How LinkedIn can support your cycling business

By Kate Allan, Compete PR

This piece first appeared in the August edition of BikeBiz magazine – get your free subscription here

LinkedIn is an incredibly valuable tool for businesses and individuals, with the site now home to over 50 million registered companies and 850 million users worldwide. Developing an effective LinkedIn profile can reap a host of great benefits; from brand awareness and connection building, to helping you keep abreast with news and updates in your industry sector.

Here we explore some of the key things you need to consider when developing your LinkedIn presence: 

1. Have a plan

In order to get the very most out of activity on LinkedIn, as with anything in life it’s important to develop a strategy. This translates to well defined objectives – is it brand awareness you are after, lead generation or education? Defining a clear plan from the outset is crucial, as well as clear accompanying deliverables to work towards. Rather than treating it as a solo endeavour, it can be good to bring other members of your team or network to be a part of this process, offering the potential for shared ideas and inspiration. And looking ahead is vital – ideally planning overarching content a good few months in advance where possible, factoring in there will also be reactive updates and developments along the way.

2. Content is king

Good content is the single most important feature of any LinkedIn strategy, without this, any activity will very likely flop. Content should be timely, relevant and valuable, and not just an opportunity to promote what you or your business is up to – it’s important to think outwardly, and to develop and drive ideas more generally. Carve out time each week to see what is happening that is new in your network, and keep up to date on the movers and shakers in your industry to ensure you’re always up to speed on who/what is where.

3. Get the support of your inner network 

Nurture relationships with your LinkedIn connections – you’ll likely start to see who is regularly engaging with your content, and it can be good to reciprocate this with the same kind of activity towards their work too. To have another individual or brand share your content is extremely valuable, opening up your content to the feed of others, who might not be in your network. To have others share your news is impactful too, making it appear more genuine, further encouraging individuals to check it out, given it’s good enough to warrant someone sharing it.

4. Check out LinkedIn news 

LinkedIn news is produced by a team of editors at LinkedIn, and is a great tool for accessing breaking news – supporting on-the-pulse content. In addition to this, there are opportunities to interact with the news posts (which can be very popular) thus having the potential to open up your profile and ideas to a much wider audience.

5. Don’t overthink things too much

Although it’s good to do all the things above – it’s important to not overthink things, and to make sure you still come across as you/your brand. Do not feel pressured to post for the sake of it, you are better to post something which aligns with your brand and beliefs, than you are seeking something which might generate amazing engagement, but is not relevant, or worse still, at odds with what you do and/or believe. 

Read more: Five minutes with: British e-bike brand Mycle

Compete PR is an endurance sports and fitness PR agency that has worked on behalf of a number major of cycling brands, including wheelbrand Parcours, indoor training specialist Wattbike, and nutrition brand Science in Sport.