With LinkedIn being the largest professional network on the Internet, boasting a membership of some 150 million users around the globe, one could gain a lot of insight about a company, their operations, best practices, potential for growth, financial stability and where the company’s focus is.

The first obvious step is to create your LinkedIn Company page. Here is a great article we have found to help get our audience started with this: 5 Tips for Using the New LinkedIn Company Pages.

Once you have established a company page on LinkedIn, here are a couple best practices you can implement to grow your visibility on LinkedIn and engage your new followers:

  1. Use the Overview Tab. By making the most of this precious real estate, you can provide your visitors with some compelling reasons to follow your company page; Give away a demo, a white paper, a coupon, something of value that relates to your business. Make sure you provide some calls to action in this area as well to drive your traffic to other sections of your site. This will be beneficial in measuring conversion rates of your visitors.
  2. Provide interesting page updates. It has been shown that status updates that create dialogue or contain calls to action are the most effective forms of page updates. Include on the page update call to action URL links for your audience to follow, directing them to a landing page to download a handbook, make a donation to your charity, enter in a contest or drawing, showcase your work, or simply to ask them to follow your blog or other social media sites. These types of page updates have the potential to grow viral and quickly increase your exposure.
  3. Encourage and Showcase your Company. When LinkedIn members visit your page, they can see which of the members in their network have recommended your product or service. When a member recommends your products or service, all of their network connections are notified as well. LinkedIn provides a “Request Recommendation” module found on the Products and Services tab. Ask others for recommendations about your products and services.
  4. Consider using LinkedIn Ads. They are still relatively affordable and can be used to drive visibility.

Timing in social media is everything. There is a tremendous window of opportunity now for the small to medium sized businesses to increase their exposure, grow visibility and even market share by using the free tools available through social networks; such as LinkedIn.