and brand voice.

My Protein does a fantastic job of leveraging brand awareness throughout their social media accounts. Each profile has a recognisable brand identity, which helps when establishing a brand.

Lead generation
So, you’ve got 1500 awesome flyers made up. Great! But how do you know when you get a call, email, or any potential lead directly from that flyer? Not being able to track sales and leads back to this makes it extremely hard to measure ROI.

Using Google Analytics, social media specific offers, and lead generation forms allows you to directly measure the ROI from social media, even down to a specific post.

By investing time into understanding your target audience and tailoring your content to match this, alongside social advertising, offers and promotions, you’ve got yourself a ticking lead generation machine.

Website traffic and SEO
There’s no question that social media helps with SEO. To put it simply, Google sees each of your social channels like it’s a page on your website. A page that is being constantly updated with keywords and rich and relevant content. It’s an SEO dream come true!

Having links to your website on your social channels will increase traffic back to your site, this increased activity helps search engines discern that your website is reputable. Google’s algorithm is continually evolving and updating to weed out spam, dangerous or fake websites and appropriately rank websites that are legitimate. By incorporating social media into your marketing strategy, you can positively influence your search ranking, without even saying SEO!

Make way Facebook cover images, video's come to town

Facebook has said time and time again that, soon, the majority of the content on their platform will be taken over by video, and they’ve have taken their next step with this by introducing cover videos… 

Users have been requesting an update like this for some time, as this provides another way to create attention-grabbing profiles – and certainly the video background does that.

Thinking about upping your cover game? Here’s what you need to do:

• Have the video size around 820 by 462 pixels

• Make sure it’s at least 20 seconds long, but no more than 90 seconds long

• It can have sound, but will play muted unless un-muted

• And upload the same way as you would upload a cover photo! 

With matters of network capacity, data usage and potential lag long gone, we gotta lot of time for updates like this!

Are you planning on making the most of this update? Let us know how! @digitalboffins

A Countdown of Our Favourite 'The Floor Is...' Memes

The past week has seen the spread of the hilarious (and slightly dangerous) ‘the floor is lava’ game, and also the emergence of this meme…

Here’s a roundup of the best!

Some even used it to sum up the chances of them passing their GCSEs.

Have we missed any? Let us know on Twitter! @digitalboffins