LinkedIn recently released their second quarter financial results, including the fact that there are now 11.5 million users. That number is quite large for a professional network, but what is also interesting is that LinkedIn members are engaged with the site. A recent study by Lab42 showed that 32% of respondents check the site several times a week and 35% check it daily. These numbers are much higher than the averages of most B2B websites or e-newsletter open rates. If you are looking to make the most of your company’s presence on LinkedIn, here are five suggestions for where to start.

 1) Employee recruitment. An obvious and appropriate way to make use of LinkedIn for your company is utilizing it as a recruiting vehicle. For a small fee you can post jobs on your company’s profile, or take advantage of the more advanced recruiting solutions. LinkedIn also recently released a new web plug-in where candidates can apply directly on your website with a click of a button. The “Apply with LinkedIn” option allows candidates to submit their LinkedIn profile instead of a resume attachment. LinkedIn has reported that thousands of companies are using this feature, and we recently added it to the careers page of the Godfrey website.

2) The share button. You will see several social media sharing buttons at the bottom of this blog, the LinkedIn button was released last November and has continued to grow in utilization, especially in the B2B world. Micah France covered this topic in his July blog, and LinkedIn recently stated that over 100,000 publishers are now using it. The Godfrey website has seen pretty high usage of the LinkedIn share button.

3) Advertising. For the B2B marketing traditionalists, there is an advertising option. Advertising on LinkedIn is similar to Google AdWords; in that you set your daily budget and only pay for the number of clicks you receive (CPC) or the number of ad impressions. The ads are small and simple with just text and an image. With LinkedIn advertising you are able to target by company, job title and groups. We have had good success with the group and job title targeting. Our analytics data shows that clicks from LinkedIn ads are highly engaged on the website and have a high conversion rate.

4) Use the Products & Services tab on the company page. This is a free easy way to expand the information for your company. You can add up to 25 product or service offerings that include a description, image, URL, promotions, YouTube videos and a contact person. Godfrey has built out our products & services tab, check it out see the possibilities.

5) Get recommended. After populating your products and services section, you can start to add credibility by asking customers to add recommendations. This option provides an invaluable way to gain the much sought after “word of mouth” reference. And since the recommendations are coming from real people with LinkedIn profiles, prospects can see the job titles and companies that are recommending you. One example of a company that has built out their products and garnered a good number of recommendations is SalesForce.com. LinkedIn makes it easy to request recommendations, you can simply email your LinkedIn contacts right from your products/services tab.

I hope you will be able to take advantage of some or all of these 5 methods for improving your company’s LinkedIn presence. And if you come across a great B2B company page on LinkedIn, let me know, I am looking for noteworthy examples.