LinkedIn: a trusted source for small businesses

Why LinkedIn isn't just a professional network to post jobs

More than just an HR landing page, LinkedIn is a way for your small-to-medium business (SMB) to drive business results, increase brand awareness and educate potential customers about your products and services; all on a platform SMBs trust more than any other social media. It's a big number: 500 million professionals on LinkedIn globally. More importantly, recent insights published by LinkedIn show it's the most-used social platform for Australian SMBs when they're looking to grow, find business partners and drive leads. In fact, LinkedIn says it's the number one social network for lead generation. That's on top of its capacity for connecting with and recruiting new talent. 

Where LinkedIn really comes into its own is as a targeted, accessible, high-touch marketing tool. Filter by job function, seniority, company name, geography, industry and more. Or by interest - through a member's LinkedIn groups, fields of study or skills they self identify. Or you can reach people by segment, whether that's "opinion leaders" or "business travelers". For that reason, LinkedIn is also an obvious platform for launching account-based marketing campaigns. Your business can use LinkedIn in a number of ways. After setting up a Company page, you can create LinkedIn Groups, publish articles or updates, do business development, promote your brand, products or blog, and grow traffic to your website. 

It's not just the data, the networking and the free real estate that make LinkedIn attractive. Findings from the Business Insider Intelligence Digital Trust report 2018 reveal that LinkedIn is the most trusted platform (for the second year in a row), based on how users' information is protected and how safe the environment feels for users to create and engage with content. LinkedIn users were seen to be well behaved, more selective and mindful about engagement, with content on LinkedIn viewed as being of a higher quality compared to other platforms. A lot of that comes from the simple fact that people go on LinkedIn for business purposes, unlike many users of say, Facebook. 

1.5 million Australian LinkedIn members are employed by SMBs and 520,000 of those are classed as "decision makers". So LinkedIn is a good way to market to the decision makers in your SMB. LinkedIn insights show that 46% of those SMBs surveyed believed professional social networks such as LinkedIn influenced their awareness and selection of products/services for their company, second only to word of mouth at 68%. When it comes to providing content through LinkedIn, Entrepreneurship, leadership, productivity and technology are the four content areas that SMBs are engaging with most frequently.

There's no sign that our love of social media is in decline. Hootsuite and We Are Social's 2018 Global Digital Report showed there are 17 million active social media users in Australia, up 6% since January 2017. Across the spectrum of social sites, LinkedIn's insights report that 78% of people created and shared content through social media to enhance company reputation, and 70% did it to generate leads. 58% used social media to distribute product or service information. Social media is now a must-have communication tool for a majority of businesses. For small business targeting other businesses, LinkedIn is a no-brainer - if you're prepared to build connections and work those connections like a pro. For more insights to help grow and protect your business, visit our blog.