Episode #077 Why you should care about Bookkeeper Linkedin Company Pages – hosted by Angie Martin

• Blog post partner to this podcast: Bookkeeper LinkedIn company pages
• See our LinkedIn Profile https://au.linkedin.com/company/thesavvybookkeeper
• Podcast 74 why Social Media for Bookkeepers is needed
• Podcast 75 about Bookkeeper FaceBook Pages
  
• Podcast 76 about Optimising Facebook Bookkeeping Pages
  
• LinkedIn
• Book a free initial consultation with me (Angie)

Why you should care about Bookkeeper Linkedin Company Pages – hosted by Angie Martin

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

linkedin, business, creating, linkedin company page, clients, seo, bookkeepers, platform, fantastic, bookkeeping, industry, people, showcase, realise, company, facebook, page, post, specifically, linkedin page

00:02

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of The bookkeepers voice social media edition. Today, I'm going to be going through things with you. My name is Angie, and I'm part of the savvy team. Today we're going to talk about LinkedIn and why you should care about LinkedIn and LinkedIn company pages for your bookkeeping business. Now LinkedIn pages was created back in 2018, where LinkedIn decided that they wanted to help businesses promote themselves and connect directly with their clients easier throughout their network.

00:48

Since LinkedIn is a platform that focuses on supporting you and supporting your businesses and working within a more professional environment. They thought it would be a really great way to be able to showcase your business by having a listing on the account. And, sadly, this is something that hasn't been picked up as well as it should be by the bookkeeping industry. And it's kind of been a bit of a missing link for a lot of bookkeepers. So I wanted to take some time to really chat through today, what exactly LinkedIn company pages are, and how they can help benefit your business. So

LinkedIn has 30 million companies using it

01:30

let's kind of get right into just some information about LinkedIn to really help you understand the platform a bit more. Today, over 30 million companies are live on LinkedIn in networking, between, you know, gaining more just digital presence, recruiting, and connecting and selling their services to their clients, with the 30 million businesses. 60, not 690 million users are then able to access their business pages,

02:09

which is amazing. LinkedIn has 690 million users. That is a massive networking portal that you can use for whatever industry that you were in. It's fantastic. And although it

02:24

doesn't look as shiny and pretty as other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn is a fantastic social media professional networking platform that will help you and increase your overall consumer trust, which now I've actually found a stat so at 62% worth of consumers have more trust in companies who are present on social media platforms such as LinkedIn. So by having a LinkedIn business page, you Able to instantly create that social proof in a bit more trust building than normal advertising can ever give you. People believe in companies that have LinkedIn and they believe that you're a serious bookkeeper when you have a LinkedIn profile in LinkedIn presence as well.

03:21

So this is a really important thing for bookkeepers to have in mind, especially if you work with a lot of corporations not for profit, or larger based companies. This is a really important platform to be on to be representing yourself as a bookkeeping expert, and your business as well. So just to give you a bit of a background on what a LinkedIn company page is, it basically gives you an opportunity to create a listing just like you would on Facebook that we've discussed discussed last week. Where you promote your services, you can create crew crew, oh, my goodness, get new team members. I don't want to say that word today apparently my voice doesn't want to recruit more team members to your team and share important interesting in value added updates to potential and existing clients.

What is the difference between a Facebook business page and LinkedIn business page

04:21

Now, what the main difference is from a Facebook business page to a LinkedIn business page is that this is going out to professional networking People who are specifically on this platform for networking and for business reasons. So instead of trying to get your clients to pay attention to you when they're on social media more for relaxing time or personal time, when you're on LinkedIn, they already have a mindset that is a professional base, and they're thinking about their businesses and thinking about furthering their own business, which gives you a lot of great opportunity to reach them when they're thinking about business and thinking about possibly the bookkeeping and how that needs to get organised.

