HOW TO CREATE A POWERFUL LINKEDIN BUSINESS PAGE
There is no question about the power of leveraging social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram to engage consumers with your brand. But when it comes to generating B2B leads, LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform.
and this is why you need a powerful LinkedIn business page.
In this article, we will look at why LinkedIn is such an effective platform for generating B2B leads, and therefore why your company should have an active and engaging business profile page on LinkedIn.
We will also take you through setting up an effective LinkedIn business page step-by-step, starting with the prerequisites for gaining permission to create the page, through to some effective techniques for actively driving engagement.
LinkedIn Business Accounts For Generating B2B Leads
LinkedIn is the leading professional social network, with 675+ million users worldwide and 167+ million in the United States alone. It is a hub for professionals looking for networking and other professional opportunities.
Many of the people who use LinkedIn are in decision-making roles within their organization, which means they often have the power to engage with your business on behalf of their organization. It tells that 70% of American LinkedIn users are in the 36-55 age demographic and that 45% earn more than $75,000 per year.
These users regularly access LinkedIn as a source of engagement with their industry and find relevant professional content. Statistics show that 12% of US users visit the site daily.
A LinkedIn business account is a profile page that you create for your company, much like your personal profile page. That page can build a network of connections, post content, and engage with other LinkedIn users, just like you can with your personal LinkedIn account.
Business pages like this can be a highly effective way to raise awareness of your business and its services in professional and B2B circles and generate new leads.
Surveys of B2B marketers using LinkedIn for sales suggest that LinkedIn is the leading platform for generating business leads. It suggests that 92% of B2B marketers prioritize LinkedIn over all other social media platforms and estimate that 80% of the B2B business leads generated via social media come via LinkedIn.
Creating a LinkedIn business page is straightforward, and generating content and leads via LinkedIn should be part of your overall marketing and communications strategy. In short, there is not much to lose and an awful lot to gain.
How To Create A LinkedIn Business Page
To create a LinkedIn business page you will need a well-established personal page and authority to act on behalf of the business. Once these prerequisites are in place, creating the LinkedIn business page is a simple process. Driving engagement with compelling and relevant content is where the real challenge lies.
Prerequisites
Not just anyone can create a LinkedIn business page. The platform restricts access to this feature to maintain the integrity of the site.
Their prerequisites are in place to ensure that only real businesses can create pages. They don’t want anyone creating fake business pages and spamming their clients with fake jobs and false products.
But, if you are a serious business, this works in your favor. It means that users know the social media platform has already checked you over. Therefore, your business is likely to be genuine and trustworthy.
What do you need in place in order to create a business page on LinkedIn?
- It would help if you had a personal LinkedIn profile that uses your real, legal name. The account must also be at least seven days old and have a reasonable number of connections.
- It would help if you had a fairly complete profile on the platform, with your profile scoring at least “intermediate” to be considered.
- You must have a working website for the business you want to create a page for, and you must have a company email address (Gmail is not accepted, unfortunately).
- The business you want to create the page must be listed as your current employer in the “experience” section of your LinkedIn profile.
Once you have these prerequisites in place, you will be able to create your business page. Bear in mind that you will be asked to verify that you have permission to create a page for the business before publishing it.
Creating A LinkedIn Business Page
Once you have your prerequisites in place, creating a basic LinkedIn business page is a fairly straightforward process.
Simply go to the “work” icon in the dashboard of your personal LinkedIn profile, which is at the top right-hand corner of the page.
When the drop-down menu appears, choose “Create a Company Page” from the list of options.
You will be asked to choose from four options representing the kind of business you will be creating the page. Choose appropriately from the following:
- Small Business – less than 200 employees
- Medium to Large Business – more than 200 employees
- Showcase – these are product pages for existing businesses pages (read LinkedIn’s information on showcase pages)
- Educational Institution
As we continue to go through the process, we will focus on creating a page for a Small Business, but the process is very similar to the other options.
Once you have selected your option, you will be asked to provide the relevant details of the business. Specifically:
- Name of the business
- The LinkedIn URL that you would like to use for the business’ LinkedIn page
- The active website of the business
- The industry that your business is active in (select from a dropdown menu)
- The size of the business (number of employees selected from a dropdown menu)
- The type of company (select from a dropdown menu)
- An uploaded logo and a tagline
While this last step is optional, it is highly advisable as the company logo adds a level of genuineness and professionalism to your business. Do you click on profiles, personal or business, if they haven’t provided a profile image?
