Professionals in any industry agree that LinkedIn is the platform for maintaining and growing business relationships. A LinkedIn profile should be the user’s online professional identity and the hub for their global business relationships.
Additionally, it is also the conduit to a wide variety of LinkedIn Groups of other like-minded professional managers. The greatest value for companies in the valve industry is that LinkedIn is a supplemental marketing tool which aids the company’s websites and influences sales activities.
By Bob Donnelly – Consultant
To get the greatest value from a platform such as LinkedIn, companies and industry professionals need to be able to utilize it to develop, sustain, and embellish its brand equity. That starts with devel-oping a unique value proposition – what is it that they do, in the way that they do it, that has unique value to a specific set of customers to the extent that they prefer one brand over its competition?
This critical information on curating a unique value proposition should appear in the “About” section of a LinkedIn profile.
Once established, polished, and promoted, the brand equity can result in a premium price advantage, protection from its competitors, and garner a source of continued profitability.
How To Use Linkedin Most Effectively
LinkedIn is a powerful marketing tool in a variety of different ways. Initially, it is another source to continuously promote brand equity by “posting” information about company activities in the marketplace. The posting function is a broadcast mechanism similar to mass emails and other forms of online communications.
The difference with LinkedIn posts is that they are designed to target a huge audience of professionals in the flow control and valve industry.
Creating a Demographic-Making Connections
Connections on LinkedIn are like-mind-ed professionals who share an affinity in specific areas related to their business interests. If someone views content related to valves or valve technology, clicking on the “connect” section of a LinkedIn profile, can automatically add to the users’ list of “connections” to receive future posts of new content.
Obviously, the goal is to accumulate like-minded professionals to continue to embellish brand equity.
Information on Followers
One of the more invaluable functions of LinkedIn is that users can access any individual’s list of connections and establish direct one-to-one online correspondence with them which can also lead to incremental business opportunities. Additionally, when new followers are added to a list of followers LinkedIn notifies the account holder that a new connection has joined the network. For example, Flowserve, a leader in the valve industry, currently has over 300,000 followers.
Reposting Content
Another great function of LinkedIn is that those who find a company’s content in specific posts of value can “repost” the original post to their followers. This aids in automatically expanding networks of like-minded professionals.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Content
Yet another fabulous function of LinkedIn is that the platform provides its users the ability to measure the effectiveness of shared content with the audience of professionals that the user is attempting to reach. This audience can be broken into job titles, company size, and locations, of those who viewed the content of a post.
Access to Valve Industry Professionals
Given that valve industry professionals have their own LinkedIn profiles, users can contact them and develop a dialogue with them on valve related technology and other industry related issues. This is an invaluable way to establish relationships and share content on changing trends in the valve industry. This is a much more efficient and professional way to establish relationships and share valve related information that they can also pass on to their network.
Ultimately, this method aids in reaching key industry leaders to share content on new engineered solutions and new products.
The Power of Video Content
Utilizing videos and other visually enticing content has become very effective for sharing information. Today, videos are streaming on every kind of smart device. Likewise, videos are being developed everyday by companies in the valve industry and displayed on their websites and other social media platforms, such as YouTube.
These same videos can be posted to a users’ LinkedIn profile and shared with their network of followers. As with other posts, they are also on the internet and can be the source of sales leads and new connections.
A Powerful Marketing Tool
LinkedIn is another powerful marketing tool for companies in the valve industry of all sizes and types of valve products and components to reach valve industry leaders, maintain customer relations, and share valve related content with prospective new customers, as well as increase followers and build brand equity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Bob Donnelly is the Vice President of Business Development for Flo-Tite Valves & Controls.
