Everything you need to know about LinkedIn for Business in 2025

LinkedIn is the world’s most popular professional networking tool, a social and advertising hub that can promote your business and get you noticed. It’s a fantastic platform to get professional exposure, get inspired by mentors, or get involved in the conversations shaping your industry.

The tricky part? Standing out from the crowd. With now over 43 million LinkedIn users in the UK, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and get lost in the noise. To help, we’ve prepared this comprehensive guide.

We’ll take you through everything you need to know, from how to set up a profile, to understanding LinkedIn ads, to best practices to apply when promoting your thought leadership. By the end you should be equipped with all the tools you need to make the most out of your business account.

Why is LinkedIn a good platform for businesses and founders?

In February 2025, LinkedIn surpassed one billion site visits, so it’s safe to say it’s popular. If used properly, LinkedIn can put you on the fast lane towards accelerating your business, in several ways:

1. Self-promotion

With approximately 42.9 million users in the UK alone, the platform is the perfect place to showcase your expertise, experiences, and accomplishments. Whether with LinkedIn blog posts or business updates, you can position yourself as an industry thought leader.

2. Scouting talent

Hiring the right person is crucial to SMEs. Each month there are 260 million users looking for work – that’s a big talent pool. From advertising jobs to headhunting for the best employees on the market, you can use the platform to fast-track finding the right fit for your vacancies.

3. Growing your network

There are 310 million active monthly users on LinkedIn, so in addition to self-promotion and recruitment, it can help expand your business’s network. The best way to do this? Through LinkedIn Groups. By joining communities of like-minded professionals, you can get a feel of the trends rocking your field and find potential partners.

How much does LinkedIn for business cost?

The good news is that creating your company page is completely free. It costs nothing to sign up, but you’ll be limited to basic search and networking features.

For many SMEs though, it’s worth considering paying for at least the Premium Business Tier, which costs £29.99 per month when billed annually. This gets you the shiny premium badge on your profile, but will also unlock features like:

• Dynamic cover images
• Display achievements and awards
• LinkedIn Learning
• See who’s viewed your profile
• A custom call-to-action (CTA) button
• Unlimited search functionality

You can also pay for a Premium Company Page, which will get you auto-invite features, enhanced page visibility, and the ability to add client quotes.

How to set up a LinkedIn business profile

To set up a company LinkedIn page, you must have a personal LinkedIn page already set up. Here are the steps you need to follow to supercharge your business networking:

1. Add your company: click the grid-like Work icon on the top left of your LinkedIn page and select Create a Company page at the bottom of the option. Pick the option that best describes your business (most likely small business, fewer than 200 employees).
2. Enter your company details: include info about your industry, company size, and company type.
3. Add a company logo and create an engaging company description.
4. Create a company description: 200 characters for your company description. The first 156 are key in that they are the ones that appear in the Google preview of your page.
5. Publish! – You can see what your LinkedIn business page looks like by clicking on the ‘view as member’ button at the top right of the page.

Here’s our very own Startups.co.uk LinkedIn profile, which we’ve optimised with our logo, branding, and slogan. Source: Startups.co.uk

How to use LinkedIn to connect with investors and partners

LinkedIn is a career-driven social media platform, and that makes it fertile ground for finding a source of financing from investors who are looking for their next project.

Here are a couple of best practices to follow so you can soon be announcing your next successful funding round:

1. Create a standout profile: clearly vocalise what your company’s mission and achievements are to add that extra dose of investor persuasion.
2. Put your best foot forward: you might not think it, but even your LinkedIn profile photo says a lot about you. Make sure you’ve thought about every detail, and your page reflects you and your business accurately.
3. Connect thoughtfully: you need to select investors who reflect your company’s ethos and who are likely to share your vision. If possible, seek out mutual connections, and join relevant LinkedIn groups related to your industry or niche.
4. Research and personalise: familiarise yourself with the investor’s profile and posts to gain insights into their portfolio, investment approach, and preferences. This will help you craft more personalised connection requests.
5. Keep them informed: regularly share updates about your business, milestones and achievements. Keeping potential angel investors in the loop demonstrates transparency and can help build a stronger foundation of trust.
6. Nurture relationships: continue engaging with your connections by sharing relevant content, offering insights, and showing genuine interest in their work.

How to drive engagement on LinkedIn

You can publish all the content you want, but without a clear strategy you might just be shouting into the void.

