In digital and social marketing, we talk about Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok a lot, but less talked about is LinkedIn. Contrary to popular belief, LinkedIn isn’t just for working professionals and job seekers. For entrepreneurs, brands and businesses, LinkedIn marketing is actually a great way to reach professional audiences!
Over the last year, LinkedIn has rolled out many features that drive engagement. This includes polls and LinkedIn stories. But how effective is using LinkedIn as a marketing channel? According to this study, LinkedIn marketing drives 277% more leads than just Facebook marketing alone! Intrigued yet? Read on to find out more about how to use LinkedIn marketing to grow your business and build connections.
1. Optimize your LinkedIn page
We hear all about optimizing websites when it comes to brands and business, but what does optimizing your LinkedIn page mean? Much like on your Instagram page, consider how you want to get your branding across in an instant. It’s a good idea to add a summary line to your profile that describes your brand’s mission, and share your brand’s story on your ‘About’ page. Think about who is your target audience on LinkedIn, and edit your page to attract that specifically. For example, if you’re trying to seek new hires, consider sharing about your team and employee benefits.
How your page looks visually also plays a part in supporting your LinkedIn marketing goals, so make sure that you have a hi-res, well-designed profile picture and cover page. Everything that appears in your LinkedIn should have a purpose in setting the tone of your brand! Also, make sure to use relevant keywords in your LinkedIn page to boost your brand’s visibility and discoverability.
2. Promote your LinkedIn page
You don’t just create a kickass LinkedIn page for your brand and then leave it. The next step is to get the word out there! If you have employees, send out a company-wide email to let them know of the news. Ask them to follow the page, add it as their place of work and share it to their personal contacts. This report shows that content shared by employees is actually eight times more effective than brand-shared content!
Likewise you should also announce the news and ask for follows from your personal network and to your customers. Make use of all of your digital and social media touchpoints such as Facebook, Instagram, email newsletters and websites. On LinkedIn itself, page admins can actually invite their connections to follow. Click on ‘Admin Tools’ in the upper right corner and click on ‘Invite Connections’.
Photo credit: linkedin.com
3. Start creating and sharing content
Now that you have some followers, it’s time to start sharing content! But not just any content – photos and videos generally perform better on social media, and it’s no exception for LinkedIn. According to them, posts with images get 98% more comments as compared to those without! Custom collages with three to four images also tend to perform well on pages.
If you want to take it up a notch, videos are the ultimate winner when it comes to content type, seeing five times more engagement on LinkedIn. The platform also auto plays native videos when a user scrolls to it, explaining why it’s great at capturing attention. LinkedIn’s algorithm also prioritize videos created on or uploaded directly to the platform.
4. Use LinkedIn’s features
Thanks to new features on LinkedIn, there are now more ways than ever to connect with your followers and audience. Here are some that are great for driving engagement:
LinkedIn Live
Brands and creators are embracing live videos more than ever before. And it’s no wonder, because it’s a personable yet entirely digital way for them to connect with their community. It transcends borders and even a global pandemic. Also, according to LinkedIn, live videos get 24 times more engagement than native videos!
However, LinkedIn Live isn’t available to everyone yet, and users have to submit an application form for review. It will take into account your content and video creation history, audience size and engagement rates, and your two-factor authentication (2FA) also has to be enabled. Once you’re set, you need to use a third-party streaming tool to host live videos. The upside to this is that it also allows you to stream across different platforms at once!
LinkedIn Polls
LinkedIn polls are a great way to drive engagement in a short time, and it allows for a lot of flexibility. Your topic can be lighthearted and humorous:
Photo credit: blog.linkedin.com
Or for genuinely getting feedback on more serious topics and finding out what your audience cares about:
Photo credit: blog.linkedin.com
As a poll creator, only you can see who has voted and what they voted for. You can also see the activity in real time, such as how much time is left to vote, the results so far, and how votes were cast. Find out more on how to create LinkedIn polls here.
Quick reactions
Much like Facebook reactions, users can now react to a LinkedIn post with a range of different expressions.
Photo credit: blog.linkedin.com
These expressions were designed with professional updates in mind. For example, the ‘Celebrate’ reaction is great for updates that include a promotion, launching a new business, or welcoming a new team member.
This new feature not only makes engagement faster and easier, it also opens the way for creative marketing ideas. For example, Gymshark is great at using LinkedIn’s expressions to get a gauge of their audience’s identity, thoughts and feelings.
Photo credit: later.com
5. Use LinkedIn Analytics
Find out what’s working and what’s not with LinkedIn analytics. You can track the number of visitors to your page and see which tabs they are most interested in. You can even see their demographics, including their job function, location and industry. Gaining a deeper understanding of who your audience is will help inform your LinkedIn marketing plan and any changes if necessary.
Photo credit: linkedin.com
Apart from visitor analytics, LinkedIn can also reflect individual post analytics. You can see how well your content is doing by scrolling to a specific post and clicking on ‘Show Stats’ in the bottom right corner.
Photo credit: linkedin.com
What type of content do your followers tend to engage with most? From here, you can tailor your LinkedIn marketing strategy to include similar content and build on your success.
