LinkedIn for career and business development in the MICE industry. Do you know how to use it? Discover practical tips for building a strong personal brand on LinkedIn, including advice on creating a compelling profile, publishing engaging content, and networking with other professionals in their industry. This is also a comprehensive guide to using LinkedIn effectively, including tips for optimizing profiles, building a strong network, and creating engaging content.
Importance of LinkedIn in business
Did you know LinkedIn is older than Facebook and is celebrating its 20th birthday this year? LinkedIn has over 900 million users, and according to the company’s data, three new people join every second. LinkedIn is not just a platform for job seekers; it is a powerful tool for building professional networks and promoting your business, personal brand, or destination. It is also one of the most important networking platforms in the MICE industry.
Free Profile Features
It is never too late to start actively using it. If you are completely new to LinkedIn or log in to your account infrequently, here is an overview of what LinkedIn offers users in 2023:
- a free profile with a banner
- profile picture
- the ability to create a resume with professional experience, skills, and education
- the ability to showcase services and offers
- link to your website and other social media
In addition, LinkedIn allows for publishing posts, photos, videos, and articles, creating polls and events, as well as newsletters. You can manage your profile as a private individual or a company page or showcase page in various administrative roles (Super Admin, Content Admin, Curator, Analyst).
Read also on my blog:
- The top LinkedIn influencers in the meetings industry
- How eventprofs & content creators can save one day a week
- LinkedIn for event professionals
- How to use prompts and extensions for ChatGPT to get the best results?
- Influencer Collaboration with Brands
Premium Features
LinkedIn also offers a range of other features as part of paid LinkedIn Premium or LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and you can also conduct targeted paid campaigns.
At the beginning of your LinkedIn journey, it is worth taking the time to optimize your LinkedIn profile or company page, filling in all possible fields using keywords or enriching content with photos. This will make it easier for other users to find your profile. It is also worth taking care of a dedicated profile or page domain on LinkedIn.
If these tasks are done correctly, Google will index them in its resources, and your LinkedIn profile may appear in the first search results on the search engine.
Features of a Creator Profile
Another option is that anyone can change their private profile to a Creator Profile. This gives you access to additional tools and features, such as displaying hashtags on the topics you talk about, showing the number of followers, and suggestions for new connections.
For creators with 150 followers and/or connections, other tools will be available, such as audio events (LinkedIn Audio Event), live video broadcasts (LinkedIn Live), and publishing your own newsletters.
The 90-9-1 Rule also applies on LinkedIn.
90% means that 90 users are passive and only read, 9% create and share irregular content, and only 1% regularly publish high-quality content.
On LinkedIn, similar to TikTok or Instagram, you can find influencers, although it is better to refer to them as B2B influencers or opinion leaders to differentiate between B2C and B2B.
Building a Network of Contacts
How to build a network of contacts on LinkedIn? There are three ways to directly send messages to other users.
- The first way is to send a connection request with a message introducing yourself.
- The second way is to request a connection, and after the invitation is accepted, you can send a message.
- The third way is a premium paid service that allows you to send a few messages to any person’s inbox associated with their profile.
After the invitation is accepted, I recommend not sending offers, but instead building an expert image by publishing valuable content, joining discussions on other profiles and pages, actively participating in group discussions or following hashtags. Professional activity on LinkedIn requires consistency, patience, and a plan. It’s not a 100-meter sprint but rather a marathon. It’s better to build relationships in the long term to acquire clients later.
It’s worth mentioning that when you make new contact with someone, they automatically become a follower of your profile. In contrast to Instagram, LinkedIn is not saturated with creators, so it’s easier to gain new followers than on other platforms. Each time you like or comment on someone else’s post, the original post will also appear in the followers’ messages. It also works the other way – when others like your posts, you can reach the followers of your followers, expanding the reach of your influence.
Experimenting with Different Content Types
What content to publish on LinkedIn? From experience, posts with photos of people tend to be the most popular, but there are no rules as to what will appeal to the audience and what post will be shared by the platform algorithm.
What’s important is that the faster reactions occur under the post (likes, comments, shares), the greater the chance of a large reach. It’s worth experimenting with posts containing only text, links to websites, videos, or polls. There are many myths about what works and what not to do on LinkedIn, but that’s rather a topic for a separate article to debunk them.
Measuring Success
How to measure the effectiveness of activities on LinkedIn. You can use the built-in analytical functions of the platform, which will provide many important parameters. It’s also worth trying tools like Shield App. Also, recently Sotrender announced that is going to add LinkedIn to its platform.
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