Utilizing LinkedIn to Grow Your Self Storage Business

By Mike Jones, Storage.com

When it comes to long-term business-to-business (B2B) communication, there’s one social media platform you’d be insane to ignore: LinkedIn.

Bred for professional communication, LinkedIn needs to be a top priority for your self storage digital marketing efforts if it isn’t already. With more opportunities to create connections with professionals in your industry, spread brand awareness, and catch the attention of potential employees, the benefits of this platform are truly endless.

Simply getting a page set up doesn’t make you a shoo-in for success, though. You need to have a strategy for your LinkedIn efforts to be effective, which is why we’ve come up with these tips for increasing exposure.

Do More Than the Bare Minimum

Filling out the required fields to explain your business is great, but it’s not enough to stand out. Take advantage of Showcase Pages, where you can list the details that set your storage facility apart from competitors, such as extra features or services. You can cater these pages to appeal to a target market and even leverage them as small marketing campaigns.

“By optimizing your profile and company page, you increase the likelihood of potential and current customers, as well as business partners, finding you,” says Chuck Hester, LinkedIn Invited Publisher and Speaker. “LinkedIn is a 313 million member social [customer relationship management platform]—the better you optimize your LinkedIn presence, the greater the chance of finding new business!”

Hester says optimizing your LinkedIn for search engines is the most important takeaway for small businesses. This includes adding common search phrases your customers use to find your business online to your LinkedIn profile and join groups that help you stand out as an industry resource without relying solely on marketing.

Create a Balance of Content

In order to build a credible reputation within the industry, the content you provide needs to be unique yet extremely relatable. Before taking advice on how to improve or fix a situation, people first need to know why they should trust your advice.

“You need to start by positioning your business first,” explains Hester. “LinkedIn, like all social media channels, is a community. People want to build relationships, find resources, and exc­hange ideas. The marketing will come once you’ve established your standing in the community.”

Do this by staying away from irrelevant topics or posting just to post. Depending on the size of your business, this could mean posting every day; for others, it could mean posting a couple times per week.

Be cautious, however, as over-promoting your business and constantly “selling” through your content is a quick way to lose the credibility you worked so hard to achieve. This is where sticking to the 80-20 rule is a good idea. Essentially, this rule means post content that’s useful for your audience (without selling your business) 80% of the time and post content that promotes your business 20% of the time.

Speak Up

That Field of Dreams adage “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t really apply to your LinkedIn page, because you need to be consistent and active on this platform to attract the right attention to your facility.

Replying to comments, commenting on other posts, and sharing what other businesses have posted are all ways to engage with other industry professionals on the site.

“Your customers and potential customers are on social media in one form or another,” says Hester. “You need to communicate with them where they live: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. Yes, it’s a marketing channel, but it can’t be ignored anymore. It’s the way the world gets their information, finds their service providers, and interacts on a day-to-day basis.”

Bio: Chuck Hester is a LinkedIn power connector with more than 13,000 direct connections. He is a sought-after expert on the subject of using LinkedIn for media relations, personal and professional branding, and how to use social media to build business contacts. He’s addressed conferences in Canada, Australia, and throughout the United States.

He is the author of Linking In to Pay it Forward: Changing the Value Proposition in Social Media. His latest book, Social Media for the Rest of Us: A Boomer’s Perspective is due in late 2014/early 2015.