Since its launch 14 years ago, LinkedIn has evolved the business landscape into a community of discussion, networking, promotion, creation and curation. From a three-person startup to Fortune 500 global enterprises, LinkedIn has helped bring a voice to the faceless ideology of business; a virtual ecosystem of human connection that at one point never seemed possible.
If you’re a business, you are likely well aware of the fruitful potential LinkedIn provides. But simply creating a company profile, publishing daily posts, and inviting your employees, leads or customers to follow your page is not enough. A strategy that is deployed with comprehensive action planning, intuitive thinking and meticulous attention-to-detail is needed to fully reap in the reward of this unique social network.
1.) Encourage Employees/Page Administrators to become Active on Groups
LinkedIn Groups is a wonderful, free platform to extend awareness and build social influence regarding you and your company. With over 2 million group today, the opportunity to pigeonhole your content to reach your exact target market segment is not only possible, but also incredibly effective and efficient.
No, a company profile can not directly post content on LinkedIn Groups as an entity, but in-house employees and page administrators can post organic content with links back to your website, blog, landing pages, YouTube channel, etc. But remember, LinkedIn Groups focus on sharing valuable, informative content—not promotional material. Instead, it’s a place to showcase your company as a thought leader and spotlight its industry influence.
2.) The 80-20 Rule
Daily company posts are a fantastic way to pump life and active discussion into your company, but if your posts are solely focused on the “sell” you can expect social engagement to suffer. Diversify daily posts with a combination of content that is systematically unique; in other words, your audience shouldn’t be able to distinguish what it is you will publish next. The 80-20 rule of content production is a simple tactic to implement into your owned media outreach. The “80” relates to sharing valuable, useful, educational and creative content; the “20” correlates with promotion and motivating purchase behavior.
80:
• Best practices or ‘how-to’ articles
• Infographics
• Curated content/external media
• Podcasts
• Product demos
• Expert Q and A
• Employee achievements/bios
• Interesting Statistics
• Quizzes and surveys
20:
• Press releases
• Commercials
• Landing pages
• Promotional opportunities
• Product updates
• Product launches
• Company achievements
• Media alerts
• Earned media placements
3.) Showcase Pages
If you have a by-product, campaign project, contest, highlighting a department, initiative, etc., creating a Showcase Page is a wonderfully useful tactic in compartmentalizing content into an exclusive social area. Not only does this help to strategize a more even flow of publication, it also helps your audience to better distinguish the structure or happenings within your company.
4.) Sponsor your Content
One of the most effective and easiest ways to gain traction for your business on LinkedIn is to sponsor your “best” content. The potential to extend your digital reach of impressions and industry/demographic awareness is immense with this feature. LinkedIn makes this tactic extremely user-friendly as you can segment your digital reach by industry, role, company size, location, experience, etc. Once you have your target demographic established, you simply pick and choose which company posts you think will provide the most interest/opportunity for your business.
5.) Get your Internal Team Involved
Some companies will find this tactic harder than others, but the truth is, there’s no better audience to help your company gain awareness or engagement more than your own in-house team. The reason why this might be a tricky tactic is that some employees may be coy, and the idea of sharing/liking/engaging on daily posts seems more like a responsibility and less like a preference. A strategy for eradicating this problem is in the ability of manager or high-ranking personnel to establish a safe and happy work environment. Bluntly requesting employees to “get involved” can incite intimidation—coercing a gap between those that are passionate about their job, and those that simply have a job. Express gratitude, thanks and admiration of your employees—and hopefully—they will do the same.
6.) Promote your Company Page, Everywhere
Not everyone knows about your LinkedIn page, which could cost you to miss out on some great opportunities. But the good news is you can easily drive instant traffic to LinkedIn through just about every online (and offline) medium.
Online:
• Official website
• Email signature
• Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, Tumbler, Snapchat, etc., social platforms
• YouTube and Vimeo channels
• Landing pages
• Earned media placements
Offline:
• Business cards
• Flyers
• Menus/table tents (restaurant industries)
• Bumper stickers
• Company T-shirts
• Business Proposals
7.) Post, Post, Post!
Improve your LinkedIn profile by publishing daily posts with relative information that captures your target audience’s attention and engages them to strike up a conversation. From infographics to product demons, from press releases to Q&A with industry experts, from inspiring quotes to employee bios, the possibilities of content marketing via LinkedIn are endless.
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