The Benefits of LinkedIn’s “Follow” Button for Businesses

Twitter changed its layout and launched “Brand page”, Facebook introduced Timeline and now LinkedIn has made with a significant change. LinkedIn has positioned itself as a “networking site for professionals”. The professional networking site is a favorite among companies and job seekers for connecting with each other. It boasts of a user base of almost 1.5 million.

Many companies have found LinkedIn to be a great way to find new recruits. Industry professionals also find the networking site to be a good platform for marketing brands. LinkedIn has recently added a new “follow” button that allows users to follow their favorite brands. Here are some benefits of the “follow” button for businesses and marketers.

Assessment of your company’s efforts

With the new “follow” button you will be able to assess the marketing efforts of your company. The more “follows” you get, the higher is your popularity. The level of popularity in this case can help you identify how much more efforts you may have to put towards attracting more followers. Not just attracting followers but also interacting with them and writing great followup messages to keep them engaged.

Brand building

You can use new LinkedIn “follow” button as a tool to build brand. Have “follow us on LinkedIn” buttons in your emails, your blogs, websites and your other social media profiles. You can easily promote your brand with the help of this tool. It can be considered as “like” on Facebook or “+1” on Google+.

Customer loyalty

It can be assumed that most of the people who follow you on LinkedIn are the ones who have bought your products/services and are satisfied. So make use of follow button to know how strong your loyal customer base is and, design plans and programs to retain them. Start some contests and provide attractive prizes to your customers. Once you identify your customer base, it becomes easier for you to target them. If your business has a physical store presence, then you can use this to create some interesting location based contests.

Following good brands

By following good brands in your niche, you can keep yourself updated with the latest news and happenings in the industry. This can help you catch the attention of other users. It can also help you get some real time data on the changes in the industry.

Social media marketing integration

You can now consolidate all your social media marketing efforts. As LinkedIn is a networking site for professionals, categorizing your clients and directing all your marketing efforts accordingly will become easier with it. Facebook is good for marketing aimed at end user customers, while LinkedIn is good for marketing aimed at business clients.

The above options help you make better use of LinkedIn’s “follow” button for your company. Set up a company page on LinkedIn, if you still don’t have one, and add the “follow” button. Every social networking site is making changes and adding new features to make things simpler for individual users as well as businesses. Leverage these opportunities to boost your marketing efforts.