Want to improve your marketing on LinkedIn?
We asked social media experts for their top tips for LinkedIn. Here's what they had to say.
You may have heard this information that there are more than 562 million users on LinkedIn and that 40% of them go to the platform daily. These figures are considerable, no doubt, but it is not those that matter for a network-oriented towards companies such as LinkedIn.
In fact, according to information provided to LinkedIn by Hootsuite, completed business pages typically receive twice as many visitors as those with incomplete pages. And organizations that publish at least once a month typically gain six times more followers than their competitors. Read on to learn how to create a winning strategy on LinkedIn for your business.
Why should your business be on LinkedIn?
If your company's presence on LinkedIn currently boils down to a personal profile, it's time to review your social media marketing strategy - especially if that profile has a rudimentary, hopelessly outdated CV. From human resources to sales, your different departments could take advantage of all the advantages that LinkedIn has to offer. For this, your business must have a presence.
1. Attract the best talent
LinkedIn is the first place where the best talents look for work, all levels combined. Over 40 million students and recent graduates are on LinkedIn, but 41% of millionaires also use it.
LinkedIn naturally allows you to post job openings, but the best approach to recruiting is to let your HR team find potential candidates through LinkedIn search, then contact them directly and invite them to join your team.
2. Expand your network, as well as your base of potential customers and suppliers
When it comes to using LinkedIn for business, it all depends on the network you develop and the connections you make. Think for example of suppliers, your collaborators and the meetings that you meet during events.
Thanks to LinkedIn's powerful search function, it's not just whom you know, but whom they know. You can leverage existing relationships to create new ones and build your network.
This is where the real power of LinkedIn for business lies: the ability to tap into already established connections and grow your brand by word of mouth. Rather than just accumulating subscribers and connections, think about how you could leverage these relationships to uncover new opportunities for growing your business.
And in case you doubt that your efforts end up paying in concrete terms with real euros and real pennies, take this into consideration: 50% of B2B customers use LinkedIn as a resource when making purchasing decisions and 76% of customers B2B prefer to work on the basis of recommendations from their professional network.
How to create a LinkedIn business page?
A LinkedIn company page allows LinkedIn members to learn more about your company, your brand and career opportunities within your organization. Company pages are also a great way to build expertise in your field.
Originally, LinkedIn business pages were seen primarily as brand human resources home pages.
See your business page as a complement to your website: it allows you to develop traffic on your site and presents a space for promoting your products, services, and content. Your LinkedIn business page offers free marketing opportunities and increases your company's credibility. Rich content and powerfully updated statuses can also make your brand the leader in its sector.
Your business page can also help develop brand awareness by increasing your company's presence in search engine results. Use tools like Google Adwords and SEMRush to find the keywords that are important in your field, then incorporate them on your business page to help research users find your company online.
The process of creating a LinkedIn business page is very simple. However, don't get into a haphazard creation of a page without having a strategic plan to maximize the benefits. Let's first discover the basic principles that will allow you to launch and run your business page.
Note: If you do not have a personal LinkedIn profile yet, you will need to create one before building a page for your business.
1. Add your business
Go to the Create Company Page page and enter the official name of your company as well as your professional email address. LinkedIn will send an email to verify that you are able to create the business page.
2. Choose who can administer the page
Other people can accompany you on this adventure. LinkedIn lets you choose which employees can manage your page.
3. Provide information about your business
Different drop-down menus will allow you to provide certain details such as your industry, the size of your business, etc.
4. Add a cover image and logo
Upload your company logo and choose a cover image that represents your company.
5. Create a business description
You have 2,000 characters to describe what your business is doing and why potential subscribers should care. This text is important, so you must involve your marketing and editorial teams in the creation of this message. Click "Publish," and your business page is online.
How to Create a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy
Setting up a business page is simple, but unnecessary without a LinkedIn strategy to maximize the benefits. Rather than just accumulating followers and connections, think about how you can use LinkedIn marketing tools to discover new growth opportunities.
Start by developing SMART goals. After all, you will never know if you are achieving your goals if you do not take the time to set yourself right from the start. LinkedIn can support businesses in many ways, so you need to determine exactly what you want to gain from your LinkedIn business efforts. Are you trying to build a network for social selling? Imposing yourself as an opinion leader? Recruit the best talents in your field?
Whether you want to address all of these or focus on one, you need to set goals to help you reach a target, and then understand how your efforts are paying off.
If you haven't developed personae yet, now is a good time to do it, because knowing whom you are trying to target is key to crafting the right message.
LinkedIn company pages: tips and best practices
Just because you create a business page doesn't mean you have subscribers. You can increase your chances of success with the following tips and strategies for LinkedIn business users.
1. Allow your employees to connect to your LinkedIn company page
Your colleagues and / or employees are your best resources to start building an audience. They are your best ambassadors and, by adding them as subscribers, you can also tap into each of their networks and thus greatly extend your reach. Invite them to add your business page to their personal profile, which will automatically make them subscribers and allow them to easily share company news.
