When it comes to marketing online today, your business needs to find and use the most valuable methods, not only to get noticed, but also to reach a bigger audience, generate quality leads, interact with potential customers, and position yourself as a thought leader.
One of the best online locations to do all of this is LinkedIn, the largest social media platform for professionals.
To excel at LinkedIn digital marketing, however, you will need the best methods and tactics for making the best of what that platform can offer.
Below, we provide some ways that can save you time and help you streamline your efforts for more efficiency and success.
Download this post by entering your email below
Develop A Strong LinkedIn Profile
Begin your LinkedIn marketing journey by developing a strong profile as part of your business branding. Your branding is the way you distinguish yourself, making you more memorable to your target audience.
Instead of throwing up a profile and moving on, then, consider this profile as the first marketing tool on the platform. You want everyone who visits it to be persuaded to learn more or to do business with you or your brand.
The first three parts that visitors will see are the profile photo, headline, and summary section. These need to be professional and compelling at the same time.
Profile photo
While you want this photo of you to be professional, it also needs to show a bit about your personality. What image do you want to project to your target audience?
To optimize it, make sure it is a high-resolution photo, shows your face, and has no distractions in the background. Use the “Public” setting, so it is visible to all.
Headline
Your headline will show directly beneath your profile photo, so you want it to help distinguish who you are to your viewers.
Instead of inserting your current job title, provide information as to how you can bring value to customers. Be specific and include your industry or specialty. Above all, make it relevant to your target audience.
One beneficial way to help create your headline is to look around at what other successful LinkedIn profiles are using and gain a sense of how you, too, can stand out.
Summary section
Your profile photo and headline can entice your visitor, but it’s your summary section that will pull them in and convince them to learn more about you.
Summarize who you are, what you offer, how you can help them, and what they need to do next (a call to action).
Keep it short, include keywords, and address the pain points of your target audience in some way.
Join And Participate In LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn presents a unique opportunity for you to connect with other members who are like-minded, work within your field or industry, or share interests.
By joining LinkedIn Groups, you can start conversations pertaining in some way to your industry and brand, develop business relationships, and find and entice a wider audience.
Here are a few tips for selecting relevant groups to join.
- Use the search feature to identify those that match your interests and industry.
- Look to see which groups your connections are in and examine those for potential inclusion.
- Branch out to other industry groups that in some way can benefit from what you know and can offer.
- Look for alumni groups.
Once in your groups, you can post valuable content. A tip for doing so is to make sure whatever you post is relevant and helpful in some way.
You may want to answer questions put forth by group members, share industry news and updates, provide professional opinions on topics that matter to the group, and identify helpful resources.
By sharing content and participating in conversations in your groups, you can build professional relationships. More ways to foster those relationships include always responding to comments and feedback on anything you post and sharing other members’ posts with your own network.
Share Engaging And Informative High-Quality Content
High-quality content remains at the heart of your marketing strategy, and LinkedIn is a perfect place to share it online.
Below are helpful social media strategy tips for selecting relevant topics, using visual media, and optimizing your posts for maximum reach.
Selecting relevant topics
When it comes to LinkedIn topics, there are a few ways to go about selecting relevant topics. Consider the following:
- News about your business, such as milestones, awards, accomplishments, or anniversaries.
- Answers to prevalent questions you find users asking, particularly in your LinkedIn groups.
- Topics in adjacent industries that somehow relate to yours.
- Spotlighting customers, employees, or events.
Another tactic for finding relevant topics for your content is to look at how members conduct searches on the platform and how the LinkedIn algorithm gauges that content.
Using visual media
Visual content, in the form of videos, images, or infographics, can be powerful when used in the right way on LinkedIn. Tips for using visual media include:
- Only use high-resolution, high-quality images.
- Avoid distortion of images by knowing and adhering to the platform’s requirements (1200 x 628 pixels).
- For infographics, try dividing them into sections to share, since they are usually too long to show fully in a post.
- For videos, adhere to the specifications of the platform, including maximum and minimum file size and duration, resolution range, and more. These specifications can be found here.
Optimizing posts for maximum reach
To increase the chances of a post reaching a larger audience, optimize it by incorporating main keywords and phrases and by using hashtags. Vary content lengths and types to attract different viewers and incorporate storytelling elements to make it more memorable and sharable.
