There are plenty of social media tools out there, and each has features that make it unique. The sheer volume of alternatives, though, means you need to cut the field down to the few with the greatest potential. For IT manufacturers and VARs, LinkedIn should be at the top of the social media list. This environment has more than 50 million reasons to use it for marketing your company, but in the interest of time, let’s look at the top five.

1. There are more than 50 million reasons to use LinkedIn
LinkedIn has approximately 54 million members; they use it to manage professional contacts, increase their visibility and learn about developments in their industries. Even if only a small fraction of them are relevant to your sales and marketing efforts, it’s still a pretty large pool … that’s waiting, even making it easy, to be found.

2. It’s all business
LinkedIn users are there for professional reasons. They leave the personal details, generally, to other social networks and use this one to grow their business contacts and raise their own profiles.

3. The tools are robust
In addition to being able to forge connections and build targeted groups, the platform now allows outside applications. You can develop custom tools to attract interaction from your target market, generate information you can use in the sales and marketing process and tailor your solutions to your clients’ needs. Flexibility has grown significantly, giving you the ability to make the tools LinkedIn doesn’t give you.

4. There’s no shortage of data
LinkedIn encourages its users to complete their profiles as fully as possible, and most seem to comply. This gives you the ability to develop detailed profiles of the people to whom you want to market and assemble extremely targeted lists. Every piece sent out the door – physical or digital – thus becomes much more valuable. The odds of prospect contact increase.