Linkedin can be a great tool for any small business looking to use social media to network with other similar companies or with partners. But it’s also great for online PR.
Here are just some of the ways that Linkedin could be used to improve a company’s (or an individual’s) PR efforts:
- Give your spokespeople a unique URL – this is easy to configure in your Linkedin control panel and will give you a search-engine-friendly URL – e.g. http://uk.linkedin.com/in/yourspokespersonsname
- Set up a company profile – you can now have company profiles in Linkedin just as you can individual ones
- SEO your company profile – make sure that your company (and spokespeople) appear in internal and external searches by including lots of relevant keywords in your Linkedin titles, biogs etc.
- Create a group – Linkedin groups allow users to connect and chat with each other. This is a great way to start chatting to customers, prospects or partners
- List all your forthcoming events – Linkedin events is fairly new and is free to use. You can add events you might be running (or attending) and it will even flag up events that other users in your network have found interesting
- Run a poll – Linkedin polls can be targeted to particular demographic splits or interest groups. The service does have a cost attached, but could be a great way to get relatively cheap industry insights or even get research for a PR campaign
- Monitor and answer questions – Linkedin Answers is a way for anyone on Linkedin to ask questions of the entire community. Monitoring these questions on a regular basis and answering any that apply to your business or sector will help you build up recognition
- Join groups and get involved in the discussion – as well as setting up a group for your business, you should also join and monitor other relevant groups that are in existence
- Connect with journalists and influencers – If you’ve recently met a journalist, analyst or even a blogger, make sure you connect to them on Linkedin. This will keep you front of mind and might mean that they will come to you first the next time they need a comment or interview
- Update your status – Having built up a following on Linkedin, make sure you keep your connections updated with your latest goings on by updating your status. You can now link status updates to Twitter (and vice versa), but bear in mind that Linkedin isn’t primarily a micro-blogging platform, so you’ll probably want to go easy and not overload your connection’s streams with continuous updates
Loading ...