The key to understanding social media is that not all platforms are equal, nor do they support your business growth.

Therefore, it’s important in the cleaning sector to find the right social media platform to promote and target the customer base or audience you intend to attract.

LinkedIn is what I call a business insight and sharing platform that many of you in the cleaning sector have dabbled with, possibly focused on, and are now working in for business growth, promotion, and insights sharing.

If that’s not the case, you might be saying, why should I focus on LinkedIn?

If you don’t, you could be missing out on a golden opportunity to grow your business, become a SME (subject matter expert), promote case studies that make a difference, learn from other businesses, create networking opportunities, and most importantly, expand your network to support business growth.

Here are some facts about LinkedIn that may help you overcome skepticism, shyness, or an inability to act, and give you confidence of the global business playground you have potential access to by just participating.

LinkedIn has almost 740million members globally with 55million registered companies. Included in those numbers are 11 million people in Australia, or 44 per cent of the population, as well as 2 million members in New Zealand.

The demographics of LinkedIn show there are more than 74 per cent of users from outside the US. Women account for 43.1 per cent of total users, while 56 per cent are men.

The percentage of aged groups are; 34 per cent are aged 30-49; 28 per cent are aged between 50-64; the balance is 18-30 years which represents 38 per cent.

According to HubSpot, LinkedIn has increased by more than 60 per cent and is 277 per cent more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter.

Another interesting statistic is that 80 per cent of B2B leads are generated from LinkedIn. People spend time on other networks but invest time on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn drives 46 per cent of social traffic to B2B sites and is considered the most credible source of content.

The platform has become the most powerful business marketing tool available to all industry sectors, especially the cleaning sector where it’s possibly underutilised and misunderstood.

Your customers are wanting to hear about new product innovations, business insights, how your business is helping people, and most importantly, how your business can help their own company.

A tip for cleaning businesses for your message, insights, innovation and offer to go out to many people and organisations on social media platforms like LinkedIn,

It’s important to recognise and engage with staff members so they feel part of the social media journey. Ask them to like and share content and be proud of your business.

It’s your employees who will have some great ideas on how to grow your brand encourage it and implement where it makes sense.

Finally, if you understand how to leverage your company’s social media brand and consistently develop content either via posts, video, blogs and LinkedIn Live, it’s absolutely worth the investment of time and energy.

It will represent the leadership position you want to hold in the cleaning sector and if executed well will provide a great return on investment and time.

Sean Matthews is Managing Director of Banksia Consulting Group. Sean can be contacted at sean.matthews@banksiaconsultinggroup.com.