Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 Most people use their personal LinkedIn page for self-promotion and job hunting. What they don’t know is that it can be used equally effectively for promoting their companies. Currently on LinkedIn there are some three million company pages. In contrast, there are over 225 million personal pages. The chances of viewing a personal page are therefore significantly greater than viewing a company page and should be leveraged for promoting the latter. Empowering Personal Profiles The first thing to do is complete your personal profile. Studies show that completed profiles have a significantly higher chance of being read than uncompleted ones. Inside your profile include a description of your role in the company. Make it as exciting as possible to give readers enticement to visit the company page. Make sure to use industry specific keywords, even technical ones. This will increase your chances of being found by search engines. Your next step is to create a link between your personal page and that of the company. Do this by creating an Experience entry that relates to your company. Make sure to choose the company name from the drop down list. Deploying Your Employees Don’t stop at your own personal page. Make sure all company employees have LinkedIn pages and all are linked to the company page. A recent study shows that companies that have more employees on LinkedIn do better than those that have less. In fact, nine out of the ten top brands had over 60% of their employees registered on LinkedIn. This number gradually decreases the farther one moves outside the top ten. It’s even worth the effort to create incentives to get company employees to set up Linked profiles. In their summary sections, ask them to write specifically about the work they do for the company and how it can help potential clients. Then encourage them to build up their networks. The more employees on LinkedIn and the more active they are the higher your company will appear in LinkedIn’s search results. This in turn will insure your company’s content reaches a greater audience. Ready…. Set….. Start Interacting! Once you and your employees are on LinkedIn and your profiles are complete and up to date, it’s time to get active! The more active you are the more you and your company will be seen and heard. First make sure to post frequent updates on your personal page. Ensure updates are relevant and are likely to be shared by others. Include news about your company, job openings, thought leadership information and more. Make sure good, targeted content appears on your company page and share it on your personal page. Encourage employees to do the same. Leadership starts at the top, so make sure your top executives lead by example. Once you, your employees and your company have interesting content invite partners, customers, and vendors to join your network, follow your company page, recommend and endorse you, recommend your company’s products and more. Gab in a Group Want to reach even more people? Join some groups and take part in the discussions. As much as possible try and include valuable content. Identify top group influencers and specifically interact with them. Also register for group events and participate in the newsletter, if they have one. Asking a question is a great way to get a discussion started. An especially good idea is to look for questions people frequently ask you in private and post them publicly. This is a proven method to create an impact. Don’t make the mistake of using groups for hard selling. That’s a sure way to turn people off! Keep your posts friendly and informative. Its ok though to include a link to things like your company blog, if you think its relevant. Do you feel like your company is active enough on LinkedIn? What percentage of employees are registered on LinkedIn? Leave your answers in the comments section below! Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on Oktopost and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Author: Mark Lerner Follow @LernerMark Mark is an experienced B2B startups marketer who's skills include: Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, Content Creation, Content Distribution, Marketing Strategy, Social Media Management, Pay Per Click, SEO/SEM, Web Design, Web Development, and Branding. Currently, Mark is focused on helping B2B startups scale their marketing operations to increase awareness, lead generation,… View full profile ›More by this author:How Serendipity Helped Me Start My Own Marketing AgencyThe One Thing Millennials Want in a Job (That You’re Not Giving Them)5 Unforeseen Impacts of Social Media