LinkedIn is the least sexy of all the social media platforms. But what it lacks in sex appeal, it makes up for in results. If you are doing B2B marketing, demand generation or working to establish your brand as a thought leader, then LinkedIn should be a part of your marketing strategy.
Since 2003, LinkedIn has been a go-to for job seekers and those looking to hire. Over the last 19 years, it has evolved (while very slowly š) to being more than just a platform for recruiters. So what else CAN it do for your brand from a social media perspective?
- Drive traffic to your website
- Increase brand awareness
- Generate new leads
- Grow revenue (by increasing sign ups or sales)
- Boost brand engagement
- Build a community around your business
- Provide social customer service
Since weāve established that LinkedIn is a social media opportunity not to be missed, letās talk about best practices for organic marketing on the platform. These are all available for FREE to you. You donāt have to have a paid account for access.
1. Go Creator mode. Creator Mode on LinkedIn gives you more tools to use to be noticed and found on the platform. Youāll find this under Resources on your profile page. This opens up a whole world of possibilities.
2. Think of LinkedIn as a landing page.Make sure you have an up-to-date profile photo, a properly sized banner photo that is on-brand and a well written headline that accurately describes you and what you do. The headline needs to be carefully articulated. This is what people will see as your intro description just below your name. Think of it as a mini billboard.
3. Get featured.Utilize the Features section to add a call-to-action (CTA). Add a link for people to book a call with you directly. Highlight your latest earned media or blog post or where they can sign up for your email list.
4. Company page versus personal profile. As of the writing of this blog post, Linkedin is favoring personal pages over company pages in terms of the algorithm. Currently, if you have the choice to post something to your personal page or your company page, it is a best practice to post to your personal page and then the company page shares it.
5. What makes good content? The best rule of thumb for great content is always be helpful.
- Bite-size info, tips, industry news, your expert opinion, etc.
- Polls drive engagement and get people involved in a discussion.
- Behind-the-scenes of your work, process, an event.
- Time-lapse videos or before/after photos show progress and illustrate visual storytelling.
- Be real, honest and authentic but donāt overshare. Remember, LinkedIn is the ābusiness partyā on social media. We really donāt want to hear about your kids or your husband unless it somehow relates to you as a business person.
- Breaking news from your industry, business community or your company.
6. Create your own branded #hashtag. Just like you do on other social media, use hashtags so your content can be found. We also recommend thatĀ you create your own branded hashtag. For example, our CEO, Elizabeth McFadden, uses #liztalks on all your posts. Judi Fox, a LinkedIn expert, tags all your posts with #foxrocks. Adding a personalized hashtag to all your posts, makes it easy for people to binge all your content. Pro Tip! Each time you make a new connection on LinkedIn, share your personalized hashtag with them and invite them to follow so they can quickly find all your content.
7. Turn your blogs into LinkedIn articles.You should be repurposing all your original content and hereās another way to do that. Review all your old blog posts. Are there any that are relevant to your LinkedIn audience? If so, turn those into articles on LinkedIn and write an intro explaining how your audience can use the info today. Google loves LinkedIn and these articles index really well when it comes to SEO.
8. It’s all in the comments. Yes, creating content on LinkedIn is important, but leaving meaningful comments can really take you places and help spread your reach. When you thoughtfully comment on someone elseās post, you are not only seen by your network, but also by the network of the postās original author. Wow! Strive for leaving 1 MEANINGFUL comment a day, 5x a week.
9. Donāt depend on the algorithm for who you see in your feed. If you rely on LinkedIn to serve you posts in your feed by people you want to stay connected with or follow, stop. Instead, make a list of people that get you into meetings, make meaningful connections for you, clients, journalists, podcasters, super fans, etc. Then, go to their profile page and click the ābell.ā This will notify you when they create a post so you can like that post or leave a comment.
10. Donāt pitch-slap your connections. One thing we can all agree on is that it’s very annoying to just meet someone on LinkedIn and the next thing you know youāre getting a hard sell direct message from them. UGH. Do not send a salesy message to your new connections. No one wants that. Establish a relationship first and then offer how you can help them.Ā
Social media and marketing strategy for scaling companies is one of our specialties here at Novella Brandhouse. Grab a spot on our calendar to discuss how we can help.