05:12

It also is a great way of networking, especially right now for keeping up to date with everything that's been changing. Just recently, we had the change in the jobkeeper amounts that are going out. So that's a great way of creating value added information that you can directly reach your clients and your client targeted industries. So it's a very fantastic tool at that. Everyone always asked me what is the difference between a LinkedIn business page and a

05:45

personal profile. This is a bit confusing because whereas on Facebook, your personal profile is your personal profile. It's what you do with your own personal time but in LinkedIn, you use your personal profile as basically a online resume that showcases your professional ability, whereas your business page showcases what your business actually does. And you're able to do more than just introduce yourself and show your skills, you're able to actually network through the whole LinkedIn database with your own business, showcasing your services, using their marketing tools, and connecting directly with small to medium to large businesses, and really going after the correct companies that you're wanting to target.

LinkedIn Personal Page is like your resume or CV

06:43

So it's a completely separate thing. When you think of your personal profile. Think of it more as your resume that you use to introduce yourself, where your business page is all about your business in a way For people to come to you to use your bookkeeping services, so there is a very big difference between the two. And it's worth having optimise profiles and optimised pages for both your business and yourself to make the most of your LinkedIn business presence. So one of the thing that I really really want to go through in this episode today is going through and discussing the benefits of having a LinkedIn company page.

07:34

Next episode, I'll go more into exactly how you can optimise and use LinkedIn to the most capability of really getting yourself noticed on LinkedIn. But first, I just want to educate you on the benefits of using a LinkedIn page because again, it's quite different from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and I find a lot of our clients specifically, just haven't realised the possibility. So I just want to go through and kind of help you learn the different ways on how a company page on LinkedIn can be a really unique marketing tool for you to use. So, as usual with any social media platform, LinkedIn is a fantastic way of building brand recognition, credibility, credit, credibility, and perception. So it is a really fantastic way to be able to link your personal professional LinkedIn profile to your company. And unlike your personal account, on LinkedIn, your company account is public by default. This means that any content that is shared in static on this page goes directly into search engines and directly affects your SEO ranking.

LinkedIn SEO benefits in a Google search

08:58

Now I'll go into the SEO amazing benefits later. But this is a big thing to always think about when you're creating social media profiles and whether or not you want to the content you directly publish to LinkedIn goes right back into Google and other search engines. So it is a fantastic way of making sure that you are creating a digital presence. And when someone Google's your bookkeeping services or your bookkeeping business itself, you're able to have a representation online, which now that we are going more and more virtually, based by as an industry, this is going to be more and more important for you to be able to be found with a simple Google search. So it's very important. And LinkedIn gives you a bit more options on different ways that you can actually fill out your account to give you more information than any other social media platform can give, about your business to allow you to have a bit more of a open book in regards to your business. But I will go into that next episode where I talked about your optimization.

10:13

Going more back into the business recognition section of what LinkedIn can do, it helps you build a credibility that is different than every other social media platform. So because Google considers LinkedIn, and people consider LinkedIn as a business platform by promoting your business and by having your business having a presence on LinkedIn, you are stating that you are a serious bookkeeper who has these objectives, who works with clients and who is serious about supporting Australian businesses. It gives you a higher credibility than just having a Facebook account. So depending on the client site, You're working with if you are working with more tier one or higher companies more than just mom and pop shops or sole traders, you really want to make sure that you are adding to your credibility and showing what your business is all about.

LinkedIn gives your Bookkeeping Business a professional appearance

11:17

It also is really important for you to realise that bookkeepers are getting more and more judged on their online presence. So this is something to consistently keep in mind. Now that social media is becoming more of a business platform as well. By having this LinkedIn profile, it will positively give feedback to the judging that your clients are doing to make sure that again, they just want to check in to make sure that you're a business and that they can trust you. And by having a LinkedIn profile. It creates that trust because again, they can show that you're an established business who takes themselves seriously and also really helps to showcase your specific skills services, promote news, which is really important right now because of COVID. And all the constant changes happening, and really increasing your overall recognition online.

