As social media continues to become more entrenched in our everyday lives, new and established businesses are finding new ways of using it to market their goods and services. But in their quest not to be left behind, have business people failed to consider whether it is really necessary to market themselves on every platform? More specifically, does a business really need a LinkedIn company profile or is a personal profile enough?
Read on to learn the answer that question.
Why social media for business in the first place?
People go to social media to connect with other people and to get personal. A company profile represents a brand and is therefore impersonal. Each time customers need assistance, they know they will be talking to a different employee, or worse, a machine.
What results do you want?
A personal profile allows you to build trust through one on one interaction. Since company Pages on LinkedIn do not allow for this kind of interaction, you and your employees need to use your personal profiles to complement it and to increase traffic.
How much do you intend to communicate with your customers?
There are several things that a personal profile allows you to do. For instance, you can connect directly with people and join LinkedIn groups. You cannot do the same with a company page and this denies you an important opportunity for networking and targeted marketing. Further, company pages can be costly; if you don’t have the budget to run ads, you will not get traffic.
With that said, should you keep your company profile?
By all means yes. Company pages with well-executed SEO will make your services and your brand easier to find. You can spend on sponsored ads every now and then as they do work for targeted campaigns, but that should not be your main strategy. Every employee in your company is a marketing resource and you should take advantage of that. By linking employee profiles to your company pages, you drive traffic from personal profiles to your company pages without spending a dime!
