LinkedIn Marketing

LinkedIn is a great place to market your business to other business minded people. It is a place where you can market your business and make connections without competing with meme pages and people not interested in business. In this section we will go over some tips on growing a page and turning followers into customers.

The first thing you need to do of course, is set up a business profile on LinkedIn. Make sure to add everything that LinkedIn asks of you including a cover photo, a bio, contact information, etc. If you add all of the information LinkedIn says you will get 30% more views on your business profile. More importantly, adding all of the information will unlock the suggested content tab. This will show you trending articles that you can use for ideas and share to your following as a way to keep them engaged.

You will get 100 invite credits for free when you set up your profile to invite people to follow your page. I recommend using these invites to first invite friends that are likely to follow the page. You should do this because for every person that accepts your invite you will get that invite credit back to use again. Just make sure that you have some content built up on your page before sending follow invites. You do not want people showing up and seeing nothing on your page. No one wants to show up to an empty party.

Once you have some followers, you will want to start posting content consistently. The first rule of thumb to keep in mind is LinkedIn’s 5-3-2 rule. This means that for every 10 posts you share you should post 5 shared posts from other profiles, 3 pieces of original content about your brand or industry and 2 fun posts that give your brand some personality. Following this rule will give your company’s profile its best chance to succeed when posting consistently.

For shared content, you can take advantage of the suggested content tab if you have fully completed your profile. You can see what is trending on LinkedIn overall or you can see what is trending in your industry, or even what is trending for your employees. I recommend doing 3 of your 5 shared posts in your industry and 2 that are just trending in general that can relate to your company’s values. You can also check the company news tab under suggested content. This will show any posts that mention your company. When you are just starting out you may not get mentioned much but when you do get a positive post that mentions your brand always be sure to share it. It will encourage the poster to create more content about your brand and it will show off the recognition you are getting to your followers. You can also pay to have an article written about your brand from a profile with a good following just to gain some traction.

Now let’s go over some tips for your 3 pieces of original content. Keep in mind that LinkedIn is much different than Instagram or Facebook. You will want to make sure your posts are a bit more professional and business oriented. Instead of showing a graphic about your company’s mission you may want to share a white paper (a document outlining your mission). You can create either articles on LinkedIn or you can create decks (power points) or graphics. Some good ideas for original content on LinkedIn include articles that relate to your industry. For example, if you are in the solar industry, you can write an article about advancements in that technology, the reduction of gas consumption, or breakthroughs from other companies in the industry. Keep in mind that you probably do not want to mention direct competitors as much as you may want to mention companies that are in your industry but take care of a different sector. If you install solar, you may not want to mention other installers often, but it is perfectly fine to mention panel manufacturers or the new racking system company you are using. Mentioning other brands in your industry will give your brand more exposure and can also allow you to create quality relevant content. As far as using graphics on LinkedIn, you can use them to show off some of your work or talk about events you are holding or a podcast you are going to be doing. If you don’t have any events use content creation to encourage yourself to schedule some. With decks you can use them to show off some of the new products or services you are offering with some info that points out what makes your brand different. You can also use them to show off positive changes or plans that your company is implementing. The best piece of advice when creating content on any platform is to see what other successful brands in your industry are doing. Be sure to check the trending tab in your industry frequently to get an even better idea of what types of content gains traction with your potential customers.

As for the 2 pieces of fun content, you can simply make a funny meme that relates to your industry. You can also share employee news to the world if an employee is hitting impressive milestones. You can always check your employee milestones tab under the suggested content section as well to see work anniversaries and promotion announcements. Whatever you post for your fun content make sure that it humanizes your brand while still showing your brand’s values.

Now that you understand the basics of setting up your profile and the content you should be sharing on LinkedIn, the next step is to simply remain consistent. LinkedIn states that the average amount of posts per week for businesses is 2-5 posts with their best performing content going out between Tuesday and Friday during business hours. I would try to post 5 times per week if possible but also keep in mind that it is quality over quantity. You do not want to have people unfollow you because you are spamming their feed with nonsense. Make sure you are putting effort into your posts and that it is something that you would be excited to read or look at.

On top of posting to your business profile itself. You will also want to create groups on LinkedIn about your industry or company that you can use to promote your products or services. You will have to set up these groups through a personal profile though which you can do yourself or have someone on your team set up. You will want to attract and invite people that are interested in your industry. You can do this by looking at followers of competitors and other groups that relate to your industry. Another thing you can do with your personal profile is pay the $100 a month for a premium account so that you can DM people freely on LinkedIn. You can use this to recruit for your business or to send preset messages to get people looking at your brand or groups for your brand.

Just like with any other platform you can also make use of targeted paid ads on LinkedIn. I like using LinkedIn ads to target management to sell to an entire company. You can target different positions and industries as well as locations which can be very valuable. You can also target individual consumers as well. For this, LinkedIn is great for targeting people in specific positions. For example, if you sell slip resistant shoes for nurses you can target all the nurses in your country which can provide amazing returns.