Part 2: Start Getting Traffic

Did you know LinkedIn is more than a business-oriented social networking site? LinkedIn is a great way to generate leads for your business, and if you're a business owner you've got to have an optimized profile, connect with people who might become customers or partners, and send the to your website to learn more.

This is the second half of our top tips to generate web traffic from LinkedIn.

1. Provide Value To Others

You can link to blog posts, e-books and other digital assets in your profile. This gets clicks to your website from content you've already created. Once you get people looking at your profile, these assets will generate links back to your website and inspire shares within LinkedIn.

2. Start Participating

Begin to cultivate your presence within your newly created network. One way to do this is to like and comment on posts, birthdays, work anniversaries and status updates. If you do nothing else, this will boost your visibility – to take it to the next level, begin to share content of your own!

The great thing about LinkedIn is the quality of content that is shared. It's a business networking site, and people are more careful about what they post and share because their employers, colleagues, clients and potential customers are all watching!

Sharing content provides value to your network, and gains you visibility as an expert in your field. You can share blog posts, interesting tips and stories, and links to content on your website. Buffer is known for studies on post frequency; they recommend that “20 or so posts per month helps you reach 60% of your audience”. You can never provide TOO MUCH value, so as often as you have something helpful, share it!

Don't forget to respond to people who engage with your content. If it's a positive comment, thank them. If it's not positive, acknowledge what they said and let them know how you plan on improving. This gives you an approachable and engaging persona, one that inspires the overall social experience because you show you care about every person that commented.

3. Publish on LinkedIn's Pulse

LinkedIn features its own publishing platform for long-form content. This is one of the next steps a profile visitor can take, after learning the basics about you – they will naturally want a more in-depth loop and you can inspire that with compelling content.

One of the big advantages to publishing on Pulse is that LinkedIn will notify all your connections that a new post from you has gone live. It's easy for your connections to share your post, giving you a wider audience. Last but not least, your post could be featured on Pulse, and published to a much wider audience, increasing your reach, your visibility and your web traffic. Align your Pulse articles with the content of your profile to establish yourself as a thought leader.

4. Scale Traffic to LinkedIn

Get other people to scale your traffic for you. Add a LinkedIn button to your website to get your visitors to share YOUR content to their LinkedIn networks. Even a few shares exposes you to new connections, and potentially huge groups of new customers. ThinkBodhi's web developers are happy to help you install social share buttons on your website so you can begin scaling fast.

Add your LinkedIn profile link to your email signature to generate traffic every time you hit the 'send' button.

5. Recommend Others Now that you've got a profile that gives others a good idea of your skills, and provided content by linking to assets you've already created, it's time to do some favors. Recommend people in your network that you've worked with previously – without them asking. Go to the profile of one or your connections, click the “More” button, and select “recommend”. They will appreciate your acknowledgement and probably will return the favor of recommending you.

LinkedIn is, no doubt, a great tool for small to medium businesses. It's a robust networking platform with many functionalities we haven't discussed here. What have you done on LinkedIn to generate traffic and increase your visibility?