Whether you are a small salon wanting to find ways to expand or an established company that has exhausted marketing strategies for Facebook and Twitter audiences, LinkedIn can offer another channel to help target wider online traffic alongside reaching a new demographic of clientele.

Overview – LinkedIn is a social networking site which offers professionals a place to swap ideas, join groups and generate leads amongst people working in their industry as well as different sectors to join up with to benefit both businesses. Because of the professional nature of LinkedIn, the leads you will be generating for your salon will be more targeted rather than many potential customers that are just browsing Facebook for example.

If you are a beauty company –  The LinkedIn ‘Cosmetics and Beauty Network’ which was founded in 2008 now has more than 72,000 members, all of which have connections to the industry. It is free to join groups and once you are a member you can advertise your website or blog to drive this traffic or professionals to your site. By adding your blogs RSS feed onto the group, any new written piece will automatically be put up on the forum for anyone to view. For a small price, you can gain a premium account which will allow you to connect to thousands outside of your network.

Gaining new demographics – Many marketers are now finding new audiences to advertise to as many of the younger markets are struggling financially. On LinkedIn, you will find a much larger demographic of people with higher amounts of disposable income which is especially good to a high end salon, selling pricey products and services. If you want to target certain people in the industry, once you have found their page you can send them a personal message outlining your interests. Maybe you could also throw in a few casual sentences for example activities or interests you share to really connect with the person.

Events – If you are planning to hold a promotional event, you can also use LinkedIn’s event platform. Once you have set up the event to promote your beauty salon, you can then use links to your groups and on your profile page to raise awareness of the occasion. Once somebody has RSVPs to the event, it will show up on the wall of their connections.

LinkedIn Answers – The site also offers other services such as LinkedIn Answers. With this, you can both ask and answer questions. If you spot a potential good lead asking a question to which you know the answer to, you can reply to them and then hopefully leave the conversation open, which could then lead to more business.

Gain contacts – By encouraging your staff to have a LinkedIn page (which is connected to your business through their job title), you also gain exposure outside of your social circles. You can ask them to copy and paste information from the company website onto their pages to make you and your company look more professional.

Clientele – Remember who you are dealing with. With the average household income per user reaching around $109,000 so using the right language and the right presentation can really affect how you and your company are perceived. Basically, the majority of interaction is geared towards generating, business and growth rather than pictures of your office party.

Laura Comben is a freelance copywriter from Brighton. Her passions include writing, art and learning about the latest beauty, tech and business news.