Why LinkedIn?
You may be wondering why is there a need to build up a business LinkedIn account when the platform is mostly used for job searches and to connect with professionals for personal purposes. As a career-oriented channel, LinkedIn is the most effective platform to establish a B2B relationship with your customers. Let's take a look at the data about LinkedIn.
From the graph, you can see that the most significant benefit a LinkedIn profile can bring to you is its ability to generate leads and redirect users to your company's website. In addition, LinkedIn shows that 80% of B2B leads are generated from the platform. Moreover, LinkedIn has had a stable increase in users throughout the years. In 2019, reached a total of 660 million users worldwide.
Above all, LinkedIn has undoubtedly become the most influential social platform for professionals. Today, we have gathered 6 key points to help you grow your business through LinkedIn.
Building Your Profile
A LinkedIn profile is the face of your company on a public high traffic platform. A complete profile will double the visitors to your business profile. There are seven crucial bits of information that you need to fill out: your organization's type, description, logo, size, website, industry, and location. A detail description of your business profile will advance your SEO to bring potential connections. Plus, setting up your location will help you connect with local professionals and businesses.
Your Content is Not an Ad
The content that you post defines the persona of your organization. It is best to publish content that reflects your organization's values. When you're creating content, you should consider your audience. Instead of posting content solely about your business, try to put yourself in their shoes and think about what types of content that a viewer on LinkedIn wants to see. Essentially, you want to produce content that is informational and interest your viewers. After all, 2 out of 3 LinkedIn users pay active attention to the news.
In terms of choosing the right time to post, Sprout Social has gathered global data into this chart so you can plan accordingly.
It is obvious that as a professional-oriented platform, LinkedIn has the highest engagement rate from Monday to Friday from 8 am to 3 pm. Of course, you should always pay attention to your company’s own analytics. If your LinkedIn connections tend to engage with your posts at different times, it’s best to pay attention to that.
On a side note - if you ever run out of ideas to create a post, we recommend posting your top content from the past (so long as it’s evergreen). Due to the algorithm of the site, it is possible that at times, a mere 2-6% of your audience may have seen your published posts, so it doesn’t hurt to repost things.
Engage with Your Niche
There are several ways to boost your engagement on LinkedIn. Naturally, on every social media platform, building engagement is the key to increase followers organically. Below are 3 tools of the platform that you can use to boost your engagement.
Search tool - Oftentimes, simply reaching out to someone through LinkedIn can result in a strong lead. The platform's search tool is quite accurate in that it offers a drop-down menu to narrow your search between location, connections, and current company. Furthermore, the “All Filters” tab provides even more precise results to cater to your company’s demands and specialties.
@ and comment - Mentioning users and commenting on their page is the most direct way to engage with others on the platform. We encourage you to mention influencers, companies, and prominent leaders that you'd like to associate with and comment on their page to increase visibility with their followers as well. However, we do like to remind you not to overdo it , as this can cause you to appear as spammy.
Employee advocacy - According to LinkedIn, employee engagement can largely contribute to spreading out your page's content to other users' network. When on average, 42% of the LinkedIn users have a range from 300 to 999 connections, multiplying those connections with each employee can lead to a great result in networking.
Join aGroup ( or Create One )
Another convenient way to generate leads is to join an existing LinkedIn group that aligns with your business' orientation. Logistically, if a group is formed by like-minded individuals then joining specific groups can benefit you largely by connecting to people within your niche. Additionally, it’s important to have your employees participate in your chosen groups to raise awareness for your brand. Having employees to engage with members of the group shows a genuine connection with others. You can also start your own group if you are unable to find any groups that fit your needs.
Now when you're looking into a new Groups page, you'll get a quick peek into the group's highlight as well as how active the group is.
The Discover tab on the left then will allow you to discover groups from your industry so you can request to join.
Direct Contact Through InMail
InMail is an amazing feature that provides access to direct contact with anyone on the platform no matter whether you're in their network. According to LinkedIn, the response rate by contacting through InMail is 3x more effective than traditional email. The feature also comes with built-in analytics to help you gain insights about your messages. The only downside of the feature is that it does charge you for $79 per month, so use the cost as an incentive to be active if you decide to purchase the feature.
Narrow Down Interested Audience by Retargeting
You probably already have experience in repeatedly seeing the ads of the product that you're looking for on the feed of your Facebook page. Now, LinkedIn is offering a similar feature called Matched Audience. Due to the fact that around 98% of visitors don't convert on their first visit, Matched Audience is a great tool to retarget interested users that have already visited your website. The feature also allows you to upload contacts' information to advance targeting your ad to the right people.
Conclusion
After you established with your LinkedIn profile, don't forget to invite your contacts through email and add your existing social media platforms onto your website. This way, you will be able to increase followers by attracting your existing audience and keep on building your connection from then on.
Did this article help you understand LinkedIn marketing strategy better? What other platforms would like to see us write about? Comment below, and follow our social channels if you want to see future content catered to your interests!