How to approach B2B social media marketing.

Part five - making a business success of LinkedIn (getting started).

With over 100 million users, LinkedIn is by far the most significant business focused social networking community. Basic membership is free for now and this will provide a really good range of services for most users.

The basis of LinkedIn’s success is that it provides opportunities to easily…

• Connect with like-minded professionals in all relevant industries

• Get involved in industry discussions

• Share industry, business and company content

• Generate sales leads

There are two parts to setting up accounts for business, the staff pages and the company pages.

TIP: When getting your staff to join it’s essential to set guidelines so all corporate details are displayed consistently on their personal pages. This importantly means all staff must use their company email addresses. Also devise a guidance policy for staff when representing your company on LinkedIn, so they maintain a professional perspective at all times.

You need to have at least one personal page set up before you can start a company page and setting up staff accounts is simple enough – just follow the instructions and ensure the individual profiles are fully completed, making them relevant, interesting (not just CVs), accurate and grammatically correct. Good, clear, headshot photographs are also important. And it's worthwhile linking the company twitter feed to each individual’s page, along with the corporate website and blog.

Don't forget to click on the add sections tool on your profile page where you can find additional functions such as languages, courses, voluntary causes and much more.

The next steps are pretty simple too:

• Link up with existing customers/suppliers (search by name or company)

• If relevant, search for old work colleagues, school mates, college or uni friends, club members etc.

• Join groups that are relevant for your business using the group search function

Setting up the company pages

Once you have an individual LinkedIn membership you can create company pages. To start, access your personal page and then click on ‘companies’ in the top menu section. The page that appears has the option to 'Add a Company' on the top right beneath the search box. Click on this link and follow the instructions.

Once this is done the staff will probably need to edit their own individual profiles and re-input the company name. During this process a drop down menu of company names will appear – click on the correct one to get added to the employee listing.

Next complete the company overview, it's important to consider and include relevant keyword search terms in the overview as they will help your business to be found through the LinkedIn search engine.

Another important aspect of company pages is the option to publicise your products and services. Use it. You can then periodically promote news, offers and events etc., which can be broadcast to your groups and contacts on a regular basis.

To be continued...