5 common mistakes businesses make on LinkedIn

With more than 740 million active users in 2020, LinkedIn's expanded from a networking site for professionals to one of the top social media platforms. But do you already know the benefits of a LinkedIn business account? With LinkedIn’s Company Page feature, users can learn about your business, brand, and job opportunities.  

However, your business will only benefit from LinkedIn if you use it in the right way. There are several mistakes that keep your efforts from generating results. We made a list of the 5 most common ones that businesses make on LinkedIn, and give you tips on how to do it better in the future.   

1. Zero Employee Involvement 

LinkedIn for your business will only be worth it if you don’t forget to approach your employees first. They can and should be your brand ambassadors. Your employees boost your engagement, visibility, and most importantly, build an air of trust and authority. The more employees that are connected to your business page, the more exposure your company gets. 

You can use LinkedIn to make it easy for your employees to promote your brand or your content to attract more traffic to your site, expand your market reach, or gain more leads and followers.

2. No follow-up

It’s one thing to send out connection requests to targeted potential prospects. It’s another to nurture that connection into a relationship so that business conversations can occur. Your relationship building process on LinkedIn should mirror the relationship building strategies you use face-to-face. You need to be interested in learning about them. This means getting to know them while personalizing every interaction you have with them. 

For example, if one of your LinkedIn connections publishes something insightful, in addition to leaving them a public comment, send them a thoughtful follow-up note saying, “I really liked that post you did on (topic).” This might strengthen the relationship with them. 

Without a good relationship, you simply can’t expect them to email you asking for your services. A follow-up allows them to get to know you. And it gives your business time to show prospects what you offer, how you operate and so on. It is also important to provide value in your messages to your LinkedIn contacts as part of the relationship-building process. 

3. A missing LinkedIn share-button

Does your company website have a button that encourages visitors to follow you on LinkedIn? If not, you are missing out on one of the easiest ways to create organic traffic to your LinkedIn account. Adding a LinkedIn share button to your webpage is a nearly effortless way to inform them.  

You can also share content from LinkedIn on other social media platforms to let your connections know they can interact with you on your business page. The more cross-media promotion you do, the more likely people are going to follow you and engage. 

4. Being inactive

Another mistake you’re making is not being present. It’s counterproductive for your business when you are not active on LinkedIn. It’s an effective channel for connecting with partners and customers alike. However, you’re going to miss out on these opportunities if you fail to establish your social presence on LinkedIn. Without regular updates, your community won’t know if you’re still around. This can cause you to lose followers.  

By regularly posting status updates, publishing relevant and high-quality content, or engaging your connections in meaningful conversations, you will help your business to stay up to date and active.  

5. Overlooking LinkedIn groups

An interesting way to grow your LinkedIn business page is to create LinkedIn groups. A lot of people either don’t see the purpose of creating a LinkedIn group or just don’t know how to grow and manage it. But in fact, LinkedIn groups are a great tool for positioning yourself as an expert in your industry. We go wrong, however, in creating and joining groups based on our own interests. Instead, the best thing to do is to create a group around a topic that your prospects are interested in.  

Many people also believe that unless they have thousands of people in their group, that it’s not worth it. That’s not true! What’s most important is the quality of the people inside your group, what you share with them, and finally, the consistency with which you communicate with them. 

Conclusion  

LinkedIn is one of the most versatile platforms out there and the business page feature is free! Use it to reinforce your company image, audience engagement, and lead generation, among many other B2B marketing goals. As long as you don't make any of these mistakes.  

We hope that this article gave you some insights on how to promote and boost your business on LinkedIn. If you still have any questions, feel free to get in touch - we are happy to help & advise.