The content you share on LinkedIn will be the biggest factor in your marketing efforts here. Yet, if you feel challenged or are overwhelmed by the thought of creating your own content or simply don’t have the time, work with experienced writers like those with WriterAccess to help you stay involved on the platform.
Leverage LinkedIn Advertising
In addition to marketing yourself throughout the platform, you can leverage the opportunities provided by LinkedIn advertising to reach specific audiences and achieve your business goals.
Some of the ad formats available include:
- Sponsored Content, which places your ad directly in your targeted audience’s news feeds and can drive traffic to your website.
- Messaging Ads, which allow you to send messaging directly to your audience’s individual inboxes.
- Dynamic Ads, for personalizing your ads.
- Text Ads, which are simple PPC or CPM ads, are quick to launch.
Unless you are already familiar with these different types of ads and how they can benefit you directly, the best way to approach advertising on LinkedIn is to experiment. Try out the different options until you find what works best for your campaign.
You will also want to understand the costs involved before committing. The platform allows you to set a budget for advertising that best meets your objectives and goals. You’ll need to determine whether to go with a daily or lifetime budget for each campaign and follow the minimum requirements.
Build Thought Leadership And Authority
LinkedIn offers a unique opportunity and platform to build thought leadership and authority. While you will need to put your own experience and personality into it, here are a few tips to help you along the way.
- Share industry insights effectively by ensuring each one is of high quality and relevant to your followers, while also wrapped around personal stories and real-world scenarios.
- Use long-form articles when possible, and keep the content fresh, original, and unique. Use them to answer questions or address issues that aren’t receiving attention already.
- Include extensive details to help establish credibility.
- Speak the language of your followers, including industry terms and buzzwords, when possible.
- Join groups relating to your industry and participate in discussions.
Continue to engage with your followers as well. To do so, spend time daily on the platform being active in conversations, reaching out to others, and finding ways to connect.
Find Helpful LinkedIn Tools And Plugins
Find and use helpful tools and plugins to benefit both you and your followers. Here are a few examples.
- Follow Company Plugin, to add to your website, so visitors can connect and follow you easily on LinkedIn.
- Share Button for LinkedIn, making it super easy for anyone to share your posts with their networks.
- Apply with a LinkedIn plugin, providing convenience for job applicants.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator, to help you identify prospects, provide insights, and find ways to build better relationships.
- LinkedIn Small Business, to help you establish your brand and connect with target audiences.
- Leadfuze, serves as a prospecting tool, allowing you to develop lists of potential leads quickly, including contact information.
Use LinkedIn For Lead Generation And Sales Prospecting
Consider all the ways you can use LinkedIn for lead generation and sales prospecting. You might want to consider the following:
- Include LinkedIn tools and plugins designed to help develop lists of potential leads.
- Utilize the Lead Gen Forms offered by LinkedIn Ads.
- Learn to efficiently use LinkedIn’s Sales Solutions platform, which allows you to research, target, and interact with prospects.
- Set up search alerts on LinkedIn.
- Utilize the alumni search feature on LinkedIn, identifying potential prospects with which you have something in common.
Analyze And Measure The Success Of Your Campaigns
Always analyze and measure the success of all your LinkedIn marketing campaigns to determine what is working and what needs refinement.
For help, become familiar with all the features of LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, which can help you streamline your efforts.
LinkedIn also offers access to in-depth analytics to help you better evaluate each campaign’s performance.
Important social media metrics to track include:
- Engagement
- Reach
- Impressions
- Audience growth rates
- Click-through rates
- Conversion rates
- Average time on page
Use these to gain a better understanding of your audience and for insights into how to refine future strategies.
In addition, keep track of your company page analytics, so you can better optimize what you share there.
Wrap-Up: Find And Use The Power Of LinkedIn Marketing
LinkedIn is the largest professional network online today, and if you’re not already using it for marketing, you are missing out on its vast potential.
Not only can it present you and your brand to the world, but it can also help you find high-quality leads, grow your customer base, and position yourself as a thought leader.
While this can sound overwhelming to pull together all at once, you don’t have to do it all yourself.
Our talents at WriterAccess have the skills and experience to create the kind of content you need to reach a wider audience on LinkedIn.
Why not try out our writers by signing up for a 14-day free trial today?
