LinkedIn is a professional social network, that’s for sure. And for a while, we’ve heard that it was the perfect B2B (Business to Business) platform – and I was the first to say so. But LinkedIn is not only for B2B! With this article, I’d like to give you a new perspective because I realized that this B2B term sometimes creates false ideas when it comes to using LinkedIn.
The Theory
If you are in the B2B industry, there’s a good chance your prospect uses LinkedIn.
Whether you’re a consultant, coach or business service provider, your audience is on this network. However, if you’re in the B2C industry (sale of goods/consumer goods), Facebook, Instragram, Twitter, Pinterest seem to be more appropriate social networks for your items. That’s the theory.
Demographic profile of a LinkedIn user
In practice
Theory is, as is often the case, something to consider but it’s a whole new thing when you’re in the field. Through my training with entrepreneurs and companies, I realized that this “B2B” term generates a false idea about using LinkedIn, and especially about the target audience. A large portion of my participants thought companies were the ones using LinkedIn and that we could, for instance, approach businesses. But that’s not true!
Stop wanting to address companies!
LinkedIn is a network for professional users above all. Either employed or managerial professionals. But your target audience is not a business, it is indeed a human being, like you and me. So stop wanting to address companies.
Your employees are your ambassadors
I give the same speech when I train marketing teams, sales or management for larger enterprises.Yes, we can create a company page on LinkedIn. But first of all, the features on this page are very limited, and second, it’s a lot more difficult to make people subscribe to your company page than to have them connect with you via your personal profile. It’s just human – we are more interested in humans than in companies.
Knowing this, you will easily understand why I’m encouraging companies to see their employees as ambassadors instead of keeping them from being active on social media, and use this visibility leverage – this will benefit both employee and employer.
Conclusion:
Yes, we can say there’s a good chance your target audience is on LinkedIn if you’re in the B2B industry. But your “reader”, the person who reads your posts, receives your messages, etc. is not an entity or a company – it’s a human being just like you and me!