12:14

Because the one thing that's really great with LinkedIn is that you can connect with other social media platforms as well. So within LinkedIn, you can connect with your Facebook page, you can connect your Google business listing with Facebook and LinkedIn. And you can also connect your LinkedIn page with through call to actions to your website, which is a really fantastic way of creating that sales process that I have spoken about a couple episodes back about having a sales and buying story, leading them on a journey. So they go on your LinkedIn page, they learn about you and realise that you are a professional person because they can go from your business. page to your personal profile showing all of your experience in the industry. And then they can go to your website and actually contact book in with you or even just purchase a service right off the bat. It creates a really lovely buying journey for your clients and really helps cement that by the time they get to your website. They're

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already pretty much sold on you and your business. So that's a really great way button LinkedIn is able to help support you and your lead generation. Another thing LinkedIn is really good at is public relations opportunity. So as I said before, the LinkedIn company pages creates an option for you to showcase your business, give value added updates directly to the sector that you are looking at. It has a fantastic algorithm that it uses. That is different from Facebook because it can further help target exactly who you're wanting to reach, which makes a very important strategy for your marketing. And also makes it easier to make sure that the time you're spending on social media and on your marketing is getting to the right people with the least amount of effort.

14:22

So it gives a lot of opportunity for you to get free! Free! showcasing on promoting your business promoting any events you're involved with, and showing off any case studies you want to do, or any milestones that you want to celebrate, to help show again, to potential clients, how serious and how longevity wise, you are with your business. It's a great opportunity and it's also a really great way it's something that again, Facebook doesn't do. You are able to add all of your employees to your profile to your business profile, which then makes it even more trustworthy because people can actually see who works for you. It goes a long way. And it really helps create that consumer trust right off the bat without you having to actually verbally say anything.

LinkedIn helps you to engage with your ideal client

15:22

One thing I also mentioned about briefly is talking about reaching your target clients. So as I mentioned, with 30 million businesses and 690 million users, LinkedIn has a massive community that reaches globally. So you want to make sure that you are spending the right time and sending your content to the correct people and LinkedIn does this fantastically. You are actually able to create promotions or credit posts that go directly to the language that you want it to be in the geography location, you want to be targeting a job function you want to be targeting. So if you only want to work with businesses that are small enough that you'd be working with the owner, you would be targeting the owners.

16:18

If you want to work with a not for profit or large corporation who you would be dealing with a accounting department, you would be segregating that as well in your posts. You can also decide if you want to work with people who have gone to different levels of universities or if you want to network with people who are specifically from a certain University. You can also segregate and segment into what industry you want to work with. So if you only work with construction companies, and you can specifically target those in LinkedIn, or let's say you only work with fortune 500 companies within the marketing industry, you can also segment and make sure that you're only going to be focusing your efforts to contact them as well.

17:08

You're also able to

17:11

filter out by company size and level of seniority for contacts that you want to specifically speak to. So it gives you just a completely different way of doing an algorithm and making sure that you can reach the people that you want, than facebook, facebook, you can't know the company size, you can't know specifically the industry or the job function that the person is in. It creates a whole other way of networking and communicating on behalf of your business and on behalf of yourself as a business owner, so it gives you just so many more opportunities of creating strong connections without ever meeting people face to face, and worthwhile connections that can lead into possible Lead Generation for your business, which is pretty exciting.

18:04

It's one of those things I could go into a whole episode about the different ways you can filter and segment your marketing efforts is a fantastic way of changing it up. I know a lot of us are more used to the way that the algorithms work in Facebook. LinkedIn algorithm works completely different specifically because it does target professionals and it targets clients in a way that Facebook just can't do it because that's not why it's created. LinkedIn is created specifically for b2b which is business to business in b2c business to consumer connections.

18:46

Now, let's go back to the SEO capabilities I was talking about briefly before our left SEO which you've probably realised the past few episodes that I've been doing and SEO is a Massive, massive reason for you to care about LinkedIn. As I mentioned before, LinkedIn is just like every other social media platform that the posts that you post directly go right into search engines in Google, let's say, the difference between your Google page and other social media platforms is being able to describe your business more thoroughly than other platforms. So as I mentioned, you can actually list who works for you so that you can actually link to other people's accounts in LinkedIn. You can explain when your company was first created, your company size, your static content that was on Facebook, again can go to LinkedIn and they can be linked to your website.

