LinkedIn is well-known as the best online networking tool for professionals. Businesses often use LinkedIn to help their employees connect with others in their industry. Another benefit of LinkedIn is the opportunity to grow your business through recognition, reputation, and referrals. But how do you start to gain traction with a LinkedIn marketing strategy?

Size Matters: Recognition

Remember that attracting followers is the best way to organically increase your audience size. Some steps to increase your following are:

  • Make sure your company profile is complete with a great description, images, and links
  • Add LinkedIn buttons to your website
  • Have all of your employees mark themselves as working at your company and follow your company page
  • Once you have content, get your employees to share it out for their network to see

As you’re sprucing up your profile to build your followers, create a LinkedIn content strategy.

Content – How Do We Know What is Important?

LinkedIn specifically tells you exactly what works:

“We believe you gain meaningful, consistent engagement and foster familiarity by posting via your LinkedIn Page at least once per day. We see the highest engagement when we post our updates in the morning — and we see a slight bump again after business hours. But experiment to see what works best for your company. Every audience will be different, including the times they consume content.”

Focus on providing quality content. Video content performs well, as do other visual elements such as infographics. Posts with a call to action (CTA) such as a link within the post also perform better than plain text posts. This can include links to:

  • Blog posts
  • Events
  • eBooks
  • Webinars

LinkedIn marketing strategy - writing a blog - webWe’d recommend creating a LinkedIn marketing strategy content calendar for at least 2 weeks into the future. Keep your posting schedule consistent so people become even more familiar with your content.

Want to take a deeper dive into posting times? This article by LinkedIn offers some guidelines for when to post to gain traction on LinkedIn.

Get a Rep! (Reputation)

If you want LinkedIn members to engage with your company page and posts, make sure you’re providing consistently helpful content.

Stay focused on what matters to your audience. Stick with the 4-1-1 Rule to remind them that you’re a trusted source of information, not just a seller of a service or product.

The 4-1-1 Rule means sharing:

  • 1 content piece about your brand
  • 1 update from another source (review from a customer, news story from a local channel, etc.)
  • 4 pieces of content published by another source that is relevant to your audience

This seems like a lot of work, but it keeps your news feed focused on what your audience wants to see, not your brand.

Give to Get (Referrals and Contacts)

LinkedIn marketing strategy - liking on cellphone and computer - webEvery business wants more referrals (and conversions). If your company offers up certain types of valuable information, professionals in the selected niche audience will share this valuable information with their audience, in essence, referring you to their network.

If you have a useful guide, eBook, whitepaper, or industry report, people will give out contact information that will allow you to pursue their business.

Focus on content centered on a topic that is both important and relevant to your readers.

 

Find Out What Content People Are Searching For

  1. Do some research into your selected audience
  2. Find a problem they face
  3. Figure out how to solve it
  4. Include tangible goals that make your instructions practical and immediately applicable

Make the most of your content by sharing it out on other social media platforms and your website’s blog, if you have one. Make sure you share it out at different times of the day to avoid oversaturation. When reusing content, reword it and use different imagery to keep it fresh.

If you’re testing paid ad campaigns, develop a clear naming convention so it’s easy to figure out which messages are getting you the best leads.

Pay attention to major changes or occurrences happening in the days surrounding the publication of your article. This will affect the type of engagement your posts are getting and might create opportunities for spin-off posts.

Gain Traction with LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

LinkedIn marketing strategy analyticsWe hope that gives you a few starting tips to gain traction with LinkedIn’s marketing strategy. Our marketing experts can spruce up your profile, create a content calendar suitable for your needs, and expand your business’s networking capabilities. If you don’t have the time to learn another networking platform, get in touch today!

LinkedIn Resources to Explore

If you’re new to LinkedIn marketing strategy, you should consider using LinkedIn’s knowledge articles to learn more. Here is one on best practices and a playbook for organic and paid marketing.