LinkedIn is a social media platform that is rapidly growing. According to LinkedIn, it can connect your brand with more than 450 million professionals across the globe. Easily mistaken as the Facebook of the professional world; LinkedIn is a platform more suitable for sharing business information and accomplishments, rather than socializing specifically.
There are two typical kinds of LinkedIn users
The first is the user that connects with everyone, even if they have never met them. They want to reach the most people just to get their name out there and have connections with everyone possible.
The second kind of user is more particular with whom they connect with, usually only accepting if they worked with the person or went to school with them.
Both practices are seen, and there is not necessarily a better one over the other. It really is up to how you want to use the platform.
LinkedIn is not only for personal accounts. You can actually create a business profile page that adds value to your business’s marketing strategy. While creating a company LinkedIn page is simple and not time-consuming, you need to be making sure that you are creating the profile in a way that you want possible future clients and employees to see your brand. It is crucial to ensure it is up to your business’s standard and aligns with branding etc.
Steps to help your marketing strategy on LinkedIn:
Set goals
Just as you would before starting any project, it is important for your company to set goals when making this adjustment/addition to your overarching marketing strategy. These goals need to be quantifiable and attainable so after the project you can clearly see if it helped your company and if it did, by how much.
If your business has never heard of SMART goals, SMART is an acronym for an aspect that each of your goals must have. Smart stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.
Once you accomplish defining your goals, it is easier to then establish the target audience you are trying to reach.
Have employees connect with the company page
The next step after creating an active LinkedIn page is gaining more connections with people. Employees are your biggest advocates, especially on LinkedIn. Not only should you encourage your employees to add their job onto their profile, which will expand the company’s reach further, but encourage them to also follow the company’s page which will expand reach again.
Not only should your business be connecting with employees but also influential partners and even customers. A business can use LinkedIn to encourage customers and others to join email lists, newsletters or look at recent blog posts, which all fosters engagement between the brand and customer or prospect.
Join groups
LinkedIn makes it easy for users to connect with each other through groups. These groups range from a wide variety of topics such as goals or skills to better know and understand.
Posting in these groups adds to the growth of your business reach. The more engaged your company is in these groups, the more people in the group will see your company as an expert in your field. Try, as a business, to answer more questions than asked to keep up the expert reputation in the group.
Post work updates and relevant articles
LinkedIn is not only a site for showing who you know to an employer but it is still classified as a social media platform. Companies, as well as employees, are able to post on their page about accomplishments they have had in their field or a new project they are working on.
Not only should you be posting your work but also post blogs or information that would be helpful or relevant to your target audience.
Remember to always post content that connects back to your goals and objectives as a business. If the blog is from your company that is great. However, if you find an interesting article or blog post that is not sourced from your company it is completely acceptable to still share this. It shows that your business is keeping up with trends and news in your respective field and are being thought-leaders on particular topics.
Include pictures and media
Before discussing what media you should include in your post, it is important to know what not to include. LinkedIn is a business social media, however it is not like Twitter or Facebook where people use a more relaxed tone.
LinkedIn is professional, and this is practiced and seen through users posts and profiles. LinkedIn is not the place to post gifs, memes, or other media that are not taken seriously.
However, because LinkedIn is professional and can often be text heavy, incorporating a photo to attract users to click a link is appropriate. Your business is still trying to stand out from everyone else so by linking a video, or adding a picture, you are more likely to generate engagement. According to Hubspot, LinkedIn figures show that posts with an image included get 98 percent more comments.
Advertise
If your company has the budget to add this element into your marketing strategy it may be worth it. Using sponsored ads on LinkedIn allows your company to get even more reach on the site. Your business can specifically target the incoming professionals you want, or any specific target audience you want to reach.
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