How to use LinkedIn to find clients for your technology

Take note and discover how LinkedIn is for technology companies. Learn about the most important phases of its strategy and some success stories.

1. LinkedIn for technology companies

Although there were times when it aroused some doubts, due to the number of professional networks that have emerged in recent years, today there are no more doubts: LinkedIn is the professional network par excellence.

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And why? Because it has become a huge portal for business orientation. Companies of different sizes bring together their networks of employees and contacts interested in their products or services, just as employees create their individual profiles to present their education and work experience.

Both companies and employees showcase their professional interests. While social networks such as Facebook or Instagram allow people to share their personal experiences, on LinkedIn users create and share interesting content for their careers. And of course, for the growth of companies.

These contents that are shared bring value to other users. And this is how connections between users begin to be generate. And if these connections are between companies, the more interesting it is to maintain contact. Companies tend to contact other companies that share the same interests, or others that share an interest in the same sector without being in direct competition.

Or even to look for companies that can provide them with services or solutions. As LinkedIn is a professional social network, more possibilities are available to the top managers of companies to find solutions to their business problems. And yes, a technology company like yours has the possibility of finding interesting opportunities on LinkedIn. We will explain how to incorporate it in the online marketing actions of your technology company.

1.1. What are the advantages of LinkedIn?

You may be asking yourself, what can your LinkedIn presence do for you? Perhaps you already have a presence on other social networks, and you use them to share content in a different way, which allows you to build natural trust with your customers. However, developing your LinkedIn profile can be very beneficial.

It is a portal that allows you to find business opportunities.

It is a portal that allows you to find business opportunities.

According to a study by HubSpot, 2.78% of the visits that arrive at a company’s website after visiting its LinkedIn page end up becoming leads. The rest of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, do not even reach 1%. The percentage of B2B companies that achieve business with LinkedIn is 53%, according to the same study.

Generate visits to your website

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If a user is interested in the content offered by your company, he/she will obviously want to visit your official website to learn more about your activity.

Generate visits to your website.

Expand the reach of your brand.

LinkedIn.

LinkedIn allows you to reach out to your potential customers and make them aware of your identity. What’s more, LinkedIn may enable you to reach new areas of potential customers that you have not been able to reach before.

Care for your online reputation.

Build your online reputation.

In addition to building your image as a technology information reference, your interactions with your contacts help you build trusting relationships, which can be strengthened every day. This will benefit your image on the internet, and more users will be encouraged to learn about your company.

1.2. The key points for your strategy

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Content is a key factor for success on LinkedIn. But in order to generate good material, you need to be clear about some fundamental points to share quality content:

  • Audience: Who are you targeting? Do you want to improve the loyalty of your current customers or do you want to acquire new ones? Mentally define who your content is aimed at before publishing it
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  • Frequency: When was the last time your company website saw activity? Encourage your employees to participate on LinkedIn by organising a calendar. The important thing is to maintain a consistent frequency.
  • Engagement. Does your content encourage people to engage? Your posts should generate affinity and empathy. Try to be direct, friendly, humble… Make the most of all your qualities, but don’t forget the most important thing: offer relevant content.
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2. The phases to develop your company page on LinkedIn

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For your social media marketing actions, especially on LinkedIn, to have a positive impact on attracting leads, they must be supported by a strategy aimed at achieving this goal. What are the phases for an effective strategy?

What are the phases for an effective strategy?

2.1. Create your LinkedIn profile

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Few people around us do not have a profile on this network. They are usually professional profiles of a technical nature, quoted and without excessive concern for their future. However, this is not the case for commercial profiles, managers and self-employed. So, if this is your world and you don’t have a profile yet, create one. As soon as possible.

And of course, you must complete it and use it with care. The more information you give users, the more credibility they will see in you and your profile. After all, the most important part of online marketing is providing valuable content and offering it to build trust.

2.2. Plan your campaign

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You need to be patient. If you’re planning to get clients next week, don’t do it, because you’re likely to ruin your reputation. Too much nervousness, too much haste and too much pressure on the potential customer. Although, of course, sales depend on the cycles of your product, so set yourself a minimum timeframe of three to six months.

Your LinkedIn posts should be based on the needs and interests of your buyer personas. Yes, as with all your marketing efforts. From here, you will be able to structure a schedule of posts on your LinkedIn profile that will be of interest to your contacts.

Yes, as with all your marketing actions.

In addition, it is recommended that you opt for one of the Premium options that LinkedIn offers you. The simplest one is already useful for what we need, basically being able to filter by different parameters and tag users according to their interests.

2.3. Find your customers

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Once you are clear about your target audience, do a search by the title you usually use: “IT Manager”, for example. You will have to do it later in all its variants: “CIO”, “IT Manager”, “Technology Manager”, filter by location (“Spain”) and, if applicable, by sector “Transport”. Et voilà! Hundreds of potential clients in front of you!

2.4. Can I start selling my product or service now?

Now is the time when we advise you, again, to take it easy. It is very easy to spoil the relationship we want to build by sending connection requests that already include an offer.

Not everyone on your contact list can be your customer. Choose the ones that can be and focus on them. Working with those who won’t be is a waste of your time and resources, and may cause LinkedIn to block you for spamming.

