How to Improve your Brand Visibility with LinkedIn?

The Importance of Visibility

A brand is an image, a perception, a set of promises and it comes into existence on when it is delivered to its target market. But much before a brand may be delivered, it has to follow the AIDA rule – Attract, Interest, Desire and Action. Yes, attracting stakeholders (including customers, investors, business partners and other groups) is the first step towards success.

One of the most popular promotional tools being used by the corporate world is social media. Research shows that the use of social media practices differs according to the size of the company in question. 36% of all companies with more than 2000 employees and 47% of all companies with less than 2000 employees used LinkedIn. This may point out towards relatively small businesses’ perception of LinkedIn as a more relevant platform to get in touch with new customers, suppliers and business partners. The other two most used social media websites are Facebook and Twitter.

In spite of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, all being social media platforms, a large number of companies choose to have their presences on all three of them. The reason is that each website gives companies access to a different group of people. Twitter is suitable for brief updates by companies to the general public, Facebook is an interactive medium that enhances customer experience while LinkedIn is a place where professionals come together chiefly for business purposes such as recruitment, purchasing, business development and networking. In fact, LinkedIn is the largest professional social network on the web with more than 131 million users from all around the globe.

How to Increase Visibility

Having understood the importance of increasing brand visibility on LinkedIn, marketing professionals often wonder what exactly they should do to make the most out of the opportunities ready to be exploited. Following are tips that aspiring marketers can make use of to boost their company’s brand visibility.

Select Target Audience

Remember, a single platform can never effectively target everyone. It has to focus on a few similar groups. Hence, a company’s LinkedIn page has to focus on two or three types of audience.

One group that has to be catered to regardless of anything is that of job seekers. Since one of LinkedIn’s core functions is to facilitate the interaction of relevant job seekers and head hunters, companies must not disappoint those who visit their page looking for employment opportunities.

Strategize

After you have decided which groups you are going to target, strategize accordingly. Do so keeping in mind the needs and wants of each group. While Facebook, Twitter and other informal social networking websites witness a spike in user activity at weekends, LinkedIn is more frequently used by all during working hours. Hence, keep this and other relevant details about your target market in mind while creating a suitable strategy. Once this is done, focus on the areas mentioned below.

Develop Content

Browsing on LinkedIn can often be frustrating, especially when you are searching for something because of the abundance of spam-like content posted by different companies including those trying to sell their products. To make your company’s page and other points of interaction impressive, the content has be given special attention.

It has to be developed by someone who has a clear understanding of who the target audience is, what they are looking for and how brand visibility can be increased among them. Some of the objectives of the content posted on a company’s page and other platforms are:

1. Informing the company’s mission, vision, values and objectives
2. Showcasing the company’s product portfolio
3. Presenting the company’s most significant professionals including the CEO, CFO, directors, managers, etc.
4. Discussing latest product launches
5. Announcing job vacancies
6. Sharing CSR activities by the company

Graphics

Graphics play a vital role in increasing the effectiveness of communication. Hence, in addition to spending abundant time and effort on developing textual content for the page, make sure that you invest the right amount of resources in graphics as well. Look at this picture that Google has posted on its LinkedIn page.

The picture is exciting and clearly communicates what the company is about. The picture below further shows how the company has made clever use of its logo and actively maintains and updates its page.

Keywords

Yet another important area to invest in is, search engine optimization. People often look for professionals, products and companies on search engines so it is imperative that those who wish to be found should invest in search engine optimization. The easiest way of doing so is to insert the keywords that you think your target market is going to be use.

Interaction

A company’s page is one point of interaction. To increase brand’s visibility, it is equally important for a company to interact with other relevant groups on LinkedIn. This can be done directly from a company’s official page or by a significant member of a company such as the managers of one the company’s departments.

These professionals can do a number of things on other groups to increase their brand’s visibility such as recommending their products to people looking for business solutions or even giving out expert opinion from their experience to those seeking it. Also, the company can start discussions itself too

Timing

As mentioned earlier, time is of essence when it comes to posting content. So keep in mind your target audience’s web browsing activity. In general prefer weekdays over weekends.

Product Recommendations

Yet another way to increase your brand’s visibility is to request customers to recommend your company’s products. Their recommendations will show up on the company’s as well as the customers’ pages. This will leave a positive impression of your brand on people who might not be actively searching for your brand.

Get Going

Having strategized to perfection and developed content accordingly, the only thing required for an increase in your brand’s visibility is implementation. So don’t waste a moment and get working already. Best of luck!