In the realm of social media, LinkedIn has struggled to be heard and appreciated. For years, many didn’t even really consider it to be a social network, but rather a slightly different version of Monster.com.

LinkedIN as a Powerful Marketing Tool

In the past couple of years though, LinkedIn has finally been getting the attention it deserves, and proving that it’s so much more than a résumé dump (at worst) or Facebook for professionals (at best).

In fact, LinkedIn is a powerful marketing tool, especially for B2B. Here’s why:

LinkedIN Boosts Brand Awareness

LinkedIn is currently the world’s largest professional network, with over 330 million members, and users are not just there to find jobs. It’s the place people turn to when they want to know more about your company than they can find out from your website alone, whether they’re looking for employment or considering doing business with you.

We may be living in increasingly digital times, but people still crave human interaction and that craving fuels the way they do business. LinkedIn is a digital forum, but if used correctly it can go a long way toward humanizing your business in ways that social media networks like Facebook and Twitter can’t.

The more of your employees that are using LinkedIn the better. Employee profiles boost brand visibility and authenticity and allow your employees to act as brand ambassadors. Additionally, when you support your employees on LinkedIn by encouraging them to share accomplishments, publications and events it helps to build a stable working relationship.

LinkedIN Builds Customer Confidence

Content on LinkedIn carries a certain amount of professional weight that content found on Facebook and Twitter simply can’t achieve. The more you engage with the content produced by your industry peers, the more confident and authoritative your company appears.
When you post or share on LinkedIn, it gives potential customers a taste of your professional personality, and if they feel like they know you, they are more likely to trust you with their business.

LinkedIN Drives Traffic

One of the things that LinkedIn doesn’t often get credit for is its link building and traffic driving power. Though the other social media networks get most of the credit for virality and traffic building, when it comes to business content LinkedIn is where it’s at.

Like other social media networks, LinkedIn has a sharing button that allows you to share content in your status updates and in LinkedIn Groups and you can share a single piece of content to multiple groups at the same time. Occasionally content shared on LinkedIn eventually makes it to Facebook and so on, still carrying professional weight, further increasing your audience and traffic potential.

By: Victoria Vener