Do you have a LinkedIn profile? You almost certainly answered yes. But does your business have a presence on LinkedIn?
Below, we’ll talk about the difference between personal and business pages, how to improve your LinkedIn profile with ChatGPT, how to take advantage of Showcase Pages, and more. When you’re done, your LinkedIn profile will be a lead magnet like never before!
Profiles and Business Pages
If you’re a contractor, consultant, sole proprietor, or solopreneur, your personal LinkedIn profile may be all you need to make your business shine. Personal profiles are great for photographers, authors, construction contractors, and even highly specialized roles like scuba instructors or beekeepers. Just think about what your clients are looking for—if they likely plan to seek out and hire an individual, your personal profile will likely suffice.
But what if you represent a larger business? LinkedIn has a ready solution. Profiles for businesses are called LinkedIn Company Pages. They function a lot like personal profiles, allowing your business to make and comment on posts, connect with other organizations, and engage with the LinkedIn community.
How to Find Your LinkedIn Business Profile
Finding your business page can be tricky, especially if it’s been some time since you took a ‘set it and forget it’ look at it.
Business pages are always connected to personal profiles, just like pages on Facebook. Log into LinkedIn, and your business page should show up on the sidebar on the left side of the page.
If you haven’t created your page yet, click the “Work” icon (a cluster of nine squares) at the top left corner of the page. Click “Create a company page +” then select “Company” or “Educational institution.” Then, follow the steps to input the requested information.
Optimize Your Page
Your LinkedIn page provides plenty of space, but you should treat each sentence as precious real estate. Don’t bore your visitors—intrigue them and compel them to consider your products or services.
Ask your favorite AI text generator to “make this statement more compelling” or “optimize this for LinkedIn.” You can do this for each text section. Consider an example.
I asked ChatGPT to “write a more compelling LinkedIn headline for ‘Wedding photographer.’” Among its ten suggestions were “Capturing Timeless Love Stories | Award-Winning Wedding Photographer” and “Turning Moments into Memories | Professional Wedding Photographer.” Both are more compelling and more interesting than the original—and more likely to generate leads.
Staff Your Office
You can think of a business’s LinkedIn page as a virtual office where clients and customers come to learn about your company. This is especially important if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar location.
But, just as you would staff your physical office, you should staff your virtual one as well. You can grant full or restricted access to the page to any team member who has a LinkedIn account. Assign one or more staff members to create regular posts, interact with other entities, and respond to messages regularly. Don’t lose leads by ignoring customer inquiries!
Showcase Your Best
In addition to the business page itself, you can create Showcase Pages. These are sub-pages of your business page. You can use them to highlight your brands, projects, services, or business units. They will be listed on the main page under the heading “Affiliated Pages.”
Each showcase page has the same capabilities as your business page, but you can use them to target and interact with specific audiences. By creating content related to their specific interests, you can increase engagement, and, in turn, lead generation.
Establish Expertise and Build an Audience
LinkedIn is the only social platform that allows business entities to publish long-form articles. Doing so can establish your business as an expert in its field. It can also generate leads from readers who first found your business via the article.
You can also create LinkedIn Newsletters—”recurring, serialized Articles on a certain topic.” Your community or subscribers are a ripe source of new leads.
Additionally, you can use these tools to “humanize your brand.” Write spotlight articles on outstanding employees, social responsibility and diversity and inclusion initiatives, and hot-button workplace issues.
Don’t forget to conclude your articles with a call to action. Tell readers what you want them to do—to comment, contact you, or tag a colleague they think would be interested in the content.
Link to LinkedIn
Finally, don’t forget to link to your LinkedIn page from other company websites and social media. You can use a service like LinkTree or any one of these Linktree alternatives to create a drop-down of all your important links, centered around a single link you can include anywhere in your contact information.
Key Takeaways on Your LinkedIn
LinkedIn has built a trusted reputation for providing business networking without the fluff of social media. You can turn your business’s LinkedIn profile into a lead magnet by updating your page, posting regularly, creating Showcase Pages and LinkedIn Articles, and including your page’s link wherever your business lives online.
