What are some effective ways for Marketers to use LinkedIn? Over the years, LinkedIn has evolved into so much more than just a job search platform. Now a days you can use it as a tool to run promotions, target and research prospects, and provide lead magnet tools. With over 500 million total users and over 250 million monthly active users, according to LinkedIn’s, Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn, this platform is the #1 channel that B2B marketers use to share content. We’ve identified some of the most effective ways for marketers to make the most of LinkedIn such as: getting your colleagues to post to reach a larger audience, using LinkedIn’s content suggestions feature, building a group and inviting customers, promoting your page outside of your company, making it easy for people to find you by including details in your company’s Specialties section, posting consistently, and adding relevant hashtags.
Effective ways Marketers to use LinkedIn:
1) Reach large audience for FREE through your colleagues’s social networks
An effective way to use LinkedIn is implement an advocacy marketing strategy. Unsure what we mean by an advocacy marketing strategy? Take a look at our blog post, Advocacy Marketing Strategy, where we outlined how to develop your own strategy. Here’s how we define advocacy marketing: “it’s a process that involves identifying customers and brand advocates who have strong network that includes your target audience. They tend to be influencers that can represent your brand effectively. Once identified, these advocates need to be equipped with right information to communicate with the audience. Individuals who are your natural brand advocates are also more likely to be loyal to your company”. You’ll need a centralized platform where you can monitor all advocate activities, distribute information to your advocates, and ensure brand consistency.
MarketBeam can be your hub for your advocacy marketing strategy:
You’ll want to develop a presence on all social channels where your audience is present. LinkedIn is a good place to start to build your advocacy marketing strategy especially if you’re a B2B business. More than 90% of marketers believe that LinkedIn is the best channel to distribute B2B content.
Source: Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn 2017
As you may know, generating engagement on LinkedIn is more difficult than other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. Employee advocacy should definitely kick off large reach and engagement. Because, employees who are building the brand become advocates of the brand and spread the word on their own social networks. Our customers have experienced 10 to 15 times increase in reach and engagement.
TIP: Gain executive buy-in so all employees participate and share social posts.
Suggested Reading: Five Steps to Using Employee Advocacy to Drive Brand Engagement
2) Use Content Suggestion from LinkedIn for content curation
Curating content that resonates with your audience is very time consuming and a tough challenge for marketers. LinkedIn offers a Content Suggestion feature that is similar to other content aggregators like Feedly. In November 2018, LinkedIn relaunched their Content Suggestion feature. When you’re logged into your page admin center you can use the filters on the left-hand side to identify suggested content that your target audience might like.
To use the Content Suggestion features, follow these steps:
1. Navigate to your Page Admin Center.
2. Click on the filters to describe your target audience.
3. Suggested content will populate in your results that you can share with your audience.
3) Build a LinkedIn group and invite customers
LinkedIn is enhancing features around groups. There are not many platforms available that connects people based on professional interests. For example, if a groups of healthcare professionals around Munich want to connect, there are very few options. So, using LinkedIn to build groups and communities will be very relevant and successful. In a previous blog post, we shared a few pointers on ways that you can Build a Community that Loves Your Business.
How to access LinkedIn groups:
1. Navigate to the Work icon on the top right of your LinkedIn homepage and select Groups when the menu appears.
2. Click on Create a group on the upper right-hand side of the page.
4) Promote your LinkedIn page externally
Don’t forget to drive traffic to your LinkedIn page by sharing and promoting it externally. Common places to include your LinkedIn page link are on your website using a widget to make it easy for people to share your blog posts or media with their LinkedIn network. Also, don’t forget to include your LinkedIn page URL on your email campaigns and newsletters.
TIP: Make sure your company looks polished by creating a standardized email signature that includes links to your social channels!
5) Pay attention to keywords in Specialities section
Another effective way for marketers to make the most of LinkedIn is to ensure that the keywords in your page’s Specialties section match your website’s keywords. Why is this important? People use the LinkedIn search bar to look for companies or explore new companies, products, and services. To ensure that your company is associated with relevant keywords, make sure they are used in the Specialties section.
For example, here are MarketBeam’s specialties that are a part of our Company Overview section:
6) Consistently post and use hashtags!
To use LinkedIn effectively, we recommend at lest 5 post per week. You’ll also want to be strategic about the hashtag you use. And be consistent with both your hashtag and your posting schedule! Always tag your keywords and match your hashtags across your social channels like Facebook and Twitter. So, why should you use hashtags on LinkedIn? Well, this makes your content easier to find and it can help people find your company. People can find your content if they are following the hashtags you are using. Pick up to 3 hashtags to associate with your LinkedIn page. A new feature that LinkedIn introduced is related to Communities.
Follow these steps to select your top 3 hashtags you want to affiliate with your company:
1. Navigate to your Page Admin Center.
2. Look for the Communities section on the right-hand side and click on the pencil icon to edit your hashtags.
3. You can add up to 3 hashtags that you want to associate with your company page.
7) Measure results and adjust social strategy
Measure results with a tool like MarketBeam to see which is the most popular post. And, repeat posting content that you know your audience will enjoy. For example, it’s assumed these days that video is the most popular type of content for an audience to engage with. But, to generalize and say that this is what all audiences prefer is untrue. To continue curating content that your audience enjoys, you need to monitor what works best for your audience.