Once you have completed all this information, you will be asked to tick a box verifying that you have the authorization to create this page on behalf of the business. Once you have ticked the box, you will be able to select “create the page,” and then your business is in business!
But while this process will make your page live on LinkedIn, there are a few more things you will want to do to complete your page before sharing it with the world. These additions make your page appear more professional and established and will go a long way toward attracting followers to your page and building confidence with your audience.
- Add a cover photo to your page that reflects and represents your work. This should be a banner image, ideally 1584×396 pixels.
- Provide a summary of your business up to 2,000 characters that will appear under “Overview” in the “About” section of your LinkedIn business page. LinkedIn and Google will use this text in their search engines, so make sure to use your main keywords.
- Add up to three hashtags that are relevant to your business activity.
- Add your company’s location or multiple locations. This again adds to the legitimacy of your company page and is also useful when you are listing job opportunities.
- If you have a multilingual audience, you can add your business’ name, tagline, and description in more than 20 different languages. Choose relevant languages and add your information.
- Include call-to-action buttons on your page. You can link to any URL from these buttons, and the button text options include: visit a website, contact us, learn more, register, and sign up. Make sure to use unique URLs so that you can track the success of your LinkedIn business page for driving traffic to your other online properties.
Finally, ask all of your team members to link the business page to their personal LinkedIn account. Having several employees connected to your LinkedIn page will again make the page appear more professional and legitimate to anyone following the page.
Ask team members to follow the page and send an invitation to follow the page to your personal contacts. This is easy to do under “admin tools,” where there is an option to “invite connections.”
Engaging Audiences With Your LinkedIn Business Page
As with most things, with your LinkedIn business page, it is not a matter of “build it, and they will come.” You will need to work to drive engagement with your brand and your business.
Ideally, you will incorporate your LinkedIn business page and its activities into your marketing and communications strategy. You will be able to cross-publish material from your other platforms to LinkedIn and cross-promote your LinkedIn business page on other channels.
Make sure to add links from LinkedIn to your website and other online properties and draw the attention of your engaged audiences to your LinkedIn business profile, such as including a short write-up and link in your e-newsletter.
On LinkedIn itself, it is all about sharing content that your target audiences who are on the platform will find interesting and useful. And on top of this, engage with platform users, invite them to connect, comment on their posts, and open a dialogue on relevant topics.
Remember that LinkedIn is a “social media” platform, so success stems from engagement and conversation rather than just publishing and broadcasting.
While you can repost pages and blog posts that you have available from elsewhere, it is a very good idea to create some content that is specifically for LinkedIn, as this will get more engagement on the platform.
When you have content specifically relevant to your LinkedIn audience, creating a video can be one of the most effective ways to drive engagement, as videos receive five times more engagement than other posts.
While you can post from other platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo, it is worth posting natively via LinkedIn. This means the video will start to play automatically when users are scrolling. And don’t forget to add subtitles, as up to 80% of people watch social media videos without audio.
If video is not an option, then at the very least add a compelling image (and preferably not a stock image) because posts with images tend to receive 98% more comments.
To build your brand on LinkedIn, it is advisable to post a minimum of once a week. You will get the most engagement if you post daily, but more than this does not result in a significant boost in engagement.
The best time to post is during working hours for your target geographical demographic. If you have especially compelling or important content lined up, save it for a Wednesday.
As the administrator of your LinkedIn Business page, you will have access to analytics that will help you to understand who is engaging with you and what kind of content is the most successful and compelling. Make sure that you take the time to understand LinkedIn analytics and incorporate relevant measurements into your KPIs.
Not sure where to start? Get inspiration and learn how to make a great LinkedIn profile from some of the best and most successful LinkedIn pages.
The Verdict
When it comes to generating B2B business leads, LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform, potentially generating 80% of all social media-driven B2B leads. This is why B2B and professional services-related businesses must have a strong presence on the network.
The most effective way to raise awareness of your brand on the network is with a LinkedIn business page, which can publish and interact with other accounts like an individual LinkedIn profile page.
The process for setting up a LinkedIn business page is simple, and once it is in place, you have a powerful tool at your disposal for growing brand awareness and engagement.
Do you have any experience managing a LinkedIn business page? Do you have any essential tips? Please share them with the community in the comments section.
I’m Growth-X’s digital marketing, copywriter, and customer success expert who focuses on growth hacks for B2B companies. When not working, you might catch me doing yoga or planning my next adventure.
