LinkedIn Checklist -7 tips for your LinkedIn Company page

LinkedIn is the top social media platform used by Fortune 500 companies. The SEO benefits are big, the opportunity to connect with your target market is endless and unlike Zuckerberg’s babies-FB and IG-LinkedIn still rewards good content. It’s not yet a pay-to-play game.

The LinkedIn audience is engaged. They’re looking to connect and learn; they have focused motivations to keep up with trends.

Did you know when it comes to lead gen campaigns; LinkedIn converts customers nearly 3X higher than Facebook and Twitter? If you’re a B2B biz-the FOMO is for real: 80% of leads from social media come from LinkedIn.

While your personal LinkedIn profile is important to building your personal brand-when it comes to capturing leads and converting LinkedIn users: a compelling company page will help you win.

These 7 tips will help you get the most connections, conversions, and job applicants from your company LinkedIn page.

1. Posting relevant, trending content is 🔑

Relevant, trending content gets engagement. LinkedIn’s ‘content suggestions’ tool is about to be your new BFF.

How to find it: Look for the content suggestions tab in the top left corner of your company page. Can’t find it? Slow down tiger, make sure you’re in admin view.

This tool conveniently recommends content that has been trending for the past 15 days. You can filter recommendations based on what your page followers, employees, or all LinkedIn users are sharing. You can hone in further by filtering their industry, location, job function, and even seniority. 😱 The world is your oyster.

Use this tool to engage with posts that are trending with your audience. Add dimension and expertise to conversations-you’ll gain followers and receive authentic engagement. We recommend reading the comments: are people asking questions that weren’t addressed in the article they shared? That’s your signal to get cracking on a blog, video, or checklist that addresses their unmet needs.

Tip: Posts related to industry trends get shared the most on LinkedIn. Follow experts in your space and share their industry insights on your LinkedIn page to build engagement.

2. Fill in all the blanks, double the visitors

Just like having a dating profile that’s half-empty-gaps on your LinkedIn page will negatively impact your chance of being found. It might sound like a no-brainer, but completed profiles receive up to 2X more visitors than those missing information. This includes a logo, tagline, website URL, company size, industry, and location.

It’s also important to give LinkedIn accurate information about your business so your competitor analytics section is legit. Spoiler: we get into the beauty of competitor analytics in point 7.

Tip: Starting from scratch? This by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions contains a step-by-step guide for creating a LinkedIn Company Page.

3. Post weekly

Posting once a week is the sweet spot. Companies that post weekly get double the lift in engagement . Here are some content ideas for LinkedIn:

• Repost interesting articles from others in your network.
• Reach out to your employees and ask them what articles they’ve recently read and enjoyed. Share these pieces in a way that recognizes the employee for their recommendation. Example: “Is your brand prepared for voice search? Here are 3 things to help you with Siri, Alexa, Bixby, and Cortana. This recommendation comes from our Research and Development intern, Jay Prasad!” Remember, consent is cool. Make sure to get a thumb’s up from employees before sharing their names on social media, if you haven’t done so already.
• Celebrate your team by posting about your employee’s accomplishments.
• Share testimonials from customers and tag their organizations.
• Post about the work you’re doing. Maybe you started using a new CRM application that’s making your life easier. Share your experience. Don’t forget to tag the organization in it; they might re-post.

Before you panic at the thought of creating new content every single week-focus on using what you already have. Creating a content repurposing plan can make your life easier.

Tip: Read 13 ways to repurpose content for some fresh inspiration.

4. Use keywords in your description

Google happens to L-O-V-E company LinkedIn pages. Search engines crawl these pages, and if they’re optimized, they’ll rank well.

So how do you make page 1 of the search results? Start by researching keywords relevant to your industry:

1. Think about what your average customer is searching for. Say you’re a B2B tech company and offer IT services such as configuration management and automating the deployment of new servers. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes-think about what they might type into Google when looking for what you sell. Depending on who your customers are, common search queries could be: configuration management software, help with configuration management or automation tools for deployment.

2. Google your competitors and note what keywords they’re using in their meta descriptions. Search keywords like these ones to see if the volume is high but the competition is low. That’s your opportunity. If you have to compete with others for keywords, that’s fine-but try to find additional words or phrases with less competition.

3. Find out how many people are googling these phrases by using tools such as or Keywords Everywhere .

Better understand how potential customers are looking for you by creating buyer personas. Pinpoint your target customers wants and needs by giving them life-what do they do for work? How much money do they make? What kinds of things interest them? Get real specific.

Tip: HubSpot has a great persona development exercise.

