LinkedIn is a great professional networking tool to communicate with existing and potential franchisees, connect to peers, monitor competitors, and find new talent for your franchise.
Many franchisors don’t realise the true power of LinkedIn and this is great news for those who do, as they can easily fill that void with a lesser amount of effort than on more crowded social channels. Many have started leveraging LinkedIn to different ends – from monitoring their online reputation to developing and nurturing a loyal community and attracting franchisees. Your franchise should be listening to your audience, responding and opening conversation, encouraging them to engage with your brand.
How are businesses using LinkedIn?
LinkedIn can have a big impact on your capability to generate franchise leads and opportunities and convert prospective buyers into new owners. Here’s your snapshot of what you need to know:
Know Your Audience and Reach Out
Who are your prospective buyers on LinkedIn? The better you understand and can answer this question, the easier it will be to engage, connect and position your franchise. Search for people who fit your ideal franchisee or are based in areas where you’re recruiting. Reach out to them because even if they aren’t a good fit, they might know someone who is!
Competitors
Review your competitors’ LinkedIn company profiles, as well as a few personal profiles of employees. This will help you to better understand how they’re positioning themselves toward their (and your) target audience. Take notes on what their profile and company page tell you about them and the franchise. Can you do better, do prospective buyers really get what your franchise is all about?
Company Page
Post regular educational, informative and fun news about your franchise together with any team news and PR that your brand receives. Not only will this show the ‘human’ side of your brand but will increase the awareness of your brand, when people research their franchise opportunity. Examples of content to post could include: video, mentions in the media, any market expansion, new location openings (newly signed up franchisees), awards and recognition, franchisee testimonials or case studies about their investment, and charitable activities.
Showcase
Develop a showcase page that focuses on your franchise opportunity. Showcase Pages are extensions of your Company Page designed for highlighting a specific product or service. Create your Showcase Page for aspects of your franchise with its own content, to attract your target audience.
Share
Amplify your voice and encourage employees to share updates via their personal profiles, maximising your exposure and help keep your brand top of mind with employees’ friends, contacts and business connections: these types of connections are historically excellent at helping to make referrals and recommendations on your behalf.
Groups
Engage with any LinkedIn Groups relevant to your target audience. Share your content relevant to keep top of mind with those people who may be a potential franchisee in time.
Sponsored Updates
Use sponsored updates to cost-effectively maximise a post’s visibility; target people based on parameters such as location, work experience, current job title, age, skills and educational background.
Upgrade Your Membership
LinkedIn has different Premium account options for those who want to get more out of LinkedIn. If you have a free account and want to upgrade, you can compare account types described here.
LinkedIn is an excellent platform for supporting your franchise development efforts. If you’d like to chat about any LinkedIn training requirements, bespoke to your company either on a one to one or group basis, or ongoing management and support, please contact me on 07752 539719 or 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.
By Ann Davies, Director
** https://bebusinessed.com/linkedin/linkedin-statistics-figures/
I had the pleasure of presenting to graduates at the Etihad Graduate Fair today. Open to 2nd, 3rd and Postgraduate students with the opportunity to hear from a wide range of guest speakers, have 1-2-1 Careers guidance interviews with our highly qualified Career coaches and meet with a variety of employers offering Graduate schemes and full time employment. My workshop focused on how to show delegates how to use LinkedIn more proactive in their search for their next job.
There are more than 500 million users on LinkedIn* and 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn to check candidates**. LinkedIn is the leading professional networking platform and a powerful job search engine to boot!
Grow your network, raise your profile, and increase your chances of being hired through referrals and recommendations. LinkedIn can help you to get that all-important new job and here’s my steps to help you leverage LinkedIn for success.
1.The Basics – one chance, first impression!
Invest in your profile picture, it is one of the most important aspects of your profile.
Your picture should show others that you are friendly, approachable, and personable attributes to getting others to engage with you.
Write a convincing summary, this section has a limit of 2,000 characters but if people are viewing your profile via mobile *** and will need to scroll down, your first 92 characters will be essential. Because viewers will need to take an extra step to see more content, each of those first 220 and 92 characters must pull their weight: 58 percent of LinkedIn’s users are viewing it via mobile so maximising the impact of those first 92 characters will be especially important.
Keywords are king, research the keywords that you should include for each role, highlighting your past achievements. Research your current actual role and the essential and desirable skills for your current job and review the profiles of your colleagues and peers for ideas.
Add your skills to the featured skills & endorsements section, and add a maximum of 50 skills to your profile. Ensure that you list the key words that you want to be found for. This also gives you control over what you are more likely to be endorsed for.
2.Search and Connect
Having more LinkedIn connections increases your chances of showing up as one of a user’s “most viewed connections. Enter your keyword into the search bar. Select the member from the suggestions in drop-down or click the search icon ?. For example, you can search for the ”HR Manager” at ”Your Ideal Company” and they’ll appear in your search.
3.Set up job alerts
To access your alerts click the jobs icon at the top of your homepage. Click manage alerts under the search box at the top of the page where you are able to edit or delete the results relevant to you.
4.LinkedIn pages
Don’t hold back on the research! Get information on past operations, current news, products, services, culture and employees and check out their “careers” pages too.
5.LinkedIn groups
Get in on the conversation and share your expertise. Others can learn from you too while allowing you to build mutually beneficial business relationships. Find new connections and tap into the goldmine of knowledge to enhance your career.
Need help for free of charge?
In collaboration with Google Digital Garage Manchester I’ll be sharing my tips in a workshop on 12th April. You’ll be able to get the full rundown with free advice thrown in. Book your free place here.
*Omnicore, January 2018
**Jobvite Recruiter National Report 2016
*** LinkedIn 2016 Q1 quarterly results