Why LinkedIn is an Indispensable B2B Platform and How to Use It
In the Netherlands, LinkedIn has been a trusted platform for years, with a steadily slightly increasing number of users. Research has shown that in 2023, over 5 million people in the Netherlands use LinkedIn, and since 2022, the platform has grown by 47,000 users in the Netherlands. Making LinkedIn the largest professional social media platform and, in our opinion, the only social media platform focused on professional use. But why do we choose LinkedIn en masse to maintain and expand our professional network?
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Why LinkedIn is a useful social network for professional use
Both individuals and organizations use LinkedIn for a variety of reasons. At its core, it revolves around professional networking and career-oriented goals. Common reasons for using LinkedIn include:
- Networking
- Job searching
- Visibility and personal branding
- Sharing and receiving advice
- Business promotion
- Researching potential partners or clients
- Career development and advice
Much more than just a digital rolodex or online CV, isn’t it?
Why LinkedIn is the platform for professional networking
On LinkedIn, you easily connect with existing relationships such as colleagues, business partners, clients, and friends. But you can also easily connect with other professionals in your industry. For example, by joining groups, following certain topics, or posting content about these topics and engaging with interesting people in your field. Networking on LinkedIn yields new business opportunities, jobs, collaborations, and advice. Especially the increasing focus on content and the various interaction options LinkedIn offers, contribute to expanding your professional network.
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Looking for a new job or colleague on LinkedIn
Of course, the largest professional social network must also provide space to discover new career opportunities. Companies post job vacancies, and for recruiters and headhunters, LinkedIn is a paradise due to the amalgamation of so much information about potential candidates on one network. Are you looking for a new job yourself? You can build your professional profile in such a way that your knowledge and skills become visible to the right people, making it easier to connect and increasing your chance of landing a new job.
Working on your visibility and personal branding with LinkedIn
What’s your expertise? LinkedIn provides various ways to share your expertise and experiences with other professionals, such as through posts, articles, and updates through your personal profile or in special groups. With valuable content, you not only build visibility but also your personal brand. Who knows, it may lead to new connections, knowledge, or business opportunities!
Why LinkedIn is a platform to exchange knowledge and advice
You’ve seen them mentioned earlier in this article: LinkedIn groups. A group on LinkedIn is a simple way to connect with people from the same industry or in a different industry but with the same skills or role. Here you can participate in discussions, ask questions, and exchange knowledge. In recent years, LinkedIn has increasingly focused on content, making it easier through your personal profile to share various forms of content, thereby starting discussions and exchanging knowledge. On no other platform can you so easily connect with other professionals within your work area, especially when you don’t yet know each other.
Why LinkedIn is ideal for business promotion
Not just for individuals, LinkedIn is also a very suitable platform for branding and promotion for organizations. Organizations can create a profile, which, like individuals, gets its own page but with slightly different functionalities. Through this page, they share news, business updates, and vacancies, and can advertise services and products on LinkedIn. In our other article, we explain how and why advertising on LinkedIn is smart, but we can already say that business promotion on LinkedIn is very valuable, both paid and organic because everyone uses LinkedIn from a business perspective. In this, LinkedIn is unique compared to all other social media.
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Researching potential partners or clients through LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one massive collection of professionals and organizations, making it the perfect place for researching potential partners or clients. You can easily view and analyze the background and expertise of individuals and organizations before engaging in conversation or establishing a connection.
Why LinkedIn is your platform for career development and advice
There are numerous ways to develop your career and seek advice through LinkedIn. As previously discussed, asking for advice is easy through groups or your personal profile, but LinkedIn also offers a lot of insight into job vacancies (and how you stand in the market), average salaries per industry or job group, asking for and creating references. LinkedIn also offers courses for the skills you want to polish before applying for your next role, such as Excel, SQL, Photoshop, and communication skills.
4 tips to get more out of your LinkedIn profile
After reading the points above, have you decided to (more actively) start using LinkedIn? Here are some tips for you:
- Optimize your profile. Consider a professional profile picture, a background image, a clear and professional headline, and an engaging summary of your expertise, professional background, skills, and goals. Don’t forget to add all your relevant work experience, education, and certifications.
- Expand your network: Start with people you already know such as colleagues, family, friends, and existing business relations. Also, dare to connect with interesting people you don’t know yet, but then add a personal message to your invitation introducing yourself.
- Regularly share valuable content. Think about articles or updates relevant to your field, for example, messages from the organization you work for. If you’re sharing a post directly from your employer, don’t forget to add a little text, for example, why it’s relevant or what you contributed to it. This makes it more interesting for your followers.
- Be active: Try to log in regularly, for example, once a week. Don’t just post content yourself, but also respond to others’ content and be active within your network. It might help to set a goal for yourself, like posting one (own) update weekly.
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Tips to increase LinkedIn usage within your organization
Would you like to achieve more visibility on LinkedIn as a manager, team leader, or owner, but don’t know how to motivate your team? Here are some tips for that as well:
- Explain why LinkedIn is relevant for your organization. Lead by example, so make sure you are also active on LinkedIn! And respond to the posts of employees, so they see it’s really seen and appreciated.
- Provide tips and possibly training when team members find LinkedIn challenging. Show them how to build a good profile, how to easily share something, and how to respond to others’ posts or participate in groups.
- Make sharing easy. Share links, for example, that your team can share and create new content together that team members can easily repost.
- A joint content calendar can ensure that your team shares content more frequently. An additional benefit is that it becomes a joint responsibility, creating more cohesion among team members.
- Set clear goals. What do you want to achieve as a team? Divide this into goals for the company page and personal goals, making it clear that everyone has a role contributing to collective success.
- Monitor progress, LinkedIn provides you with plenty of interesting insights about the reach of content, the number of likes, the number of followers of the company page, etc.
- Recognize and celebrate achieved goals. Have you set a number of followers or impressions for this year as a goal beforehand? Then also pay attention to it as a team when the goal is achieved.
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