LinkedIn (Photo credit: Christopher S. Penn)

If you thought that LinkedIn was not worth your time, the social networking site has proven you wrong, The community is active, the advertising platform is profitable, the content is good, and the site overall is a proven business to business goldmine for those that have taken the time to stay involved. At a recent Social Media World Marketing World presentation, Jason Miller gave us the high points of using LinkedIn for B2B marketing.

The first thing to do is to create a branded page for your business. These pages are easily found in the search indexes, and are a portal to your company for the public. Build the page like you would the about section of your website with important keywords for search included. Make sure to link to your social pages on other platforms and to your website.

Publish interesting content to your profile on a regular basis and follow up on interaction that occurs with the content. Groups are also great ways to interact with customers on the social site. The group needs to be monitored and utilized, while not being a straight sales pitch for your company.

Reach out to experts in your field so that they can broadcast the content that you originally post on the site. This will increase your exposure greatly. Employees within your company are great, but others that have used your services and products are also helpful. You cannot control the whole message that is put out by your advocates, but they should be happy with your company and therefore have a positive message for their followers.

You can also use paid promotion on the social network. Make sure to target the audience for your advertisements and provide some content for free that is of value. And test different ad content until your return on capital is acceptable.

LinkedIn Marketing: 5 Steps to Growing Your Business on LinkedIn