You need to drive your content strategy by bolstering engagement. Here are six key tips to drive higher engagement on LinkedIn:

• Utilise page analytics: leverage LinkedIn’s Page Analytics to identify issues and monitor the performance of your page, including updates, visitors, and follower growth. If you’re running LinkedIn ads, you can also use Analytics to measure Click-Through-Rate (CTR), reactions, comments, shares and follows.

The analytics board on LinkedIn should be your best friend. You can find it by clicking on the ‘Analytics’ heading seen here on the left, under ‘Dashboard’. Source: Startups.co.uk

• Optimise content for engagement: think about what will resonate with your target audience, encourage interaction, and deliver value. One of the best ways of doing this is to think about what you yourself are engaged by. Experiment with different content formats, headlines, and visuals to capture attention.

• Visual appeal: a picture is worth a thousand words, both in an art gallery and on LinkedIn. Take advantage of the carousel format to share as much content as possible and to make your posts visually engaging.

• Use video content: video popularity is skyrocketing on LinkedIn, growing at double the rate of all other formats in 2025, with time spent watching videos increasing 36% year-over-year. Don’t get left in the dust, make sure you take advantage of the trend and start recording videos, as well as traditional posts.

• Don’t rely on AI: yes, AI-generated content is flooding the internet, and it can be tempting to rely on these tools to make life easier, but just bear in mind that there’s been speculation LinkedIn is trying to mininise AI-content. Make sure your content is original, and has a human tone, to avoid being penalised.

• Consistent publishing: consistency is key to building a dedicated following and maintaining interest. You can use an editorial calendar to plan and schedule your posts to ensure a steady stream of content. You should aim to post about two to five times per week. This will help keep your account active without overwhelming your followers and connections.

Videos are rapidly trending upwards on LinkedIn. Make sure your business page has a diverse range of media to engage your audience. Source: Startups.co.uk

How to use LinkedIn analytics

LinkedIn analytics is a must-use tool to help you understand how your LinkedIn Business page is performing.

Using it is pretty straightforward: go to your company page and click on the ‘Analytics’ tab. From here, you can access a drop-down menu which allows you to view analytics for visitors, updates, followers, competitors, leads and employee advocacy.

In Analytics you can also get a quick snapshot of the last 30 days of activity, allowing you to adapt your LinkedIn strategy on the short term.

You can click on the drop-down element at the top of the analytics page to choose a specific date range to view results from. Source: Startups.co.uk

Unsure what each part tells you about your performance? Here are a couple of quick pointers:

• Visitor analysis → this tells you how many people are looking at your page, and most importantly, how they’re interacting with it. As you tailor your content, you’ll gradually pick up on what catches new visitors’ attention to improve your engagement rate.
• Competitor analysis → this tool compares page followers and engagement with your closer competitors. This makes it easier to know which pages to look at to understand what competitors are doing well that you could do better.
• Employee advocacy analytics → want to get your employees more engaged with your LinkedIn profile? This insight lets you review how actively your employees are interacting with your page.

We recommend you track these points as well as other LinkedIn analytics every week to understand how you’re performing and to get an idea of what data-driven improvements you can implement.

How to use LinkedIn ads to reach a wider audience

Social media management is always going to be a big concern for small business owners, but LinkedIn is very different from other social media platforms. After all, you’re marketing your professionalism, rather than your personal and casual side.

To do this, you have a choice of four different ad formats to choose from. Here’s what each one does:

Sponsored content

These ads are designed to appear in the LinkedIn news feed. These types of ads come in a variety of forms to try and engage the newsfeed audience, including:

• Native single image ads
• Native video ads
• Interactive carousel ads
• Event ads
• Document ads to collect leads and drive engagement
• Thought leader posts
• Click-to-message ads
• Connected TV ads
• Newsletter ads

Sponsored messaging

With this ad format you can reach out directly to professionals via LinkedIn Messaging. You can do this through choose-your-own-path conversation ads, or through direct message ads.

Lead Gen forms

With this ad, you can collect quality leads from your ads on LinkedIn with pre-filled forms.

Text and dynamic ads

These ads are run on the LinkedIn right rail. They come in three different flavours:

• Text ads: a self-service pay per click (PPC) platform to help drive new customers to your business
• Spotlight ads: these showcase your business to help increase traffic to your landing page
• Follower ads: these promote your LinkedIn page with the goal of getting you more followers

How do I make the most of my LinkedIn ads?

