6 Steps to Make Your Company a LinkedIn Superstar

A couple of months ago I wrote about tips to use social media for your business. Since then the opportunities have continued to grow with the arrival of enhancements to many of the leading social media champions — LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, SlideShare, etc. This month, I'd like to focus on reviewing enhancements to LinkedIn and on how your business can participate with this engagement tool.

The major news in LinkedIn enhancements is the launch of Business pages where messages about your business; information about current, new and former employees; job openings, etc. can be shared with other business organizations and professionals. You can also follow companies of interest including prospective clients, partners, competitors or those you find interesting.

Here are the steps to take to use this enhancement along with a SlideShare presentation highlighting these steps, along with examples from Madison-based Applied Tech, a full-service outsourced IT service provider for small & medium size businesses.

Step 1: Assign or Hire Social Media Champion(s)

Depending on the size of your organization, either you or a highly knowledgeable internal or external professional/team with a depth and breadth of understanding about your organization, along with a strong grasp of social media needs to be designated or hired to represent your organization in your social media engagements including on LinkedIn. Some organizations have taken the misguided approach of selecting an intern or new graduate with social media skills for this task, but a far better approach is to select an individual or team with the seniority; empowerment; and knowledge about your company, industry and customers to connect with your primary stakeholders using social media.

Steps 2 – 3: Set-up Your LinkedIn Business Page

LinkedIn is evolving their business strategy from being a one-to-one professional social network to one where individuals and companies can connect with one another. Their newest feature is the addition of business pages that display content that you create and post, while displaying and aggregating content from individual profiles on LinkedIn from those who have designated your company in their profile information.

2. Set-up your free LinkedIn Business page by going to Add a Company on LinkedIn.

3. Designate your company editor (hopefully your social media lead) to develop and post your company profile and keywords.

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