You clicked on this article, so you recognize the power of an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy. But, if you still need some convincing, here are the only two statistics you need to know: 91% of executives are present on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn contributes to more than half of the total social traffic to company websites.
An active hub of your target audience and with the promise of a high conversion rate, LinkedIn is an essential building block of your company’s overall LinkedIn marketing strategy.
Let’s jump into the 7 actionable tips that will transform your LinkedIn marketing strategy
LinkedIn Marketing Strategies
1. Understand the algorithm
Before you start posting and optimizing your company’s page on LinkedIn, you need to understand how the social platform’s algorithm works. It is commonly believed that the algorithm doesn’t prefer one format of content to another. Still, it does place heavy emphasis on two factors critical to building a strong LinkedIn presence: relevance and likelihood of engagement.
Relevance is a crucial component of how posts get ranked on the users’ feeds. The content that is aligned with the past behaviors of users on LinkedIn is ranked high by the algorithm. The past behavior includes the posts that users have liked, commented on, and shared previously. Hence, to reach your ideal audience, your content should be relevant (i.e. your target consumers are interested in the topic you have shared).
The idea of engagement goes hand in hand with that of relevance. Engagement is partially time-bound. From the moment your content is shared on the feed, the algorithm takes note of how many users are interacting with your post. The better the quality of your post, the more users will engage with it. As a result, the algorithm will push it out to more feeds.
2. Brush up your basics
So you’re probably past step one: you have created a LinkedIn account for your company. It’s now time to first focus on the smaller, but essential elements of your LinkedIn strategy.
- Cover photo: This is your first LinkedIn strategy to get creative and attract more viewers. To convey either company information or build an emotion that you want your target user to associate with your brand, use a high definition cover image. Either use an appealing design/illustration/creative or use easy-to-digest text, followed by a call to action.
- Profile details: This is an obvious LinkedIn strategy, but one that many companies miss out on. Complete your entire profile by answering each section (company logo, about us, etc.) to gain credibility and appear professional.
- Company description: The most important LinkedIn strategy on your profile. The first two sentences need to be informative, yet leave the reader wanting more — so they can click on “see more”. Use a concise copy that directly talks to your target audience. Include information like the company story, instead of the number of office locations, to build a real connection with the reader.
3. Visuals sell
For a minute, step into the shoes of your target consumers. Would you rather have an engaging photo or video on your feed or just monotonous text sentences? You will be inclined to choose the former. A strongly knit LinkedIn marketing strategy includes the use of custom photos — stock photos work too. They don’t have the personal touch that custom ones do.
Additionally, videos perform exceptionally well. While you can post links to your YouTube videos on a LinkedIn post, you should plan to use the LinkedIn native video option instead. It instantly captures audience attention by auto-playing when a person is scrolling their feed. Furthermore, explore the live video space as it amounts to a 25 times higher engagement rate. Lastly, you can also attach presentations and/or PDFs that will provide expertise and authority to your firm’s image.
4. Content Creation
Don’t use this platform to showcase your sales and marketing promotional materials. Instead, base your LinkedIn marketing strategy off of value creation, by providing meaningful information, guides, or even entertainment for your ideal reader. Don’t forget to use at least three hashtags as your LinkedIn strategy.
Don’t forget to use niche (#digitalmarketingadviceforbeginners) hashtags, instead of overly broad (#digitalmarketing) ones. Also, timing is an important part of your LinkedIn strategy. Post earlier in the morning or later in the evening because that’s when professionals are on their phones for non-work related matters.
- Ask questions: Remember point 1. Audience interaction should be an essential aspect of your strong LinkedIn strategy. So, when you post a question, the chances of a LinkedIn user leaving a comment are higher than if you hadn’t included a question in your post. (Tip: Ask your audience for the kind of content they would like to see or the topics that are of interest to them, and accordingly pivot your LinkedIn marketing strategy)
- Jump on the news-bandwagon: Stay updated with the latest news in your industry and frequently state your opinion on it. Take a stance and post about it on time as a part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy. (Tip: Check-in daily with the “today’s news and views” section in the column on the right)
- Use infographics: Share easily digestible information in the form of pie charts/graphs, etc. to catch the attention of your audience. You can also share quotes and professional memes (if that matches your brand personality) to increase engagement as a part of your LinkedIn strategy.
- Share your pearls of wisdom: Even though visuals constitute an important aspect of your LinkedIn strategy, here’s a reminder that you can also post text — no links, images, no fluff. Just post a few lines of advice or an anecdotal tale that people can resonate with and engage with.
5. Employee involvement
Your employees are the influencers that don’t charge you for being your company’s advocate. Ensure that your employees are following your company on LinkedIn from their accounts and are engaging with the company’s content, so it has a wider reach. Additionally, to increase engagement, you can post photos and videos of the employees in brainstorming/team building sessions and images of your office. This will add a human touch to your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
Read: Future of Social Media Marketing in India
6. Paid efforts
Like every other social media platform, LinkedIn also allows you to run ads on it. Make use of the “matched audiences” feature. It helps you to directly target the users who have already engaged with you on your company website and the ones who’s contact details you already have.
With this set of users, you need to focus on conversion only, as you are past the awareness stage. With repeated exposure to your ads and great content, you’ll become top of mind for these users. This LinkedIn strategy ensures a better reach to your target users.
7. Analyze your data
Your LinkedIn marketing strategy is incomplete without analyzing your marketing efforts’ performance. You can fetch data from LinkedIn’s native analytics dashboard. Post a variety of content throughout the week. Then at the end of the week, look at the data to understand what posts are doing well, and then make more of those. Additionally, make a note of your top-performing posts so you can repurpose them for when you run out of ideas or are working on a different part of your LinkedIn strategy.
The three metrics you should track are engagement, conversions, and web traffic. If you’re building a community, focus on the engagement metric (like/comments). If you’re using your LinkedIn marketing strategy to get users to sign up for an event/newsletter, i.e. to take any action, then closely track your conversion. Finally, measure your web traffic to see the number of users who are intrigued by your LinkedIn content enough to visit your website.
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Conclusion
The blueprint for your new LinkedIn marketing strategy is now ready. But to execute the rest of your LinkedIn strategy, don’t forget to explore the invaluable resources available on upGrad’s blog. From Artificial Intelligence to Big Data, you can find informative articles on multiple such topics on upGrad.
Don’t forget, LinkedIn marketing strategy is just one element in your broader social content plan. To learn about not only social media, content marketing, and branding, but also get a foundational understanding of the digital marketing field, enroll yourself in the Digital Marketing and Communication PG certification. Become one of the 3000+ students who upped their digital marketing literacy over six months. After all, upskilling yourself is the need of the hour to execute a strong LinkedIn marketing strategy.
This article originally published on upGrad blog.
