Known as the largest professional social network, marketing on LinkedIn can be effective when done right.
LinkedIn now has more than 660 million registered professionals.
LinkedIn has assisted about 45 percent of marketers with customer acquisition, while the platform accounts for about 80 percent of B2B (business to business) leads.
If you’re not already on LinkedIn or might not be using the platform to its full potential, you’re missing out on marketing opportunities for you as a professional and your brand.
The following are six tips for better marketing on LinkedIn.
Optimize your profile and page
While it’s a simple step, creating and optimizing your LinkedIn profile and/or page is a key first step when marketing yourself or your brand.
The best part of this step is that it’s completely free to do.
It matters because you want to showcase what you’re all about for everyone who comes across your presence.
The actions you should take to optimize your LinkedIn profile include (but are not limited to):
- Using a high-quality profile image that’s professional and is close up on your face
- Including your current job position
- Add at least a half dozen relevant skills
- Fill out any past professional experience
- Connect with relevant colleagues
The actions you should take to optimize your LinkedIn page include (but are not limited to):
- Using a high-quality brand logo image
- Choosing a high-quality cover image that represents your brand
- Filling out all available fields, such as About, Life, Jobs, etc.
- Consistent posts that include a mix of content
Strategize your content
Avoid the mistake of creating and optimizing your LinkedIn profile and/or page—and then neglecting it.
Content is like the marketing currency of the internet, especially on social media. You’ll want to create, share and publish content on LinkedIn that educates, informs, guides, inspires and/or entertains your following. A content calendar can help you stay organized.
Be sure to mix your content up to be as engaging as possible. This includes:
- Custom images
- Native video posted directly to the platform
- Native articles that look like blogs but created within LinkedIn itself
- Links to not just your own articles but those of others as well
Just remember that LinkedIn is not a text-only platform, so break out of text-only posts. Think through the goal of your LinkedIn presence. Is it brand awareness? To establish yourself or your brand as a thought leader in your industry?
Whatever the goal, your content should support and project that. You want your content to be actionable. Then, be sure to engage with others’ content and any comments on your own content. Social media (including LinkedIn) is a two-way conversation, not just a broadcast.
Involve your colleagues, employees
More than possibly any other social media platform, LinkedIn is all about the connections you make.
And in that sense, your colleagues and/or employees can be some of your biggest advocates.
You can encourage colleagues to engage with your content and endorse your listed skills.
Employees can add your company to their personal profiles, engage with company posts and share them with their networks. They also can share any news or articles that your company is featured in on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Groups are also a great place for you, your colleagues or your employees to get involved with. They’re designated pages that enable people from within the same industry or with shared interests to interact with each other.
Personalize your direct messages
Direct messaging on LinkedIn is a popular tactic on LinkedIn, especially for sales representatives and job recruiters.
But these messages are often generic, templated and not very effective.
The more you can do to engage with your recipient’s content and review his or her profile for key points that you can use to connect with, the better.
You also can consider using personalized InMail, which is a feature that’s available to individual Premium accounts (not through LinkedIn Company Pages). This is a great way to reach out to influential individuals on the platform to build a relationship. LinkedIn InMail gets three times more responses than regular emails.
Consider LinkedIn ads
LinkedIn offers advertising opportunities on its platform. In fact, its Matched Audiences feature allows you to target the most relevant users by retargeting people who have visited your website as well as people who are on your existing account or your email contacts.
This is an effective tactic because these individuals you’re targeting have some familiarity with you or your company already. So, there’s an increased possibility that you’ll convert them into customers.
Monitor your performance
Whether you’re tracking how your profile is doing (though a LinkedIn Premium account) or how your page is doing, understanding your performance on LinkedIn is important so that you can make adjustments to your strategy as you go along.
It all comes down to seeing what’s working and what’s not.
Remember, there’s no such thing as a failed post. Everything is a learning opportunity.
If you’re looking to make the management of your LinkedIn presence a little easier, consider one of these 11 free (or almost free) social media management tools.
For more on how to market well using LinkedIn, see what LinkedIn itself advises.
While you’re considering how to improve your LinkedIn marketing strategy, think about your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.
