Creating your company’s LinkedIn profile

Social media is about building networks and it works best when a single person or handful of people take charge. But it takes time.

Whether or not you choose to get involved you can’t afford to ignore it – the genie is already out of the bottle. You need to be aware that people on these networks are already talking about your business. And your employees will already be on LinkedIn, therefore why not embrace it? Here’s how your business can use LinkedIn:

• Set up a properly branded and fully populated company page (below is a good example, for Editions Financial). You don’t need to do this yourself, you can get help from outside – by setting others up (hint, hint, me) as an administrator. When you get stuck in meetings, I can be relied upon to remember to share your news via LinkedIn’s company updates feature, and update your website too.

• Create audience segments for different versions of the company page – based on location, job role and responsibility. A retailer of film equipment could show promotions to American customers (with contact details for their N American sales team) in film and TV while showing an upcoming trade show in Munich to German rental companies (with contact details for the European team).
• Decide if you want to encourage all your employees to be on LinkedIn – and encourage them to link to the company page.
• Once set up, consider the need to monitor the company page – to be able to respond to any negative comments. Employees who already active users may be best-placed to remove offending comments immediately, and to ensure you address any issues publicly if necessary.

And remember, a combination of LinkedIn, Twitter and blogging is best for business to business activity. But if work gets in the way, and you get a bit busy, you can always bring in outside help. That’s me.