By Jessica Hawke
LinkedIn is growing and active, yet the platform is still under-utilised in marketing. Every week there are over nine billion impressions on the social media feed yet only three million people are sharing updates so there is very little competition.
Below we explore some top tips to help make the most of LinkedIn during the post but also AFTER posting and how we can need to trigger the algorithm by being an active participant contributing to the wider LinkedIn ecosystem.
1) Optimise your personal and company profiles
• Before you reach out to other users, you need to create a compelling LinkedIn profile:
• Take a critical look at your company and personal pages and ensure your content is as good as it gets. Check your competitors.
• Profile summaries should be clear and succinct, and optimised to include keywords and important search terms relevant to your industry and skills set.
• Find a great image for your profile – a professional image and not a holiday snap!
• Make sure contact details are complete and up to date.
• Complete work experience, education, training courses, volunteer experience and get recommendations from colleagues, past and present.
• Set your profile to ‘public’ so it will be indexed by the search engines.
• An impactful profile is well connected so aim for 500+ connections. ‘People You May Already Know’ is a great tool if you are looking for other ways to branch out.
2. Provide content to engage the right prospects
The LinkedIn Algorithm is heavily favouring profiles which publish updates and content – so get active and get your company in front of lots of prospects. By becoming a contributor, you will master the algorithm – get active and share, upload, post, update.
Be aware that LinkedIn likes users to publish ‘natively’ on LinkedIn so try not to link away from LinkedIn. You can upload a PDF easily enough, for users to read within the LinkedIn platform.
3. Maximise reach through engagement – connect, follow, like, comment and share
Make your posts engaging and relevant to your target market and incorporate copywriting tactics such as ‘hooks’ – ask a question or take a poll, use hashtags (more than 3 but less than 10 per post), and mention any relevant company pages. Use @ tags wisely because if the tagged person or company does not engage it slows down the reach of your post.
Encourage likes and comments – if a prospect likes something you have posted, your post gets shown to their network. It will boost your engagement and be more likely for your posts to go viral and get your company in front of more prospects. Respond to comments within an hour for 20% growth. The more comments your posts receive will increase the reach of your posts and there is no penalty for commenting on your own post.
Contribute to your network by engaging with company and personal posts– engaging with 3 posts will increase your reach by 20%. Choose the type of content you want to see more of as LinkedIn analyses what you are consuming and gives you more of it. Liking a post increases your chance of seeing the next post from that author by 30%.
Drive engagement by copying your status update URL and promoting it elsewhere – tweet it out, add it to your email signature strip, and cross promote it on Facebook.
4) Use the messaging service
Use LinkedIn to contact prospects directly. When you connect with prospects use a great ‘script’ – but make sure it is personalised and snappy.
Review performance and tweak and refine to optimise performance.
Invite prospects to follow your company page – this a very gentle approach and ‘easy in’ avoiding the hard sell. If your prospect is connected with a company or organisation page, follow that page first– it will express your interest in a ‘soft’ way and their updates will appear in your feed, so you can keep in touch with their specific needs and requirements which could lead to a sales conversation. You will see all new posts from new connections for the first two weeks!
If your brand would like to discuss how you could take advantage of the many opportunities that social media can bring to you business, do get in touch using the let’s talk page, email info@scsmarketingandpr.co.uk or call 01252 621293. SCS helps businesses to improve low performing and slow performing social media channels.