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There is a whole a whole heap of essential SEO capabilities that you can do with LinkedIn, which is a fantastic way of really building a holistic approach to your SEO. So it's definitely something that when you get your LinkedIn account, you want to also make sure you have a website that has solid copywriting done and making sure that you have your business plan created. So you have that consistent message and branding message that you are communicating because it makes a massive difference. And by being able to have that static content on LinkedIn is fantastic. And then that doesn't even talk about your actual posting content that goes out as well. So it's a very helpful and very fantastic tool for you to use your SEO especially if you're doing it yourself.

LinkedIn Lead Generation

20:59

Now, Lead Generation. This is why I love LinkedIn. There's so many possibilities to create lead generation through this platform. As I mentioned before, this is a business to business and business to consumer networking platform. That is the point of LinkedIn. So when people are on LinkedIn, they are thinking about business. So this as soon as you create a company page, you are starting some lead generation opportunities for you right off the bat without posting anything. This is a massive difference compared to having just a Facebook page or an Instagram page or anything like this. This platform is specifically for businesses. So it's really fantastic to make sure that you are naturally increasing your lead generation

21:53

opportunities by making sure you have that static content created and then are posting out Just as you would to any other social media platform, and making sure that you have that positive impact on your SEO, on going and making sure that people can find you online. One thing with LinkedIn that you can do that's very similar to Facebook is that you can also post and boost posts on Facebook, just like you do on Facebook. So just like you would do a post, it's been successful on Facebook and Facebook asks, If you want to boost your post, you can do the same application on LinkedIn, but through its own algorithm, which has shown it actually creates a three times higher conversion ratings and actually creating lead regeneration.

LinkedIn is specifically for business interactions

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This is because again, LinkedIn is for business. So people who are seeing your business content, even if it's boosted, they're seeing it in their thinking about business whereas on Facebook if someone sees your business Content boosted, they might not be in that business frame of mind. So they might not action it until the sixth or seventh time they see it. Where on LinkedIn, if you see a business post that is relevant to what you're needing, you're more likely to boost it to actually click on it and do the call to action and start the sales buying journey right away, because that's what you're already thinking about it is a fantastic way of reaching your clients at the time that they are thinking about their business. Another thing that again, social platforms are amazing with is using analytics. So as I mentioned, LinkedIn analytics in LinkedIn.

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The whole algorithm is completely different from Facebook. So it gives you a completely different bunch of analytics that you can review and track to make sure that you are accurately reaching and connecting with your potential client base better, so it has its own analytics, and it has its own client behaviour on this platform, it really can help streamline in, figure out what exactly you are doing right in your marketing and what you need to adjust any marketing strategy, which just is so essential to growing a business or once again, just containing a business to make sure that it stays relevant within the industry. So creating these lead generation opportunities and creating a LinkedIn company page isn't just for startups or for businesses who are wanting to grow. This is also for businesses who are wanting to stay relevant and wanting to maintain their client base now. All really helps it all comes together. I promise. So this Episode is going to be a bit shorter because I wanted to make sure I could break it into two episodes were one was more of just education based on LinkedIn.

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And then second one I will do next week will be more into optimization in really making the most as your LinkedIn page. So as summary, get a Google business, get a LinkedIn business page guys, it's super easy to set up and it will really help you create that additional social proof that everyone is looking for from the bookkeeper. Now that social media is becoming king of helping us make service based decisions for our businesses. So I hope you've enjoyed this and I hope you've learned a couple new things about LinkedIn and LinkedIn. It's great application of company pages. As usual, I have created a blog free to read through with active links where you can go through and learn more about LinkedIn algorithms LinkedIn capabilities and LinkedIn, just in general of creating proper profiles and creating your company business page as well.

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So please feel free to go through that blog and make sure that you utilise all the links so that you can get as informed as possible with this podcast, and if you have any questions. As always, my free consultation link will be available in our quick links on our actual website. So please feel free to book in a time to chat with me and let's get you guys found on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for joining me today. And as always, stay safe, sane and savvy.