CONSTRUCTION MANAGERS: LINKEDIN BEST PRACTICES

LinkedIn is the premier social network for professionals and businesses. Many use the site to look for job opportunities, check out an individual’s profile, and promote their business. As a construction manager you need to do all three. For businesses and individuals a LinkedIn profile has become a necessary part of doing business.

How can you get the most out of LinkedIn?

BUILD A PRESENCE
Obviously it won’t do any good unless you’re there. The first step is creating an account and filling in your profile. Then you can set up a company page where you can mirror some of your website information, provide links back to your website, and promote content.

Provide interesting visuals, especially video, and use the company logo, colors, and other devices you use in other marketing to identify your company. And as you add content, remember to use your keywords and phrases within the LinkedIn pages to help people find you both through the major search engines and the LinkedIn site search.

All content should be on-brand and professional yet in the company’s voice. You are striving, as always, to differentiate yourself from your competitors and show prospects the value you add. Ask followers for recommendations, activate tags, and outline your expertise on your LinkedIn profile.

ENTICE FOLLOWERS
There are some statistics that show LinkedIn users are:

8 times more engaged with the brand
3 times more likely to buy a product
2 times more likely to recommend a brand they are connected with
You need followers!

To start out, leverage your existing communities and networks. Place links to your LinkedIn company page in emails and other social media and invited others to follow your company. Ask your employees, friends, and colleagues to promote your company page to their connections. And don’t forget to add a LinkedIn button on your website to let people follow your LinkedIn page and to share your content to their own network on LinkedIn.

CONVERSATION, NOT MONOLOGUE
Social media is all about engagement, interaction, and discussion. Unlike most of your website where you list products and services and provide forms to download content, you need to be prepared to interact with your followers.

Start the conversation yourself by:

Posting rich content once or twice a day: company news, industry insights, influencer opinions
Invite comments
Include images that provoke further conversation
This only works if your content is relevant to your customers and followers so stay on-brand and on-message.

You can even segment and target your posts with LinkedIn’s targeted status updates. Just as you wouldn’t send the same email to your entire list every time you can engage smaller groups or an individual through targeted content.

Some experts think you should only post during office hours, but today so many people check their social networks in the evening, even for work purposes, that you can post later into the evening and on weekends as well.

ANALYZE AND REPEAT
Find a tool, such as HootSuite, to help you measure engagement. Watch your ratio of clicks, likes, comments, and shares to your impression total. Then go back and tweak your content and profile to improve it.

If you listen to your followers you can easily learn their needs.

KEEP IT FRESH
Change your profile and company page periodically to keep them up to date and to give people a reason to keep up with your company. You can analyze who your connections are connected to and identify competitors. You can also identify potential clients from secondary and tertiary contacts. This is how networking helps you expand your reach.

LinkedIn, more than any other social network, is geared toward creating professional connections, promoting business, and advertising jobs. This is where the savvy consumer goes to find out about the service professionals they want to hire or to work for.  If you aren’t here, you may not make the short list.


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