One of the worst things you can do on LinkedIn is to send a contact request to a person who doesn’t understand what you have in common or the benefit of being in contact. Remember to always think about why you think this potential contact may be a good fit for your business.

Send a short note, always personalised, as a message attached to the contact request. Something friendly and that does not compromise either party. Something like “it would be very interesting for me to keep in touch with you in the future”. You reach out to the potential contact and do not put them in an unexpected commitment.

Once they have accepted you into their contacts, it is important to show your appreciation. And above all, show your interest in sharing content and common interests that will help you build a mutually beneficial relationship on LinkedIn. This will undoubtedly help you to build trust with your contacts.

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2.5. Sort your contact list

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Once you have started to get contacts for your company’s LinkedIn, in your contact list you have the possibility to tag each of them.

You can also tag each of them.

This can be very useful, among other things, to tag your contacts according to their buyer persona profile. This way, you can develop communication strategies with your buyer personas, and follow the same criteria each time you acquire new contacts. Another way to tag your contacts on LinkedIn can be according to the degree of interest you think they might have in your technology product or service.

The key is to locate the best opportunities to create leads among your contacts. Of course, adding more tags or categories to your leads is something that you should develop especially in your CRM tool.

2.6. Now it’s time to talk!

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It is very important to maintain communications with your followers, or allow a period of time from the moment they have become your contacts, to start talking about your service. If your contacts immediately detect that your objective is simply to maintain a commercial interaction, they will most likely end up eliminating you. Therefore, before establishing this conversation, it is advisable to maintain small interactions with your contacts. For example, share their content, or comment on it.

Find out what their business project is, what their goals are. Find out what their main interests are, or even what their fears are regarding the performance of their business. And after that conversation, after having educated yourself more about your contact, then it will be a good time to explain your interest in providing a solution to their business challenge. And even more so if your technology company is prepared to offer it to them.

The goal is, therefore, to get that contact to offer you their professional email, and thus continue the conversation about your proposed solution outside LinkedIn. In this way, you will attract the contact to your field. Introduce them to your website, your company. Start demonstrating the level of professionalism of your company, and how your team has the technological tools to help the contact achieve their business challenges.

Little by little, you would transform that initial contact on LinkedIn into a new sales opportunity. And from here, you know very well how to convince that person in charge of the company that you have the ideal solution.

And if everything goes well, you will be able to convince that person that you have the ideal solution.

And if everything goes well, you will be able to convince that person that you have the ideal solution.

And if everything goes well with the solution you offer, this contact would have no problem sharing his or her opinion about your company on LinkedIn. You know very well that a satisfied customer is happy to share their success with others. And that will help you a lot in building your reputation on LinkedIn.

To ensure the success of this strategy, it is essential to walk this path with sincerity and with the will to establish a medium and long term relationship with the client. LinkedIn is a tool to make yourself known in a friendly, approachable way, to show other companies that your goal is to help them achieve their objectives.

3. The best technology pages on LinkedIn

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Large technology companies have been able to take advantage of the popularity of this social network to reach a wider audience by disseminating information of interest. Take note and find out how the best promotions for tech companies on LinkedIn have worked out.

 

 

3.1. HP is a leader in followers

HP is the first technology company to reach one million followers on LinkedIn. But this one million means much more than just a number. It is a structured community, with common interests related to the company and which HP can address in real time. A dream for the marketing and sales departments in 1939, when the company was founded.  

Meg Whitman, who was CEO of HP for six years, has become quite an influencer, and even publishes opinion pieces, such as the one in which he explained his voting decision for the US presidential election. Yes, it is true that it is not directly related to his business, but his profile as CEO on LinkedIn has reached the point where his followers are interested even in his knowledge in other fields..

On LinkedIn, they are also interested in his knowledge in other fields..

On LinkedIn, HP is a genius at creating content, analysing big data and designing simple graphics to communicate.

3.2. IBM is the queen of the news cocktail

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IBM topped the LinkedIn rankings with 1.8 million interactions in 2012, according to Zoomsphere. And since then, this figure has only increased. In fact, more than 5.9 million people have subscribed to the company’s updates on LinkedIn.

What’s more, more than 5.9 million people have subscribed to the company’s updates on LinkedIn.

What’s its secret? The tech giant shares a good mix of information and stories that surf the web, as well as generating good, valuable and actionable content.

It also does a great job of sharing information.

She also does a great job of promoting different online assets of her brand, publishes numerous posts on the social network Tumblr and leads campaigns with hashtag that span multiple social platforms.

In addition, he also shows the ins and outs of his company, the workspaces, the day-to-day life of his employees, and more.

3.3. Evernote knows how to optimise your publications

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The Evernote blog is very complete, but in addition, they know how to get the most out of each publication. Whenever Evernote writes a publication on its blog, it posts it in the section created under the title Latest. This, in turn, is reflected in his Linkedin profile in Recent Updates. In this way, users of the professional platform can easily keep up to date with the latest news from your company.

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This great little detail is a great way to keep your company up to date with the latest news.

This great little detail made Evernote the winner of the Best Linkedin Company Page award in 2014. And it is, without a doubt, a great example on Linkedin for technology companies. 

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Images: Israel Palacio | LinkedIn(CC BY 2.0) andcav | Evernote