2. Share useful content and respond to subscriber comments
The best way to grow your audience and keep your subscribers is to offer them value by regularly posting articles or news about the business. Make sure you stay consistent in your posts and try to post different types of information, such as company news, thought leadership articles, or industry expertise. Keep your content interesting to your audience. Try to actively engage with them by asking them what matters most to them or what they would like to see.
When ADP relaunched its LinkedIn business page with more emphasis on sharing qualitative content, primarily from its internal research team, the company doubled the number of its subscribers. Even better, its subscriber base has grown from 70% employees to just 30%, which means it has gotten more external subscribers and increased the reach of its network.
3. Include other media
Yes, LinkedIn is primarily about business, but you still need to make your content stand out - and text messages are not the right way to do it. LinkedIn figures show that messages with an included image receive 98% more comments.
4. Take advantage of LinkedIn groups
Active participation in a LinkedIn group can help you and your business network connect with other professionals and companies in your field. Joining a group chat will also attract views to your business page.
To find a group whose interests match your business goals, use the search function at the top of your LinkedIn home page or check out LinkedIn's suggestions for groups to discover. You can also create a new group based on the subject or industry you want.
If you create a group or join a group you want to highlight, you can add it as a featured group on your company page. To do this, click on your profile icon at the top of your LinkedIn page, then choose your company page in the Manage section.
Select the Overview tab from the top menu, then scroll down to Featured Groups. Start typing the name of your group and it should automatically complete. You can add up to three groups to your business page.
5. Try the storefront pages
Showcase pages function as subdomains of your business page, allowing you to highlight specific areas of your business, such as a particular brand or an initiative in progress. LinkedIn members can choose to follow one or more of your Pages. You can create up to 10 default presentation pages. If you need more, you will need to submit a support request to LinkedIn.
To create a Showcase page, click on your profile icon at the top of your LinkedIn page, then choose your company page in the Manage section.
Click on Administrative Tools at the top right, then select Create a presentation page.
Adobe, for example, offers showcase pages for five of its products, all for different audiences. While the main page of Adobe LinkedIn Company Page has 887,000 subscribers, storefront pages have between 5,000 and 64,000 subscribers. These numbers are much lower, but storefront followers receive updates and information about specific items in the Adobe portfolio that interest them - so these are valuable relationships.
6. Communicate internationally with multilingual tools
If you have customers in countries where English is not the main language, you can create custom descriptions of your business in 20 different languages. The appropriate description will appear for each LinkedIn member based on the language settings they have chosen to use to view the network. You can also set your company name to appear in these languages.
When you publish content and updates, you can publish in different languages and configure the settings so that your followers see your content in the language of their choice. It's a great way to build your credibility with international LinkedIn members.
7. Understand the LinkedIn algorithm
While most other social networks keep their algorithm secrets well-kept, LinkedIn provides some information on how its algorithm works. Here's how the algorithm assesses and ranks your content, in summary.
A bot rates your content as spam, poor quality, or plain. Quality is important because you obviously want to aim for a clear ranking.
The algorithm measures the initial user engagement. Has your post received likes and been shared? Do users hide it from their feeds or mark it as spam? Again, quality is the key, but relevance is too.
The algorithm performs additional spam and credit checks based on the quality of your account and your network. Engagement is also very important at this point.
Editors review the content and determine whether it should continue to be displayed, or even whether it should be improved.
8. Incorporate LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn members provide detailed information about their professional interests and skills. This means that LinkedIn has exceptional targeting capabilities.
LinkedIn offers several self-service advertising solutions. Here is a brief overview:
Sponsored Content: Amplify your content to reach a wider audience than you could organically and attract new looks to your business page.
Text Ads: These are pay-per-click or CPM ads that appear on the LinkedIn home page, profile pages, group pages, search results pages, and more.
These are just the self-service advertising options. LinkedIn also offers advertising products that you can purchase through an advertising platform or a marketing partnership
9. Use LinkedIn Analytics
LinkedIn studies show that messages tend to receive more engagement in the morning, followed by messages posted after hours. It's a good place to start when planning your publication schedule, but what works for the average business doesn't necessarily work for you.
Fortunately, LinkedIn offers detailed analytics to help you know what type of content your subscribers are most likely to engage with, understand your subscribers' demographics, and track traffic and activity on your business page.
Here's how to access LinkedIn Analytics for your business page:
Click on your profile icon at the top of your LinkedIn page, then choose your company page in the Manage section. Click the Analysis tab and choose Visitors, Updates, or Subscribers.
Tracking who visits your business page - and how they interact with your content - will allow you to adjust your LinkedIn strategy based on actual data, thereby maximizing the effectiveness of this important social network.
Above all, remember that LinkedIn is a professional network that allows you to build your credibility, create a meaningful network and leverage the expertise of experts established in your industry. It's a valuable tool in your social marketing arsenal, so be sure to use whatever it offers.
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