An active personal LinkedIn presence is key to any B2B growth strategy.

Originally published in Better Marketing.

People do business with people, not with faceless companies.

People do business with people who are knowledgeable, trustworthy, and memorable.

As a B2B business leader, how do you show the human behind the product? How do you position yourself as knowledgeable, trustworthy, and memorable?

Enter LinkedIn, the social media world’s gift to B2B business leaders. This platform is an after-work happy hour, 24/7. People come to learn new ideas, meet each other, and build their businesses. In short, they’re networking.

Use this built-in audience to your advantage. Write regularly about your interests. This will showcase your expertise and keep you top of mind. Suddenly, before you know it, you’ll be that person. The knowledgeable, trustworthy, and memorable one. The number one call for your network.

Building your personal brand on LinkedIn can take time. But it’s an investment that will pay your business dividends in the long run.

Here are three reasons why developing an active presence on LinkedIn can help B2B business leaders to grow their businesses.

You can source more opportunities from your existing network.

When you post about your industry and interests, you remind your network that you are an expert in your field and that you exist. (Yes, that person you met once at a conference likely doesn’t remember you.) Posting keeps you top of mind, which ensures that you’ll be the first call the next time someone has a relevant need.

You can stand out from the crowd by sharing your expertise.

Nervous about posting? Many people are. In fact, most Linkedin users (95%+) don’t post at all. But they are interested in what they read on the platform: 30M American users log in daily. As a result, LinkedIn is desperate for fresh content.

This might not calm your nerves, but know this: if you grab the mic and share your perspective, you’ll stand out from the crowd. LinkedIn is not as saturated as other social media channels, so your posts will be seen. And you’ll give your network something new to think about.

You can get more organic reach on LinkedIn than on any other social media platform.

Organic reach is the number of views that your post gets without putting ad dollars behind it.

Unlike other social networks, LinkedIn’s news feed shows you content that your network interacts with. (Remember seeing those posts that “John Smith finds this insightful”?) This means that even if you’re not connected to someone, you might still see their posts.

This news feed algorithm is a marketer’s dream. Your ideas can have huge reach beyond your immediate network, which could, in turn, generate more leads for your business.

Here’s an example of how this works. On most other social networks, your posts will be seen by your friends / connections / followers. If you have 500 friends, typically only 500 people (and usually fewer) will see your content. On LinkedIn, if your post gets 5 likes by people who each have 500 connections, your post could be seen not only by your network but also by 500x5=2,500 other people.

Now what?

When developing your B2B business’s growth strategy, leverage each company leader’s personal LinkedIn presence. Challenge them to write at least one post weekly. You can even schedule regular “LinkedIn Post Party” events during which the whole team writes their posts.

While your business’s leadership likely has a broad network, don’t forget about the rest of your team. They, too, can develop a regular LinkedIn presence that can be beneficial to the company and to their careers.

LinkedIn can help you spread the word about your expertise, your capabilities, and your business. For free. Take full advantage of it.

Here are three ways I can help you:

1. Serve as your business’s Fractional CMO.

2. Analyze and optimize your marketing strategy.

3. Get 1-on-1 coaching for amplifying your LinkedIn presence.

   Interested? Send me a note.