What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is the professional network, used for hiring, business development and industry publishing. For B2B companies it is the one platform where targeting by job title, company size and sector is reliable, and where a post from a named person consistently outperforms the same post from a company page.
A short history
- December 2002 — founded by Reid Hoffman and co-founders in California.
- 5 May 2003 — the site launched publicly.
- 2011 — the company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
- 2016 — Microsoft bought LinkedIn for about $26 billion.
Today the network has over a billion registered members worldwide. In Bulgaria it is used mostly by people in IT, finance, trade and management.
How companies use it
- Personal profiles of the manager and the sales team — posts from a named person reach more people than posts from a company page.
- The company page — description, job ads, news; the place where people check the company.
- Advertising — targeting by job title, industry, company size and skills. More expensive per click than Facebook, but more precise for B2B.
- Hiring — job ads and searching for candidates.
Example
An IT firm that makes warehouse software posted from its company page and collected a few likes per post. The manager starts writing personally once a week: short cases from implementations, with figures and no sales pitch. Within six months his profile reaches warehouse managers and logistics staff, and five of them write directly to ask for a meeting. The company page still exists, but the conversations start from the personal profile.
Why it matters for a business
For companies that sell to other companies, LinkedIn often matters more than Facebook, because buyers are there under their own names and job titles. The network rewards regularity and a personal voice. One useful post a week from a person customers know does more than daily corporate announcements.
What to ask
- Do our customers have LinkedIn profiles, and are they active there?
- Who on the team can write regularly in their own name?
- Is the company page complete: description, website, contacts?
- If we advertise, which job titles and industries will we target?
For companies that sell to other companies, LinkedIn often matters more than Facebook. We run profiles and posts there as part of our social media management.