Guide : LinkedIn presence

LinkedIn is the most used social network for professionals, which you are. Often underestimated, LinkedIn can lead to some sales if you manage it properly.

The platforms offers you two types of profiles:

• A personal  profile: You probably already have a personal profile and some connections on LinkedIn, it’s what LinkedIn what built for : business-related interactions. You will want to have a well-curated profile in order to promote your business properly since you will be able to post/comment/like in groups only with a personal profile. Make sure to include your position and company in your status: it will always be shown along with your name in your posts.
  Beyond that, we also suggest you have an updated, good-looking profile with a link to your store as people will often click on it.

• A business profile: those are the ones associated with a particular company & see Now In Store’s profile page. When you set a personal profile you can then have “Dave is Executive Lead Manager at OIYWQE Inc.” and actually have the logo on his profile. As a shop owner, they also allow you to add your employees. Business profiles are a great way to provide them with updates about your company.

LinkedIn groups are the place to be : they gather people interested in the same particular topics. You can look for groups in the search bar and click on join. Groups are usually for an industry, specific service users (Shopify, Etsy, Storenvy) or even geo-segmented. You may notice some groups are private which means an administrator will review you profile and accept you or not in the group. They do this in order to make sure you will get along with other group members.

Once you are in, you can see other people’s posts, like them & comment them. You will want to do that for many reasons:

• Liking a post will keep you informed of people commenting it, so we would suggest you do it whenever the topic strikes your attention
• Commenting a post gets you in contact with other similar LinkedIn users that will likely share some experience, insight and even more!

You will also quickly make some friends out there if you do it well. Some people will have the exact same interest that you have in a topic and you will learn and teach a lot! Some new “friends” even added me as a business connection after a few comments!

But you can also post a link (a blog post, an article) or even begin a discussion with a question!

When you post something in a group, you will see a box like that:

If you begin to write something, it will change into this:

You have a 200 characters limit for the first part and then you can add some more(people will have to click on “…” to be able to see it). You can post it as a General, Job or Promotion post in this case but you will see this can sometimes change. You also have the option to share it with the group + your twitter.

Spam is no exception to LinkedIn and doing the same will not separate you from the crowd. So when you write a post on LinkedIn, keep in mind that your post should first bring value to your readers if you want them to bring you value after.

You will also notice a box on the side of each group: it represents your implication in this particular group. And you will want to be a top contributor. Let me explain you why. The more you post and comment in a group, the more people notice you and see you as an “expert” in the group, and this has two substantial benefits:

• you get to have your personal picture on the top-right side of the group page (4 people are lucky enought to be there at the same time) and people see you face all the time: you get clicks.
• you get to be in peoples mailboxes a lot! When you are active in a group, people receive an email each time other comment below them but more importantly, every group member receives a daily email with the most commented discussion. If you commented it or, even better, if you started it, you will get noticed.

Here was an introductory journey to the world of LinkedIn Marketing.

Keep posted for some more guides!

– Ambroise, with Now In Store