What sets LinkedIn apart from its social siblings is its emphasis on connecting businesses and professionals. In fact, you’d be correct to coin it the ‘leading online hub for companies and entrepreneurs looking to liaise and create profitable opportunities’. The following numbers illustrate just how powerful the platform’s become. At the moment, LinkedIn has:
- Over 575 million registered members
- 303 million active monthly users
- 92% of all Fortune 500 businesses on board
LinkedIn’s staggering momentum in the business sphere can, in part, be attributed to the fact that professionals are actively scrolling their feeds with an intent to connect with companies. This makes the platform a goldmine for entrepreneurs and small- to-medium enterprises looking to make their mark and garner more customers.
In light of this opportunity, we’ve collated some highly effective tips and tactics to make the most out of LinkedIn:
1. Nail down what you want to achieve
Everything you do on LinkedIn needs to be informed by a predefined strategy that aligns with your business goals. This includes the content you post and how you distribute it to your intended audience. A marketing strategy should typically be geared towards attaining one — or more — of the following goals:
- Boosting lead generation
- Increasing brand awareness
- Reaching and conversing with your target audience
- Elevating profit through product and service sales
- Building brand reputation
Once you’ve ascertained which of the above you’ll be pushing, it’s time to set up your profile and create your content.
2. Don’t skimp on your company profile
Not only does a complete business profile communicate professionalism, it generates close to double the visitors that business pages with missing information or imagery receive. Ensure that the following fields are filled out and populated:
- Logo
- Business description
- Website URL
- Company size
- Industry
- Company type
- Location
You could write the most persuasive copy to fill out the above sections, but you’ll be doing your profile a disservice if the accompanying imagery (brand logo and cover image) is not uploaded in hi-res and sufficiently pleasing to the eye. Remember, your brand is a package that you’re presenting to prospective customers, so ensure every aspect of your LinkedIn online presence is professional.
3. Utilise the handy Matched Audiences tool
In the past, LinkedIn’s ad platform was considered something of a dud. This is definitely not the case anymore — you’re now able to get your content in front of a highly segmented audience of your choosing. With LinkedIn’s marketing suite, you’re able to craft sponsored content, text ads, and deploy messaging directly into a user’s inbox via InMail.
But the real feather in the cap is LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences tool. With this recent Windows addition, you can retarget visitors to your website, upload accounts already in your sales funnel, and add email addresses to target with LinkedIn ads. The below infographic illustrates just how important this functionality is for conversion:
Image courtesy of Neil Patel
4. Carve out a consistent posting schedule
According to LinkedIn themselves, companies that adhere to a posting schedule of at least once a month have been proven to attract new followers six times faster. We’d recommend posting at least once a week (as long as the content is well-executed and valuable). To make it easier on yourself, set out your content calendar a month or two in advance and use a tool like Buffer to deploy your posts automatically. With regards to best practices, Buffer recommends the following to give your content the best chance of performing well:
- Descriptive caption: Helps to provide people with better context on your content
- Eye-catching images: A clean, simple aesthetic helps your content stand out
- Hashtags: A great way to increase the visibility of your content to new audiences
- Ask questions to engage users: By stimulating conversation with topical subjects, it’s more likely a user will recall your business when they’re searching for a similar product or service.
5. Harness LinkedIn’s enhanced ad suite
Recently, LinkedIn integrated Boolean targeting logic into their ad suite for pinpoint audience accuracy. What’s more, the upgrade offers more adaptability in terms of optimisation and tweaking on-the-fly, increasing the chances of your ads being seen by the users you’re marketing to. LinkedIn offers a plethora of ad executions, each with their own strengths:
- Lead generation forms: A CTA button automatically populates a lead-gen form with a user’s LinkedIn profile information.
- Sponsored InMail messaging: Delivers highly relevant, personalized messages to a user’s inbox directly.
- Sponsored posts: Get your messaging onto specific users’ news feeds by boosting your best content.
- Carousel ads: Lineup multiple images in a single post to tell your brand story or communicate the value of your products and services.
- Text ads: A simple yet effective form of delivery that features a headline, paragraph, with the option of including an image.
When you combine the above ad formats with LinkedIn’s newly updated demographic reporting feature (which tells you exactly who is clicking on your ads), you’ve got a super robust set of features to promote and measure your LinkedIn content.
6. Integrate your LinkedIn profile with WordPress
With social media, small businesses and budding entrepreneurs have one of the most powerful — unprecedented — growth tools of all time. Truly, to not make use of the big four (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) is to sell yourself and your ambitions short. It’s worth noting here that not only does social media inform prospects about your services, it nudges users in the direction of your website, thus increasing the chances of converting interested leads into returning customers.
Integrating LinkedIn with a WordPress site empowers you with audience information. By connecting the two, you’ll know exactly who is visiting your digital hub, where they’re coming from, and when they’re clicking through. These analytics are absolutely vital for the growth of your business, helping you tailor and tweak your messaging so that it’s more engaging and relevant to the demographic that’s actually interested in what you’re offering.
7. Find an experienced online campaigner to partner with
From developing a UX-enhanced website to crafting a social media presence that reaches and engages your target audience, making inroads in the digital space can seem difficult and overwhelming at first. Rather than testing the waters on your own, why not enlist the help of an experienced campaigner in the online space?
Kaira designs and develops best-in-class WordPress themes and plugins that empower users with the tools they need to build their own websites easily (and without any coding knowledge). Our WordPress themes and plugins adhere to the latest coding standards and are aimed at launching a website that fully integrates with your social platforms, quickly and easily. Did we mention we’ll be with your every step of the way, offering ongoing support and assistance when you need it?
To discuss your options, please don’t hesitate to contact us. If you’d like to see an example of what we do best, download the free version of our newest theme, Overlay.