Here’s the best practice to follow, to make sure your ads are as impactful as they can be:

• Be strategic with your location → this is one of the mandatory fields LinkedIn asks you for when kickstarting your ads campaign. Before you commit to a LinkedIn ad, make sure you know specifically what city or area you’re targeting to boost your chances of success.
• Avoid hyper-targeting → although you do want to have a clear idea of your target audience, don’t limit it to the point where you only have a small pool of people. A good rule of thumb is to keep a target audience of over 50,000 for sponsored content, and text ads and over 15,000 for message ads.
• Monitor your campaign closely → once your ads are live and have accumulated enough data, you can click the demographics tab in the ads campaign manager to see how well your ads are performing. You’ll see detailed information about the professionals who clicked and converted on your ads.

Lead generation on LinkedIn

When used effectively, LinkedIn can be a goldmine for high quality leads for B2B businesses: over 90% of marketers use LinkedIn for their B2B marketing, and advertisers see a 2-5x higher return on investment with LinkedIn Ads.

How much does lead generation cost on LinkedIn?

When talking about lead gen pricing, the costs aren’t very transparent. But our general guide is that you can expect to be paying roughly £4.29 per click per ad, £5.38 per 1000 impressions, and £0.65 per send.

While this does make LinkedIn advertising more expensive than other social media platforms, keep in mind that users on LinkedIn usually display higher user intent, which makes it easier for them to convert.

Three top tips for successful lead generation

Here’s three points to consider to increase high quality leads:

• A seamless form: you should have a clear, quick-to-fill-in form. Ideally it should be able to be completed in just seconds.
• Demonstrate authority and credibility: ensure your executives have a strong presence on LinkedIn, and that your own LinkedIn business page is highly polished.
• An active presence: if your customers already know who you are, it’ll make it much easier for your ads to have the impact you need. The best way to do this is go where your customers will be, e.g. a  LinkedIn group expressly dedicated to your industry’s updates.

What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

Essentially, it’s an AI-powered paid tool that provides access to a vast network of potential leads and insights, as well as tools to help you target, engage and close more deals.

How much does LinkedIn Sales Navigator cost?

You can choose from three different plans when you’re taking out a LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription. Here’s a breakdown of what you get with each:

• Core – £59.99 per month (billed annually) – you’ll have access to advanced lead and company search, alerts on your saved leads and accounts, and create custom lists.
• Advanced – £124.99 per month (billed annually) – you’ll get access to all the Core benefits, and also you’ll be able to share content and track engagement and ask for warm introductions from teammates.
• Advanced Plus – contact sales – besides all the Core and Advanced features, you can also get CRM updates with data validation, integration of CRM contacts, and advanced enterprise integrations.

How do I get the most out of LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

To get your money’s worth from the platform, here are a couple of steps to take:

1. Use LeadBuilder: this powerful search tool makes it easier for you to filter leads by company, job title, industry, company size, geography, and more. All you have to do is click the LeadBuilder button next to the search bar. Then, select the filters you want to use to narrow down your search results.
2. Save all relevant prospects in the search results to build your list: this lets you swiftly keep track of and manage your leads, as well as receive updates on them. To save a lead to a list, simply click the checkbox next to their name.
3. Utilise account maps: an account map is a visual representation of your sales pipeline. To create one, you can use tools like Lucidchart or Visio. Simply add your leads and accounts to the map, and then connect them with lines to show how they are related.
4. Use TeamLink Connections: this lets you see which of your connections are also connected to your leads, and use this information to make a good first impression. To use this feature, go to the Leads tab and click the TeamLink Connections filter. This will show you a list of leads who are connected to your first or second degree connections.

LinkedIn for business best practices

1. Create a strong profile: your profile is your first impression on LinkedIn, so make sure it’s polished and professional. Use a clear and concise headline, write a compelling summary that highlights your skills and experience, and include relevant keywords.

2. Build your network: the more connections you have, the more likely you are to be seen by potential employers, clients, and partners. Connect with people you know and admire, and join relevant groups and communities.

3. Share valuable content: post articles, blog posts, and other thought leadership content that is relevant to your industry and audience. This will help you to establish yourself as an expert and attract new followers.

4. Engage with your audience: comment on other people’s posts, share their content, and start conversations. The more engaged you are, the more visible you will be in the LinkedIn feed.

5. Track your results: use LinkedIn analytics to track your progress and see what’s working and what’s not. This data will help you to refine your strategy and improve your results over time.

Bonus tip: be yourself! People can spot a fake from a mile away, so be genuine and authentic in your interactions on LinkedIn.