Last week we highlighted the importance of a website that lets your small business be easily found online.

This week we continue our Get Social series with best practices for using LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the most essential social business channels, with 107 million users in the United States (LinkedIn: February 2016) and offers free communities, groups, job searches, business insights, and other professional tools for businesses of all sizes.

Of course, you can pay to advertise your business on LinkedIn, but we're going to focus on a few things you can do for free that can have a big impact.

Build your profile. Building a LinkedIn profile demonstrates your professional credibility. Like SEO for your website, you can also use keywords that will help your profile be found in searches.

• Complete your profile. The more complete your profile is, the more often you'll show up in search results.
  • Add a profile photo that is good quality and in a professional setting.
  • Provide a quick summary of your experience, describing your strengths and your business well.
  • Add current and previous work experience.
• Send invitations to connect. Search for business associates, employees, customers and even college alumni.
• Ask for recommendations. Recommendations from present and former colleagues, as well as customers, let those viewing your profile see that you're good at what you do.

Create a company profile. Creating a company profile expands the reach of your brand and message. Company profiles don't allow for the same personal level of interaction that your own profile will allow, yet both play important roles. A company profile is an important part of your LinkedIn social networking and offers certain benefits:

• Brand your company. Add your logo, company description and have your employees connect to the company page.
• Be found easily through search. Like your personal profile, company pages are very SEO-friendly and can extend your ability to be found organically through Google searches.
• Run sponsored updates. Promote your content using sponsored ads. These do cost additional dollars, but can be a low-cost way to reach people who haven't followed your page just yet.

Start engaging with LinkedIn users. LinkedIn offers many ways for you to create thought leadership, engage with your customers, and continuously learn and share your wisdom. Here are some ways a small business can exercise the same marketing muscle as larger organizations:

• Update: This can be a direct message from you (example: looking to hire for X), sharing a company blog or update, or a news article you think is pertinent to your industry and your connections would enjoy. This helps you stay top of mind with your connections.
• Publish a post: This is for writing an article or reposting your own blog as an article. A post is a professional thought leadership piece that you might want to promote in other social circles, or have your connections "like" or comment on to spur engagement and viral reach.
• Join or start a group: There are relevant groups or associations in your industry for business activities like sales or marketing, or for networking. If you have a unique or niche business and don't see the right group for you-start a new one. Once in a group, add answers to threads or start new ones to be discovered by group members.

For more ideas on how to use LinkedIn to promote your small business, check out their small business resource page.

Now you're set up on LinkedIn to be found. You can go about building relevant industry relationships and successfully extending your marketing and sales arm for discoverability and engagement.

We want to engage with you too! Click here to follow Ascentium Capital on LinkedIn.

Our Get Social series continues, and in our next post we'll be covering Twitter best practices. Don't want to miss a post? Click here to subscribe for email updates.

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Ascentium Capital offers a wide variety of business financing programs, including leasing and short-term loan options for anything from new computers or software to equipment that can help you with your move to social.

Contact us today to learn more about how we help small businesses like yours.