More than 500M people of the world's professionals gather on LinkedIn to stay connected and informed, advance their careers and work smarter. But are you using LinkedIn to its fullest potential?

It might seem a little bit intimidating. You have enough on your plate -- do you really need to be figuring out yet another way to create targeted content? Actually, yes. You have more power at your disposal with LinkedIn than you might realize.

Launch Your Company Page

The design of LinkedIn Company Pages has changed a lot over the years. Make sure yours is set up correctly and optimized for the latest layout, featuring a compelling and high-quality banner image. If you're looking to complement your organic LinkedIn marketing efforts with some paid advertising, LinkedIn Ads are a smart choice.

Use LinkedIn Sponsored Updates

Step it up a notch and leverage the power of segmentation with LinkedIn's targeting options, which enable you to target your status updates to specific users. Company Page administrators can target their updates using criteria like company size, industry, job function, seniority, geography, language, or by including/excluding company employees.

Share Audience Specific, Relative Content

To get the most out of LinkedIn for lead generation, promote and share links to your blog posts and landing pages in your Company Status Updates. You can get a sense of which types of content are most popular on LinkedIn in your industry with LinkedIn's Trending Content resource. It highlights the most popular content being shared on LinkedIn for various audiences and topic segments.