It may not the most glamorous social platform, but your LinkedIn marketing strategy should definitely not be at the bottom of your priority list as a B2B marketer.
LinkedIn accounts for a whopping 45% of social traffic to B2B blogs and sites, generating 80% of the total leads from social media.
One of its biggest advantages is that it is a rich source of senior-level decision-makers, leaders, and executives –– i.e, people you’re probably going to want to get the attention of.
If you haven’t yet got a LinkedIn marketing strategy formalized, or if you think your existing one needs a refresh, this article will help make sure you’re on the right track to get the benefits of the platform and, ultimately, grow your business.
In this article, we’ll be diving into the key steps you need to take to create a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy.
Set Your Goals
As with other social platforms, you’ll need to define your objectives. Think about why you’re using LinkedIn.
Here are some thought starters:
– Promote your product or service
– Generate leads
– Drive awareness of your business
– Engage with potential customers
– Build authority
These goals will help you to define your tactics later.
Know Your Audience
The next step is to identify your target audience. Who is your target customer? What is their job title? What do you think their pain points are? How can you help them?
Let’s look at an example.
Say your product is a content marketing tool that streamlines the process of copywriting for web projects.
Your audience is likely to include copywriters, content marketers, project managers, and content strategists.
But why guess?
You can access pretty awesome audience data in LinkedIn – you just need to have the LinkedIn Insights tag embedded on your site. If you use Google Tag Manager, you can install the LinkedIn Insight tag in under a minute.
Once you’ve installed the tag, LinkedIn will start tracking visits from LinkedIn members to your website. Once you reach 300 unique visitors, you’ll be able to access valuable data about the people who are visiting your website –– job title, seniority, company name, industry, and more – within Website Demographics.
Awesome, huh?
Within LinkedIn’s insights, you can also look at existing data on your company followers.
Update Your LinkedIn Company Page Profile
Do an audit of your company page. It doesn’t have to be too in-depth, but think about when the last time you updated it was. Have things changed since then? Do you need to give it a refresh?
Your company page is the first thing prospects will see, and they should be able to find out everything they need to know from it.
You can even create Showcase Pages, which are linked to your Company Page but purpose-built to promote specific business lines, products, or initiatives within your company.
Go through this checklist to ensure your LinkedIn company page is up-to-date:
- Company name
- Logo
- Cover image
- Description
- Website
- Contact information
- Company size
- Employees
- Culture
- Jobs
Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Page for Search
Use Keywords
Keywords aren’t just for your website or blog –– they also help with your LinkedIn marketing strategy!
Use highly relevant keywords for your product or service throughout your profile to encourage visibility.
Drive traffic to Your Company Page
Inbound traffic to your LinkedIn Company page is important to increase its ranking. Ensure you include links to your LinkedIn presence from your website, blog, emails, and other social platforms, in order to increase traffic.
You should also encourage your employees to list your page as their employer, which will give your page a boost in the rankings.
Publish Content Consistently
Posts you publish on LinkedIn are indexed by Google, so it’s important to keep it regularly updated.
Check Out Your Competitors’ Pages
LinkedIn’s #BestofPages competition is a great place to find examples –– check out this slideshow below for the Top 10.
#1 Teleperformance
What They Do Well: Teleperformance makes exemplary use of native video, frequently sharing quick-hit content that is short, snackable, and easily digested even without sound. They humanize their brand by featuring company leaders in the video content, and establish credible thought leadership through the use of third-party stats.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn also recommends competitor pages to track, that gives you access to some valuable metrics on followers, growth, and engagement, which is helpful for benchmarking.
Promote Your Company Page
Building a following will help your content – and therefore brand name – reach more people.
- Start with your own team, and invite them to engage with and share your company’s content on their own LinkedIn pages. Encourage them to post about the company and ensure they are listed as employees.
- Use three to five relevant hashtags in your posts to reach new audiences.
- Use @mentions for influencers or thought leaders, to encourage them to reshare the posts on their feeds.
- Ask brand advocates and customers to share your LinkedIn posts – it’s always worth the ask!
- Add a ‘Follow Us on LinkedIn’ button to your email newsletters, website, and blog.
Create Compelling Content
Keep your audience engaged with the right kind of content for LinkedIn. While it’s still a social network, you should experiment with different content to that which you’d post on other platforms.
Original long-from articles – LinkedIn actively encourages longer text posts in their post editor. This is a great way to get exposure for you as a thought leader, and your business.
Share content on diverse (but relevant) topics – Your followers won’t always be looking to buy your product, so think about what other, industry-adjacent, topics you can cover that will still be relevant to them.
Industry trends – According to Buzzsumo, this is one of the top types of content on the platform. Posting your take on industry news, analysis, and trends will position you as a thought-leader, with a good knowledge of your industry and your finger on the pulse.
Presentations – LinkedIn owns Slideshare, and offers tools to help you make the most of it.
Plan in Advance
Posting quality content consistently is key to growing a following on any platform, so we highly recommend creating a content calendar to allow you to pre-plan your updates and be prepared for newsworthy topics or events.
Come up with content ‘pillars’ that will help you populate your content plan.
For example:
- MONDAY Industry trends / predictions
- TUESDAY Tips (Slideshow/video)
- WEDNESDAY Blog post
- THURSDAY Longform article on LinkedIn
- FRIDAY Company news/culture
This makes it much easier to map out future content, without it being overwhelming.
Schedule Your Posts
Dedicate a set amount of time each week to pre-scheduling your posts, so you can relax and know that your LinkedIn publishing will take care of itself.
SmarterQueue not only lets you schedule your posts in advance – it also allows you to curate interesting and relevant content to share from other sources.
Use industry-related keywords to find interesting, fresh content to share with your network, or use your favorite sources and share their latest blog posts.
You can set your posts to go out once, or set them to recycle as often as you’d like.
Use Data to Improve Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy
Don’t just set it and forget it – assess how your content is performing. Read and engage with comments on your posts, and check analytics to discover key insights that will help you improve.
- Visitors: This is where you learn about members who have checked out your Page. At a glance, you can see what type of device they were on, spot trends, and view aggregated professional attributes.
- Updates: How are people engaging with the content you share? Obtain a high-level view by analyzing metrics like Impressions, Clicks, Comments, and Social Engagement Percentage.
- Followers: Gain a better understanding of your current follower base in terms of location, job function, seniority, and more. You can also identify patterns and find a list of companies to track based on other Pages your audience follows.
Ready to give your LinkedIn marketing strategy a boost? Go ahead and put these strategies into action. Or, if you have other tried-and-tested tips, we’d love to know about them! 👇
