LinkedIn can help you generate leads, find employment, sell products or services, increase email subscribers or network with industry influencers.
LinkedIn may be professional, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun! Make sure your content remains genuine while avoiding promotional posts that overstep boundaries.
1. Optimize Your Profile
With more than 722 million LinkedIn members worldwide, making your profile stand out requires considerable effort. If you’re a freelancer searching for clients or a company manager looking for employees, a strong LinkedIn marketing strategy will get noticed by your target market and make an impressionful first impression.
There are a few simple tips you can follow to make your profile more attractive and effective, such as updating it frequently with photos of you that feature your face so people who have never met you before can quickly recognize you. It may also help to include professional-looking backgrounds to give it greater visual appeal.
Your work experience section is also an integral component of your profile. Be sure to highlight your most relevant skills, the employer/organization’s name and any significant accomplishments or milestones achieved; use this space to showcase these as well. When providing details for projects you have worked on in the past, remember not to get too specific in describing everything – just include enough info that a hiring manager would need for an informed decision process.
If you’re using your profile to market a product or service, create a short video explaining its features and functionality. Videos are an effective way of engaging viewers and keeping their attention. Plus, videos demonstrate your expertise while building trust among your target market.
2. Optimize Your Company Page
LinkedIn provides companies with multiple ways to engage with potential customers and clients, including its company pages. Businesses can use these pages to showcase their brand image, product offerings and other details while also giving their target market an opportunity to leave reviews and offer comments about content posted by LinkedIn users.
Optimizing a LinkedIn company page requires marketers to make sure the name and description match the official brand name as well as incorporate relevant keywords for enhanced search visibility. Doing this may result in additional connection requests, followers and business opportunities on LinkedIn.
Company pages also allow businesses to create “Featured Content,” which are pieces that appear prominently on LinkedIn home and search results pages. An ideal piece should be informative, educational and align with their professional brand; therefore it’s crucial to regularly update Featured Content so new audiences can see all you have to offer them.
One of the most effective strategies for marketing a LinkedIn company page is using rich media, such as videos and infographics, to drive increased engagement on LinkedIn. Although rich media can help to boost engagement levels, it must not be used to spam or push sales hard-sell tactics like in the 1980s sales rep era.
LinkedIn also allows brands to create Showcase Pages dedicated to specific products or services, providing an opportunity to curate content on a certain subject matter, create learning centers or promote a product launch.
3. Optimize Your Content
Promoting yourself on LinkedIn requires content that is both carefully crafted and pertinent to your professional brand. When testing different formats, image-rich posts tend to do well compared to text-only ones – however it is important to find a balance.
LinkedIn employs several ranking signals to select content to show to its users, such as likes, shares, comments, Connection requests, timeliness and other factors. Leveraging these ranking signals to optimize your LinkedIn content can help expand your audience reach, secure more jobs and expand business.
Out-and-out text posts won’t cut it on LinkedIn; images and videos should also be posted as engaging content that provides your followers with a more in-depth understanding of your business. Create videos about the mission or factory floor tour can engage audiences more fully – these types of posts can even convert followers to leads more efficiently!
An effective way to increase engagement on LinkedIn is by sharing relevant articles and blog posts. LinkedIn gives these posts an algorithmic push, so that they reach a larger audience – not to mention that sharing them may drive additional traffic back to your website!
Your LinkedIn profile’s Featured section can also serve as an excellent way to showcase your expertise and increase exposure. Be sure to select only your highest-performing posts for this section, along with providing detailed explanations about why each one was included as featured content. Providing such descriptions also can help ensure readers fully comprehend its purpose and value.
4. Optimize Your Ads
LinkedIn’s robust targeting options enable you to zero in on your ideal audience. From job titles and functions, interests, company sizes and beyond – targeting can be tailored precisely. Furthermore, using multiple Attributes or selecting various And/Or options you can fine-tune targeting further. However, targeting too small an audience can impede delivery. To mitigate this risk it’s recommended that a minimum audience size of 50,000 members is set; by default LinkedIn allows audience expansion however this feature can be disabled at campaign level if desired.
When creating your LinkedIn ad, employ visually striking visuals. As trends can quickly shift, testing different creatives and offers can help determine what works best.
Once your ad has gone live, it’s critical to evaluate its performance and optimize it. Start by counting impressions and unique clicks received; use this data to assess how well your ad is doing and decide how much to invest.
After creating your campaign, you can assess its performance based on the objective you selected when creating it. For instance, selecting conversions as your goal means LinkedIn will present your ads to people most likely to take action that meets your desired outcome.
As your target audience becomes more refined, so will its return. If a certain type of person doesn’t convert, simply exclude them by uploading a contact list or creating a matched audience in the campaign manager. Furthermore, users with certain attributes such as job titles or seniority levels could also be excluded from your audience.
5. Optimize Your Inbox
LinkedIn inboxes can quickly become overwhelmed with notifications, invitations and messages – something even the most organized users find overwhelming. To effectively prioritize and respond to incoming messages on LinkedIn, use tools like Sprout Social to separate sent and received messages.
Engaging with your audience on LinkedIn doesn’t discourage posting a link to your company’s website; in fact, LinkedIn encourages it and can increase reach and discoverability – just ensure your posts remain informative while avoiding overtly promotional material.
Utilizing different content formats is equally essential to success on LinkedIn, with videos outperforming text-based posts by up to 2x and those including images showing increased engagement rates by as much as 2x. If you’re uncertain which form will perform best for your audience, try running multiple campaigns until one yields the most leads.
Make sure your group memberships are fulfilling their full potential. LinkedIn groups provide an excellent platform to connect with audiences and share industry insights while simultaneously nurturing leads and existing customers. To do this effectively, ensure your team participates actively within these groups by contributing valuable discussions or resources.
LinkedIn provides rewards for sharing content from other members, making a consistent posting schedule more likely to improve visibility and reach. Furthermore, using ads campaigns as well as company pages can increase exposure and lead generation – with these tips in mind you’ll be able to use LinkedIn effectively to achieve the results that matter for your business.
