With 722 million members and 18 years of growth and circulation, LinkedIn has become one of the most important social networking sites to small businesses and small business owners. With its primary function of allowing users to find and connect with professionals around the world, LinkedIn serves as an incredible resource for finding clients, stakeholders, customers, and more.
Like other social media platforms, there’s also a way to build a strong LinkedIn content marketing strategy. Some users just starting out make the mistake of utilizing LinkedIn as a more professional Facebook. It’s an easy misstep to make, however, today we will be diving into how you can revamp your LinkedIn strategy. You’ll get a few tips for increasing engagement and promoting your brand, being a part of the community, as well as a few ideas of companies that do great work on their LinkedIn pages.
Tip #1: Connect Employees With Your LinkedIn Page
While employees should all be connected with each other on LinkedIn, they should also be connected with your business. Make sure each of your employees puts your business as their current position and that they list it in their portfolio section.
They should also list themselves as employees of your page, giving the page administrator the ability to share their news and updates when they post.
Tip #2: Increase Your Email Newsletter Subscribers
Segment your audience into groups and create crafted messages thanking them for their connection on LinkedIn and if they would consider signing up for your newsletter. LinkedIn lets you add 50 people to one conversation, so it serves as an excellent opportunity to create a mass message in the name of furthering your brand reach.
Be vigilant about responding to messages as they come back. As a platform primarily dedicated to networking, people will expect responses in a relatively short amount of time. In your messaging, be sure to show how your newsletter will add value for each individual person. People are more open to self promotion on this platform, since that’s one of its main purposes, but you don’t want to risk coming off as too pushy or over-promotional.
Tip #3: Be Active in Professional Groups
A great feature of LinkedIn is that it allows you to join virtual networking groups with like-minded individuals as a way of sharing content. Join a few that are most relevant to your business and its goals, and encourage employees to do the same.
If and when you’re admitted into the group, take some time to get to know the people in it and see what they’re posting. Interact with their content by liking, commenting, and asking questions. Once you get a sense of what the group stands for and the type of content they share, begin respectfully posting your own content. The things that you share should further the community’s conversation and create talking points to consider. You also don’t want to risk over-promoting or spamming the group with an overwhelming amount of your content. This could get you removed from the group entirely.
Tip #4: Engage Followers With Interactive Content
Links to blog posts and other content that brings people back to your websites are a great way to get people to engage with your LinkedIn. You can also post videos, which are an excellent opportunity to create educational content that promotes your brand and also won’t make people navigate away from LinkedIn, if that’s what they prefer.
LinkedIn also has features for creating polls. This is not only a great opportunity to create simple and engaging content, but to also get to know more about your audience. Ask them their content preferences and what they enjoy seeing from brands like yours. Ask them their opinions about certain aspects of their business life or the industry you work in. This is an excellent and relatively easy way to get more interactions on your LinkedIn business page.
Tip #5: Create a LinkedIn Showcase Page
A showcase page can be used to highlight certain initiatives, parts of your brand, or even products. They provide a place for you to try out new dimensions of your brand voice and home in on aspects of your business that you might like to highlight. The page itself will be listed as an affiliate to your business’s main LinkedIn page.
The option to create a showcase page lives under the Admin Tools button on your business profile. However, only create this affiliate page if you feel you’ve already built up a fairly strong following on your main page and think your audience members could benefit from this new LinkedIn. It’s certainly an excellent opportunity for marketing, but if the only reason you want to create it is simply to have it, it probably won’t go very far or add much value for your audience.
Case in Point
Teleperformance
Named number one for best LinkedIn pages in 2019, this France-based company excels in creating content that is memorable and true to their brand. By using vibrant colors and plenty of short videos, they are able to catch audience attention and easily get their messages across.
Amazon
What makes this giant so successful in the LinkedIn realm is its ability to produce short, eye-catching, and educational content, while also highlighting the human aspect of their employees. In 2019, they conducted a campaign in which Amazon workers shared their resumes in three lines or less. The result was higher engagement and an overall higher interest in what Amazon had to say online.
HackerEarth
This developer-hiring software company serves as an excellent example of what happens when you post on a daily or every other day basis. While they may not be well-known outside of the developer space, they still get plenty of engagement on LinkedIn. They are also well known for eye-catching graphics, which help promote their brand and mission.
In Conclusion
LinkedIn is a great place to connect with other businesses and professionals both within your neighborhood and around the world. It’s an excellent way to show off your business’s creativity, your employees’ successes, and connect with equally-passionate people to learn from one another.
If you’re interested in building a content strategy, whether that be on LinkedIn or any other online platform, get in touch with Vervology. We have specialized tips and tools that can help take your small business to the next level.