Nate Riggs: Social Business Strategies; communication, social web strategies, & passion in Columbus, Ohio.

In my opinion, LinkedIn is still one of the most powerful social networking tools for business.

I know Lewis will agree with me here.  Yesterday, while finishing up a day of corporate training with Incept, I received two invitations to connect.  Both were fully targeted to how I’ve optimized my profile, connecting with me to ask questions about how to develop a social media strategy.  One was from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the other from the San Francisco Bay area.  Amazing.

To be honest, the power of LinkedIn profiles still blows me away.  Without my LinkedIn profile, and, specifically, it’s ability to make the Social Graph visible and searchable, how on earth would these two individuals had ever known I existed, let alone that I might be a resource for them?  Simple answer.  They wouldn’t have.

Inbound Traffic Through SMO
Social media optimization is the rave this year.  Brian Solis has even made the statement that SMO is the new SEO.  I wholeheartedly agree with him on this.

Every social network out there has a search function, and LinkedIn is one of the more robust in terms of search functionality.  With that in mind, it makes sense that each LinkedIn profile can then be optimized to be found by people running queries inside, and sometimes outside the network.  What’s more is that you not only have the ability to optimize your individual LinkedIn profile, but also your company LinkedIn profile.

I’ve written about how to use company LinkedIn profiles for business development.  But what about getting your company (and the people inside) found?

So that you can get the maximum benefit for lead generation and inbound traffic, here are a few how to tips you can use to optimize your company LinkedIn profile, establish good rankings against your competition, get found by potential sales-ready buyers searching for your products or services, and convert those visitors into real business opportunities.

Double Check Your Company Name & URL
To make sure that people don’t create duplicate profiles for the same company, LinkedIn places internal controls on the company name and company URL present in your page.  The reason for this is the aggregation of your personnel’s profile onto the page.

Once you select a company name and URL, each person in your company MUST use the exact same wording, company name and spelling in their personal profiles in order to show up under the page.  Having consistency allows LinkedIn’s algorithm to crawl the network and pull in each individual profile under your company profile.

If there is an inconsistency, or if you notice that a few different companies share your same company name, your profile admin will have the ability to submit a ticket to LinkedIn to have it worked out.  When you compose that message, be extremely clear and concise, and be prepared to wait about a week for a reply.  They will get back to you and work to fix the problem.

Develop Your Keyword List
If your company is already doing organic SEO or running a PPC campaign, you should have a developed keyword list.  If not, get a white board, a few members of your company, and start brainstorming the terms and phrases you believe your customers will use to search for a company that provides your type of products or services.  It’s important to keep in mind that some of your customers might not be familiar with your industry jargon, so focus on plain speak first.

Once you’ve narrowed your list to between 5-10 words or phrases, run some searches and look for the number of results the query returns.  You can even save these searches for later reference.  Typically, the queries with the highest number of results will indicate the more popular terms.  For your page, you will want to pick 2-3 main key words or phrases to focus on.  Here are a few more quick tips:

• Don’t forget to include your company name on the list.
• Search companies, as well as people, to see how many results get returned in the query.
• Search from different people’s profiles.  This is important because everyone has a different social graph.  A user’s social graph is a factor in LinkedIn search results.
• Don’t forget your company’s location.  You can narrow results by targeting a specific geographic area.
• Don’t for get to look at general “head-tail” terms (typically one word), as well as “mid-tail” and “long-tail” terms (between 2 -5 word phrases).

As an example, Incept’s main targeted phrase is “blood donor recruitment,” as this is the core service my client provides.

Write Compelling & Optimized Page Copy
Now that you have your keyword list and it’s been tested and searched, start writing your page copy.  Remember that copy writing is an art that helps a visitor receive a message about your company.  It will be important for search optimization to include each keyword with a density of 3-5 times in the copy, but also remember that you are writing for a human.  Make sure to clearly explain the important information about your offering(s), how you do business, your company’s unique selling proposition, and clear calls to action.  Always make sure to tell a story.

And a fine point that’s one of my personal pet peeves:  Please make sure to utilize short paragraphs for maximum readability.  LinkedIn does not give you the ability to include images in the actual page copy to break up the text so make sure to focus on 1-2 sentences, and then a break.  Doing so will make your company profile much easier to read.

Provide Multiple Ways for Visitors to Convert
This is another very important aspect of your LinkedIn company profile.  You’ve done your work to get the readers to your profile and explain the offer and benefits of working with you.  You’ve included a solid call to action, asking your visitor to take the next step.  As the final step in conversion, make sure to give your visitors the information they need to connect with you in multiple ways.  For instance:

• Name specific people in your company as contacts in your last paragraph.
• Let visitors know that they can connect with them directly on LinkedIn.
• List your contact’s email address right on the company profile.
• List each contact’s direct dial phone number.
• If you plan on using other forms of social media (like Twitter, Facebook, a company blog, etc.), list those URL’s as well.  You might want to call them out in brackets or parentheses.

And For Good Measure

• Make sure to check your page and rankings often, and adjust as needed.
• As you add new associates to your team, make sure that they have the correct company titles and information on their personal profiles.
• Test out various calls to action over time to see if you can isolate a variable and learn what specific CTA converts at a higher rate.
• As you meet new prospects, make sure to mention your company LinkedIn profile as an available resource for them.

That’s a lot of info and a long post.  Whew!

[Oh, and by the way, go ahead and search Companies on LinkedIn for "Blood Donor Recruitment".  The results may vary, depending on your personal social graph.  What do you see?]

What’s your take?  Are you using your company’s LinkedIn profile to its full potential?