LinkedIn is a popular social media platform with over 774 million users worldwide.
If you’re not using LinkedIn to improve brand awareness, build your network, boost leads and conversions, and increase revenue, then you’re not using it to its fullest potential. LinkedIn is often underutilized, but it can be a powerful addition to your social media content strategy.
This guide contains many LinkedIn tips that you can start using right away to improve your brand awareness, share your marketing content, and grow your business.
What is LinkedIn marketing?
LinkedIn marketing is the process of using LinkedIn to improve brand awareness, generate leads, share content, make connections, foster business relationships and partnerships, and drive traffic to your website.
When marketing your business on LinkedIn, you have access to features such as analytics, connections, and brand-building.
Why is marketing on LinkedIn important?
When it comes to social media marketing, you should not just put all your resources toward the big three: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You should also use LinkedIn because it is the world’s largest professional network and it generates leads 227% more effectively than Facebook and Twitter.
Before we start, here is a short introduction to LinkedIn for those of you who are new to the platform.
How to Use LinkedIn for Business
Step 1: Create a user account for yourself
To create a LinkedIn account, you will need to sign up with your work email address. You will also be the administrator of your Company Page, but you can add additional Page managers later.
Step 2: Create a LinkedIn Company Page
Now that you’re logged in, you can create your Page by clicking on the Work icon at the top right of your browser. Then, scroll to the bottom of the menu that pops up and select “Create a Company Page.”
Choose the right type of Page from the four available options:
- Small business
- Medium to large business
- Showcase page
- Educational institution
Showcase pages are for companies who want to have separate pages for each division of their business while still linking back to the main corporate page.
Showcase Pages are pages affiliated with a Company Page that appear on the latter’s main page under the heading “Affiliated Pages.”
After selecting a Page type, input all the necessary details. Your logo and tagline will be the first thing that LinkedIn users see, so make sure to write a good one.
When you’re done, click Create page.
Ta-da, you now have a Company Page.
Step 3: Optimize your Page
There are a few more things you can do to make your Page more successful.
Scroll down and click on the blue “Edit Page” button.
Make sure to fill out all the fields in the additional information area. This will help improve your LinkedIn SEO and make it easier for users to find you in search results. It’s worth the effort: Companies with complete profiles receive 30% more views.
A few LinkedIn Page optimization tips
Use translations
You can create a multilingual Company Page on Facebook to reach a global audience. Up to 20 languages can be included on your Page. This includes the name, tagline, and description fields.
Add keywords in your description
Make sure that your LinkedIn company page includes natural-sounding keywords in the first paragraph of your company description, as this will make it easier for Google to index your page. Try to keep your company description to a maximum of three or four paragraphs, and make sure that it covers your company’s vision, values, products, and services.
Add hashtags
Adding hashtags to your post will allow you to follow up to three different topics.
And finally: add a custom button
This is the button located next to the Follow one that LinkedIn users will see on your Page. You can change it to any of these:
- Contact us
- Learn more
- Register
- Sign up
- Visit website
“Visit website” is the default option.
You can change the URL for your website at any time. If you’re running a webinar or event, you can change it to “Register” or “Sign up” to focus on that, and then change it back to your website afterwards. You can include a UTM in your URL so you can track where your leads are coming from.
Step 4: Build your Page following
No one will be aware of your Page unless you promote it.
You’ll see a cute illustration of a marketer wearing sweatpants and talking to their dog about this quarter’s work until you start posting your own content.
Here are 4 ways to get your new Page some love:
1. Share it
To share your Page, go to your main Page and click the Share Page button next to the Edit button.
To get started, share your new Page to your personal LinkedIn profile and ask your employees, customers and friends to give it a follow.
2. Link to it from your website
Include the LinkedIn icon alongside the rest of your social media icons in your footer, and any other places you link out to social media.
3. Ask employees to update their profiles
It’s important for the long-term growth of your page that your employees list their job titles on their profiles. When you first created your page, your employees’ profiles didn’t list their job titles so there were no links.
Now that you have created your Company Page on LinkedIn, ask your employees to edit their job descriptions on their personal profiles to include a link to your new Company Page. This will help increase traffic to your Company Page and help more people learn about your business.
They need to edit their profile, delete the company name, and type your company name into the same field. LinkedIn will look for pages with that name. When they find yours, they need to click it and save the changes. This will update their profile so that it links back to your page.
