B2B vs B2C – LinkedIn

LinkedIn is growing at about 2 new users every minute.  At the time of this writing there are 27 million users of which about 90 million of them are in the United States.  In most cases the analogy most people use to describe LinkedIn is that it is your professional Rolodex and/or your on-line resume. As you are working in LinkedIn, you have the ability to use the resume portion of the platform to expand beyond the traditional one or two pages that are considered acceptable on a traditional paper resume. But in the marketing space how does B2B vs B2C – LinkedIn compare?

B2B – Because of the fact that LinkedIn is the number one professional social media platform it is natural to assume that this is more highly suited to the B2B world. For a business, I feel that it is imperative that you present you and your company as professionally and completely as possible on this platform. There are a couple of features that are available that I have discussed in other articles including my Top 5 Business Page Tips Series of articles.  To create a business page you need an email address that is name@company – not gmail, yahoo or any other generic email tool. On the business page enlist the items that are available –  the images, the products and services, careers, and the company status updates. From a lead generation perspective, the leads may not come to you, but the platform enables you to warm-up cold leads.  For any business with a number of employees, each person should have a 100% complete profile using the keywords for their personal skills and within the employment description, the company keywords.

B2C – the advantages for a consumer driven business are also beneficial to a B2B business. Personal profiles should be complete for your key employees. Use the options to place your YouTube videos, links to specific landing pages on your website for each of your products, and if you have the staff to accommodate it, add up to three contacts per product or service.

The clear winner here would be a B2B business, but our business needs to be where our potential customers might find us. Is that LinkedIn?

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