Since we live in an age in which anything even remotely significant is shared online, businesses can hardly afford to ignore the clear benefits of social media marketing. Through an exclusively business-oriented social networking model, LinkedIn® offers an added dimension to businesses who want to promote themselves online.

If you haven’t yet fallen head over heels in love with LinkedIn, and are wondering why you should start a relationship, here are six benefits that LinkedIn can offer your business.

1. Locate colleagues, suppliers, and distributors.

The LinkedIn Company Directory allows you to search companies or browse industries to track down businesses that could potentially benefit your bottom line.

2. Promote your company, product, or service.

Organizations can use LinkedIn to promote themselves, their businesses, and their products or services completely free through individual and company pages. LinkedIn Direct Ads also allow businesses and individual entrepreneurs to create paid ad campaigns that target other LinkedIn professionals who might be interested in their product or service.

3. Research your competition, customers, or partners.

LinkedIn makes it easy to do extensive, business-related research all in one place. You’ll have no trouble finding information about companies you may be considering dealing with. You’ll also be able to research the competition and learn how you can improve your own business methods in order to stay at the cutting edge of your market.

4. Increase traffic by linking to your site from your LinkedIn page.

LinkedIn can help you vastly improve traffic to your website by allowing you to place a link to your site on your profile or company page. Chances are if someone clicks on your link to go to your website, then it will improve your website conversion optimization.

5. Improve your Google PageRank.

LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. Since LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high PageRank in Google, this is a good way to influence what people see when they search for you.

6. Recruit new employees.

LinkedIn members who are seeking employment will be able to locate your company when doing job searches, which can help you attract qualified job prospects to fill your vacant positions.

LinkedIn is an irrefutably beneficial tool to businesses in the quest to finding the most effective marketing mix. Most of LinkedIn services are free, so why not take advantage of the extra placement? The risk of not embracing social media for organizations is certainly high, but the cost of embracing it is low.