If you list someone as an employee on your LinkedIn profile, their contacts will be able to find and follow you. This can help your company establish credibility, as displaying the number of employees you have is a good way to do this.
4. Send invitations to follow
You can invite your connections to follow your Page from the Page itself. LinkedIn limits the number of invites you can send to prevent people from spamming.
guilty), but it only takes a minute, so why not?
Step 5: Execute your LinkedIn marketing strategy
The easy part is creating a Page, the hard part is keeping it going with content your audience will actually want to see. Having a plan makes this much easier.
The LinkedIn part of your social media strategy should include answers to:
- What is the goal of your LinkedIn Page? (This may be different from your overall social media goals.)
- What will you use your Page for? Recruiting? Lead generation? Sharing the super nerdy industry stuff that doesn’t perform as well on Instagram or Facebook?
- Are you going to advertise? What is your LinkedIn ads budget?
- What are your competitors doing on LinkedIn, and how can you create better content?
Lastly, make a content plan:
- How often will you post?
- What topics will you cover?
- How can you repurpose existing content to use on LinkedIn?
- Are you going to curate content from others?
Some apps enable users to upload content, schedule it for autopublish, and view it in a weekly or monthly view. Apps also allow users to ensure that their posts are evenly balanced across all goals and topics, and to easily add new content or rearrange upcoming posts.
In addition to creating your own content, it’s important to engage with others on LinkedIn. Although it’s a professional network, LinkedIn is still a social platform.
LinkedIn Marketing Best Practices
LinkedIn can help you direct traffic to your website, find potential customers, share your expert knowledge through articles, and expand your professional network. Additionally, LinkedIn is a great way to post job openings and attract new employees to your company. If you’re looking for ways to use LinkedIn as part of your social media strategy, here are a few ideas.
1. Use hashtags.
If you want to use hashtags to improve your LinkedIn marketing strategy, choose them carefully and don’t use too many.
When looking for hashtags to use, you’ll want to find ones that are relevant to your field, but are also popular enough that people will see them. To do this, you can use the search bar on LinkedIn to look up broad hashtags. For example, if you work in growth marketing, you can search #growthmarketing to see how many people are following it, and how often it is being used.
Begin by using three to five hashtags that will reach your target audiences. It is important to have a variety of hashtags with varying numbers of followers so you don’t get too focused on high numbers. Hashtags that are related but lesser known can help you to reach an engaged LinkedIn audience.
2. Know when to use a LinkedIn Profile vs. a LinkedIn Page
If you want people to be able to see your business’ content on LinkedIn without having to send a connection request and wait for approval, you can create a LinkedIn Page. LinkedIn Pages are public, while LinkedIn Profiles are private. Each serves a different purpose in LinkedIn marketing, but both work with the LinkedIn algorithm. You’ll have different tools that you can use to grow your audience, depending on which one you create.
LinkedIn Profiles are unique in that they allow you to have private, one-on-one conversations with people who request to be added to your network. If you’re a consultant, work in direct sales, or prefer to take a individualized approach to your business, you’ll want to have a LinkedIn Profile to make use of this feature.
You can create the ultimate marketing workflow by listing your business’ LinkedIn Page as your employer on your personal Profile. That way, when a visitor lands on your Profile, they’ll see your Page, too.
3. Create posts of varying lengths.
There are two types of posts that are effective on LinkedIn – quick, bold posts that pack a punch, and long-form stories that capture the readers’ attention and lead to a longer dwell time on the app. Both of these types of posts should have a place in your LinkedIn content plan.
You don’t want to become known as the person who only shares monologues because your network won’t always have time to read them. Instead, focus on sharing content that is concise and to the point. This will make you seem more authoritative as a thought leader.
If you vary the length of your posts and add images and videos, your content will be fresh and relevant to your network. People will be excited to see what you post next.
4. Share external articles on the platform.
LinkedIn’s algorithm is different from other platforms like Instagram in that it allows external links to blogs and websites. If the content you post is valuable and relevant to your audience, you will be successful in posting other people’s content on LinkedIn.
When linking to another author’s website, it is polite to tag them in your post or use their hashtag to give credit, even though you are not required to do so. The author may share your post with their own followers or comment on the post, which would introduce your profile to their audience.
5. Keep your publishing schedule consistent.
Although LinkedIn is known for having content with a long lifespan, it is still important to publish content regularly.
Publishing regularly will make your network trust you more. Figure out which days and times get the most engagement, and make those part of your schedule.
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