Can a Small Business Leverage LinkedIn to Drive Traffic to its Site?

LinkedIn is one of the best social networking outlets for business professionals and career oriented users.  Some consider it a must-have tool for those looking to generate quality leads.  This site continues to prove itself as a great place to share your content, showcase your expertise, and drive traffic to your website.  LinkedIn can help you boost traffic in a number of ways, and below are just a few of many. 

The profile is the most powerful weapon LinkedIn provides you.  This where you reveal your interests, experience, areas of expertise, contact information, and other relevant details that are pertinent to your business goals.  While it doesn’t have to read like the conventional resume, it is important to maximize the potential by optimizing your profile.  Make use of every available area you possibly can to establish yourself a credible source on first glance.  This will pique the interests of others and may get them to click the link to your website.

While it doesn’t have the enormous following of Facebook, the LinkedIn network is growing fast, quickly attracting pools of like-minded people.  Building our own network is as simple as searching for people you know and sending out invitations for others to connect with you on the site.  You are free to connect with partners, employees, or even friends who may be valuable to your network.  LinkedIn also allows you to seek out connections with new professionals by sending a request to someone who is directly connected to one of your existing contacts.  The more people you connect with, the more exposure for your profile and status updates, both of which help get traffic to your site.

LinkedIn is all about networking, and this interaction can greatly boost the efforts of a small business.  This is evidenced with a handy little feature that lets users give recommendations for the people they are connected with.  For example, if you are connected with a customer who loved the service you provided them, they may decide to give you a recommendation by writing something nice about your business.  These recommendations are published on your profile and can be made available for all to see.  If these endorsements are relative to the website links and updates you posted, they will help establish you as expert and generate quality traffic. 

Small businesses that are out to leverage LinkedIn as a traffic generator would be wise to take advantage of all the available built-in tools.  This includes everything from the search box that lets you seek out connections, to posting RSS feeds of your article content to the groups you belong to.  You can also use the sidebar modules to ask or answer questions, or subscribe for automatic email updates to find out how your connections are interacting with the network everyday.  Making use of these tools keeps you connected with the community, while helping you build your reputation, and increase traffic to your website.