How to Use LinkedIn for Your Small Business Marketing

LinkedIn can be a powerful marketing tool for small businesses, yet many companies still greatly under-utilize this tool.  While the list below is substantial, even leveraging a few of these ideas can boost your small business. Below are a few tips on how to effectively use LinkedIn for your small business marketing.

Create a LinkedIn Company page

Most professionals will at least set up a personal profile, and then overlook setting up a company page. You need a LinkedIn company page to amplify your brand to distributors, association members, customers and others. A company page also lets you highlight your services, thought leadership, and your employees to build your external credibility and community. Best of all, a LinkedIn company page is free if you have a healthy personal profile.

Connect with like-minded professionals that can become your clients

Once your LinkedIn profile is set up, you should start connecting with industry professionals and people who could become your clients. Small businesses can zero in on the exact industry, company size and job role [of the people] that they know typically would buy their product or service. Take the time to do proactive outreach and connect with these people to start building up your connections.

Use LinkedIn Groups to connect with people

If you’re looking for more ways to connect with industry professionals and people who may need your product or service, look for groups that are in your industry or your target demo.  Ask and answer questions, and participate consistently.  Even better, starting a LinkedIn group is a great way to have access to email and stay in touch with your group as it grows. This too requires some dedication, but now you’re in control of the groups messaging and activities.  It’s a great networking outlet to get connected to others.

Add content on LinkedIn

As a small business owner, you should be blogging on a regular basis to share your expertise. While it’s important that your original content resides on your own website, you should be sharing this information on LinkedIn as well.  Post a link to your onsite blog with a short summary, or post a curation piece on LinkedIn, highlighting your blog posts each month.  You’re putting your expertise on display when you share your content and reaching a wider audience than you would with your website blog alone.

Use paid company sponsored ads on LinkedIn

Company-sponsored updates boost visibility with your company page followers and others on the LinkedIn network. Sponsored updates appear in LinkedIn member homepage news feeds and look like any other native update, except they’re marked as “Sponsored.” This is a powerful and inexpensive way to get in front of a targeted audience and showcase your company page.

Update your company status regularly

Your company page is not a set it and forget it.  Be sure to update your company status on a regular basis. If you don’t have timely information to share, be sure to share industry articles so you can showcase your company as a thought leader.

Ask your clients and employees to recommend you on LinkedIn

A great way to get more relevant traffic to your profile and make your company stand-out is to get recommendations from current and past employees.  This is a great way to make a favorable impression on people who are learning more about your business and potentially considering doing business with you. Do the same for clients as well. People are usually happy to provide a recommendation but chances are, you’ll have to be proactive in asking for them.

With these tips in mind, you can maximize your presence on and use this powerful tool as a way to drive higher qualified leads to your small business.