Guest post by Zachary Lee

Sure, LinkedIn may not be as poppy and fresh as its popular rival Facebook, but that is exactly why it’s valued by business professionals. Right now a majority of business professionals say that LinkedIn is a valuable tool for sourcing employees, job hunting and even connecting to customers – but these are not the only benefits.

LinkedIn can also be a powerful component of your Web content strategy – if leveraged correctly. Here are 6 tips that can help you optimize your content strategy, and get the most out of LinkedIn’s 161 million worldwide professional user base.

(photo credit: Sheila Scarborough)

1. 1.       Promo Your Content With LinkedIn Apps Like SlideShare

As the saying goes, Content is King. Stop running around trying to get your LinkedIn audience to navigate to your content, and bring that content straight to them.

With the SlideShare App, LinkedIn profiles, groups and company pages can showcase their content, including PowerPoint presentations, text documents and PDFs.

1. 2.       Integrate LinkedIn with Your Blogs

As with the first tip, bringing your content to LinkedIn can increase your audience tenfold. Plus, LinkedIn makes it rather easy to integrate your blogs – whether on an individual, company or group page. Here is two quick ways to integrate your blog feeds with LinkedIn:

Wordpress blogs can easily be integrated through an easy LinkedIn WordPress App, and your recent posts (or those tagged ‘linkedin’) will display on your public profile.

For non-wordpress blogs, the BlogLink App by TypePad will also display blog feeds from Movable Type, Vox, Blogger, Livejournal and more. In order to display your blog feed, simply add the blog URL to the ‘websites’ section of your profile.

1. 3.       Post Timely, Relevant and Useful Status Updates Linking to Your Content.

Today’s users demand a dynamic content experience. Give them more reason to appreciate your LinkedIn profiles, and regularly update your statuses, linking to trending industry news or your own blog feed.

Also, reach out to your followers or group members for recommendations. LinkedIn sees the world in ‘degrees of separation,’ and any recommendations will increase brand awareness.

1. 4.       Encourage Discussion with Groups, Polls and RSS News Feeds.

Once you have the followers and subscribers, keeping them interested is the name of the game. Get more eyes on your prize by pitching your content in a way that starts discussion. Learn how to use your content to foster discussions with LinkedIn’s Poll app, and watch the conversations grow.

Another way to get more eyes on your content is to create LinkedIn group pages to facilitate topic-centric discussions and polls. Group admins can also integrate RSS and Atom feeds from their blog, and have a real-time news ticker displayed on their group profile (as shown below).

1. 5.       Mandate Company-Wide LinkedIn Deployment.

If you have spent hours optimizing LinkedIn pages but you are still the only member or follower, then you have big problems. Don’t let your efforts be in vain, and make sure everyone involved in your organization is on LinkedIn.

Also, to make the most of LinkedIn, establish a process for employees to showcase, share and discuss content across your LinkedIn groups and pages. Remember, leveraging LinkedIn to get the greatest impact requires that you grow your member and network base to get more eyeballs on your content.

1. 6.       Customize Your LinkedIn Layout

If your profile, group or company page looks like something is missing, than you may be missing out on growing your audience. Be sure to customize the layout of your LinkedIn profiles by entering ‘edit mode’ and ‘drag to rearrange profile sections’.

For more resources and tips on social network marketing and content strategy, check out Marketing Weekly.

About Aaron Elliott

Founded Social Barrel in 2010 to bring the latest Social media news and tips to other social media junkies! Connect and stay updated on Twitter