LinkedIn isn’t only good for building resumes and applying for jobs. It can also grow businesses, further reach, drive organic traffic and generate leads. With more than 562 million users, the world’s largest professional network has the ability to take your business to the next level.

The platform continues to build on to its functionality as one of the most powerful networking tools available. Whether it’s including the ability to record and send voice messages or adding translations for several different languages, LinkedIn only continues to improve and grow businesses.

If you’re ready to create a marketing strategy using LinkedIn, here are three tips to get you started.

1. Determine your target audience and goals.

If you start by knowing little about your target audience or the goals you wish to achieve through your LinkedIn marketing strategy, you’ve already thrown away time and money. Without a plan, you lose in every aspect. You need to think ahead if your strategies are going to succeed and bring about growth.

Become laser-focused by mapping out a buyer persona for your intended audience. This is a fleshed-out example of your ideal customer and all the details about them that’ll help you market to them: age, location, interests, job title, buying behaviors and more.

Collect information on your existing customers to get an idea of who you should already be targeting. Send out surveys and questionnaires about what you’d like to know, and explain why. As an incentive, throw in a coupon code or a freebie so there’s a higher chance of reciprocation.

Once you’ve created a couple personas, make a list of the goals you want to achieve by marketing through LinkedIn. Then evaluate those goals and decide how LinkedIn’s platform will help you achieve them.

For example, if your goal is to create brand awareness because your business is small or fairly new, you can use LinkedIn to get your business in front of people. You’d create a strategy for finding your target audience and showing your products and services to them to create interest.

Whatever the goal is, always keep it in mind as you move forward so you know what steps are necessary to go from point A to point B.

2. Optimize your company page.

Everyone knows to optimize their individual LinkedIn pages when scouring jobs and trying to network. But how many businesses take the time to fully optimize their company page?

Completing your business’s company profile is one of the best ways to boost awareness. Have you ever been to a company’s page or website and exited out right away because there wasn’t enough information? That’s what could happen to you if you don’t optimize with intent.

You want to fill out every space possible for completion. The more complete your business page is, the better. It builds authenticity and trust for a consumer when information about a company is readily available.

Upload the appropriate images for the header and logo. Add an “about us” section talking about the inception of your company and how it’s gotten where it is today. This humanizes your brand and appeals to viewers.

3. Publish value-rich content.

Publishing a post on LinkedIn is a great way to get your best content in front of the right people. Utilize LinkedIn’s publishing feature to answer your audience’s questions, position yourself as an expert in your field and gain insight from professionals.

You always want to create content tailored to your buyer persona. Ask yourself what pain points your customer base is experiencing and how you can solve those problems. Would your content encourage consumers to subscribe to your email list or buy from you? Is your content in formats your target audience responds to?

If you’re going to put out content that resonates with your audience, research what they want and need first. Take a look at your content’s analytics to see what is being shared and interacted with most and what isn’t doing as well, and apply that knowledge to the next round of your strategy. You can repurpose old content to give it new life or brainstorm new topics that rid your customers of their challenges.

Add hashtags at the end of your posts to increase its visibility and further its reach to the right audience.

What’s next

Using LinkedIn as a tool to drive traffic and increase conversions is sure to work with the right strategy behind it. A good place to start is to know who you’re marketing to, how to optimize your profile and how to publish the right kind of content. There are several ways to market through LinkedIn; the better you know your business, the faster you’ll be able to see profits.

Article written by: Chris Christoff