You know that LinkedIn is an outstanding platform for B2B marketing. But it’s not enough to just share your content and company updates on LinkedIn regularly. Here are four ways to make sure your LinkedIn marketing strategy is set up for success.

1. Optimize Your Company Page

Make sure you take the following steps to optimize your LinkedIn company page:

• Optimize your page for search. Company pages are SEO-friendly, so make sure to include your primary keywords in your company description. Don’t forget to add keywords to your specialties so you show up in search results.

• Be consistent in your branding. Use the same company logo and visual elements that appear on your website and other social channels. However, because your audience on LinkedIn might be slightly different from your other social channels, feel free to change your banner image and background image to speak directly to your LinkedIn followers.

• Speak directly to your target buyer personas. In your company description, let them know what you do in a way that speaks to their pain points. Make sure you clearly lay this out in the first couple sentences of the description to entice the visitor to click "read more," which is when the link to your website becomes visible. The idea here is to hook them with a value proposition and a description of your offerings to draw the click to your website, where the heavy lifting will happen.

2. Segment Content with Showcase Pages

Links to your Showcase Pages show up on the right side of your main page and give companies a space to deliver content related to their product and service offerings. You should have a Showcase Page for each segment of your audience  with their specific needs in mind.

When choosing names for your Showcase Pages, keep in mind that names must be unique, and that only the first 22 characters will show on your company page. When publishing content to these pages, feel free to be promotional, but also include plenty of informative content for prospects who are researching solutions.

3. Go Searching

Familiarize yourself with some of the built-in lead-generation tools LinkedIn offers, such as  the Advanced Search feature, which lets you filter users by location, industry, current company and more. You'll get a list of matches along with a sidebar of options for further filtering before you start making connections.

Another feature is Saved Search. Once you've established a group you'd like to reach out to, you can keep returning to this list whenever you need to.

Another way to identify people who might be interested in your products and services is to search for LinkedIn Groups. You want to find groups that are relevant as well as active so you're not trying to mingle in “dead” groups. Once you find a few that are a good fit, you can join them and then start working the crowd.

But that doesn’t mean bombarding group members with ads. In fact, that’s a great way to get removed from the group. Instead, start by simply commenting on posts and having conversations with other group members. Then, you can start sharing your relevant and educational — not promotional — content.

4. Publish Original Content

Not only will LinkedIn's publishing platform help you connect with people in your network, it will also help you reach new prospects. All the major search engines crawl LinkedIn posts, so your content ends up displayed on search engine results pages, too.

To get the best results from your content published on LinkedIn, it's important to create new content or post curated content on a regular basis. You'll also want to include a call-to-action on each of your posts to let readers know where they can go for more of the same. You can direct them to another post, encourage subscriptions to your blog or newsletter or direct traffic to your website.

With more than 467 million current users from virtually every industry, LinkedIn has established itself as a natural fit for B2B marketing. The rules of engagement are different than other social media platforms, but with 79 percent of B2B marketers saying LinkedIn is an effective lead-generation source, it's worth getting right.