There are many reasons to optimize your LinkedIn profile however B2B marketing is often overlooked.  Read on for BrainRider’s 8 best practice tips.

Key benefits of optimizing your LinkedIn profile:

• Get found: 75% of all B2B purchasers now use Social Media as part of the purchase process and LinkedIn is the #1 tool
• Manage your digital profile: 85% of all purchase decisions start with online research — make sure your positioning key messages show up when customers search for your brand
• Showcase your expertise: through status updates (share what you are reading), group postings (add to the conversation), and LinkedIn Answers (tap your knowledge)
• Google loves LinkedIn so use it to build your brand awareness: in today’s search-driven world your brand exists only if it shows up in the first 3 pages of search results
• Google loves LinkedIn so use it to improve your corporate page rank: LinkedIn provides high-quality inbound links that can improve your page rank
• Promote your company: one of the key benefits of LinkedIn profiles is corporate promotion so support your company by listing your profile

8 tips that everyone in your company should be asked to do:

1. Complete your profile: LinkedIn features full profiles first in their search results

• Use benefit and expertise language that your customer is searching for
• Put your value proposition in your headline
• Include your picture
• Target keywords that match your corporate strategy
• Change the default URL for your listing to a personal url.
• Link to your profile from your own website, blog, twitter account, etc to improve its search ranking

Put your value proposition in your headline

2. Customize the “websites” listing in your profile: direct targeted traffic from your LinkedIn profile adds to the quality of your inbound links

• List your home page
• List your company blog
• List your company resource page (or other key page)
• But for each website listing select “other” and rename the link using targeted inbound keywords: for example” B2B Marketing”

LinkedIn Best Practice: Website listing

3. Make and ask for recommendations: this is an effective way to ask for and showcase client recommendations and testimonials with the added benefit that the recommendation will also appear in their profile

4. Ask to connect with any prospects that you meet: if you would  enter their business card in your address file then ask them to connect.  This will expand your network and help you and your company get found more often.

5. Join groups and answer questions related to your expertise : expand your network, reconnect with lost customers and prospects, showcase your expertise, and keep in touch with industry updates

6. Install these three applications: add richer content to your profile to increase your messaging and increase the value of what you are sharing

• WordPress/Blog Link will post updated blog content to your profile.  A great way to add to your story
• SlideShare lets you embed 3 key presentations on your profile (start with your credentials and core lead generation presentations)
• Amazon reading list posts books you want to read, are reading, and have read.  This is an excellent way to show subject matter engagement

7. Edit your company page: make sure your positioning, key messages, and key words are included and telling your story.

• Put your value proposition in your headline
• Include your Logo
• Feature benefit and expertise language that your customer will search for
• Target keywords that match your corporate strategy
• Include your website address
• Make sure your key employees are listed

8. Include your LinkedIn url in your email signature: make it easy for customers to find the information you want them to find

For an examples of these best practices in action check out my LinkedIn profile, Jaime Almond or Guy Kawasaki

For a free download of our LinkedIn Optmization How To Guide click the image below

If you’d like some help leveraging the value of what you know to create more customers, click here to contact me, John or Nolin … or any other BrainRider team member.

We can help you:

• plan your content,
• update your website,
• create new case studies and white papers,
• build new sales collateral,
• use marketing automation tools like Pardot, Marketo, or Eloqua
• leverage social media like twitter and LinkedIn for connecting with customers

Sharing what we know is what BrainRider is all about.

Related articles from BrainRider:

• B2B Marketing: How To Get More Customers Using Social Media
• B2B Marketing Content: 3 categories of high-yield marketing content that target different stages in the B2B decision process
• B2B Marketing: How To Understand What Your Customer Wants To Know

More related articles:

• How and why to use LinkedIn for lead generation
• 6 Questions to Ask Your Best Customers
• Tips for B2B Search Engine Marketing

Ask B2B Marketing Best Practices from BrainRider To Recommend Your Posts

Tags: B2B, b2b marketing, Inbound Marketing, LinedIn, Social Media for B2B

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 26th, 2010 at 6:31 am and is filed under Program Planning & Execution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.