Once you’ve identified your keywords, it’s time to strategically include them into your description. Ensure your most important keywords are placed in the first 156 characters. Google previews up to 156 characters of your descriptions in the search results and LinkedIn cuts text off after line three.

While keywords are the focus here, you still have to ensure your writing is clear, concise, and conversational. Your words have to make sense and sound human. Remember: the keywords are for Google’s robots but the copy is for humans.

As noted in point #1: Trending content that’s relevant to your audience is crucial for engagement. It also has SEO perks. The more trending content you share, the higher your chances are of Google recognizing your page as a valuable source of information. According to LinkedIn, this can help you rank higher in search results. Keep reading to learn about a tool that will help you increase engagement among your followers.

5. Create Showcase Pages

LinkedIn Showcase pages allow organizations to focus on highlighting a specific product, promotion, or service. But we’re freaking out because it’s truly so much more than that!!! Showcase pages allow you to segment followers-and if we know one thing it’s that segmentation is like oxygen to marketers.

How to find this: To create a Showcase page, click on the ‘Admin Tools’ drop-down menu in the top right corner of your company page. Underneath ‘Extend your reach’ click on ‘Create Showcase Page’.

So, let’s say your B2B tech company has a Showcase page dedicated to webinars about the basics of configuration management. LinkedIn users can then follow this specific Showcase page without following your main company page. This might seem counterintuitive at first, but the benefit is customers who follow ‘Configuration Management 101’ will be served very different content than those who follow your general company page. The same goes for your ‘Cloud Migration Made Easy’ page; you can tailor content to be more relevant to these followers, and set up a clear path to purchase based on your different page audiences and their personas. Sick of hearing the word persona? Sorry not sorry-it always comes back to knowing your buyers.

Tip: Showcase pages have a completely separate URL, which includes the title of the page. You only get 100 characters for a Showcase page title. Use them wisely and take advantage of that bonus SEO real estate.

6. Create an employee engagement plan

90% of business leaders see a direct connection between employee engagement and business success. And employees have 10x the reach of company pages. Creating an employee engagement plan for your company LinkedIn page will boost your visibility and reach.

Tips to get your team involved:

• Encourage them to complete their personal LinkedIn profiles. Don’t forget to have them list your organization as their workplace.
• Champion client wins on LinkedIn. Engage with your current clients and post throwback pics of past ones.
• Host a LinkedIn day at work. Have a professional photographer come in and take headshots for LinkedIn profile pictures. Share examples of what effective personal profiles look like with your employees. The more successful their profiles are, the more potential your company page has.

• Offer rewards to the department that engages the most with your LinkedIn updates.
• Encourage everyone to give a shoutout to one team member every week on LinkedIn. They can do this by sharing a piece of their work or endorsing them for a particular skill.

7. Measure and benchmark

KPI’s are the real MVP’s; how else can you accurately track what’s working and what’s not? Every month you should be tracking what posts are resonating with your community so you can rinse and repeat the good ones. The ‘Analytics’ tab-beside ‘Content Suggestions’-is full of wondrous data that’s demanding your attention! Avoid cherry picking and go in with a focused plan. Here are 3 reporting habits to adopt:

• Check out the competition. Similar to Facebook’s version of this tool, LinkedIn selects competitors based on the info found on your business page. You can compare total followers, new followers, the number of updates, and engagement rates with those in your industry. This is where you should start when making realistic KPIs for yourself.
  How to get there: Analytics → Followers → Scroll down to the third column ‘Companies to track’.
• Look at who’s following you. If the right people aren’t visiting your page, what’s the point? The visitor analytics allow you to view the job function, location, seniority, industry, and company size of those looking at your page. If your target market is Senior Business Developers in San Fran, but your current demo is Sales Managers in NY-it’s time to reassess what you’re posting. Go back to point number one on this checklist to finesse your content strategy so you can start attracting your customers OR if you’re getting customers from this new demo, take another look at your personas. Either way, this information is a sign to dig deeper
  How to get there: ‘Analytics’ → ‘Updates’ → Scroll down to the second column ‘Follower demographics’.

• Measure post engagement. Look at what posts are performing the best and do more of that! Engagement rates and clicks are two KPI’s you can focus on when determining if content was successful or not.
  How to get there: Analytics → Updates → Scroll to the second column ‘update engagement’.

KPI kit for beginners:

1. Track total followers, new followers, the number of updates, and engagement rates.
2. Regularly review what posts performed the best based on engagement rates and clicks. Keep posting this kind of content.
3. Compare your KPI’s to your competitors.

LinkedIn is truly a magical marketing tool. Start on some of the actionables we’ve outlined in this checklist and if you need our help, hit us up. We want to help you get more joy out of your marketing.

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Originally published at https://bstro.com on November 21, 2019.