LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform with over 850 million members. With such a massive user base, LinkedIn offers tremendous opportunities for businesses looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, and drive sales. However, simply creating a LinkedIn company page is not enough – you need an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy to grow your business following and engagement on the platform.
Why LinkedIn is Important for Business
With over 62% of social media traffic referred by LinkedIn, it is a critical channel for B2B companies. LinkedIn provides access to a massive audience of professionals and decision-makers that are not easy to reach through other platforms. Some key advantages of marketing on LinkedIn include:
- Highly targeted audience: LinkedIn provides powerful targeting options based on job title, industry, skills, geography etc. This allows for highly targeted marketing.
- Lead generation: 92% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. This content marketing fuels lead generation.
- Thought leadership: LinkedIn provides opportunities to establish your brand and key employees as industry thought leaders through content publishing on LinkedIn and LinkedIn groups.
- Sales Prospecting: LinkedIn is a goldmine for sales teams. The depth of LinkedIn profile information allows sales teams to identify, qualify and reach out to relevant prospects.
Given these advantages, investing in a LinkedIn marketing strategy is important for brands looking to drive awareness, leads and revenue via social media.
Complete LinkedIn Company Profile
The foundation of your LinkedIn presence is your LinkedIn Company Page profile. A complete and optimized LinkedIn Company Page helps ensure your business surfaces prominently in LinkedIn search results. Here are key elements to optimize in your Company Page:
Cover image
Your cover image is prime real estate on your Company Page. Use it to reinforce your brand identity with colors, fonts, imagery that align with your brand style guide. Include a call-to-action like “Follow Us” to nudge visitors to follow your company.
Logo
Your logo enables visitors to instantly recognize your brand. Use your official brand logo for consistency.
About section
The about section is valuable real estate to succinctly communicate what you do, differentiate from competitors, establish thought leadership and Credibility. Include details like:
- Company description
- Founding story
- Mission statement
- Awards/certifications
- Notable clients
Pictures and videos
Engaging visuals of your products, office, team events, videos bring your page to life. Videos can help convey company values and culture. Optimize with captions and hashtags.
Products/services
Highlight your product/service offering so visitors can learn how your business can help them. This tab is visible on mobile, so optimize this well.
Careers
Feature open job listings to attract talent. Give a peek into your workplace culture to entice applicants.
Optimize LinkedIn Profile of Employees
After optimizing your Company Page, the next step is to ensure your employee profiles sparkle. 75% of B2B buyers view employee profiles before engaging with a business, so complete profiles are a must. Key profile elements to optimize include:
Profile Photo
A professional headshot inspires confidence in your expertise. Backgrounds with company logo/products help reinforce branding.
Headline
Summarize the value you provide, focusing on how you help customers and your Differentiation. Include important keywords.
About section
Briefly share your experience, skills and achievements. Include keywords that prospects may search to find you.
Experience
Detail your responsibilities and accomplishments at each role. Demonstrate the value you drove for employers with metrics.
Skills & Endorsements
List key skills, tools, methodologies you are proficient in. Encourage colleagues to endorse you for key skills.
Education
Listing your academic credentials, certifications establishes your expertise. Don’t miss key accomplishments like awards, projects, thesis papers.
Recommendations
Recommendations from past managers, colleagues, clients validate your capabilities. Recommend connections in return.
Share Relevant, Valuable Content
Content is the fuel for your LinkedIn marketing strategy. By consistently publishing engaging, relevant content, you can attract followers, build connections and generate leads. Here are 4 content types to focus on:
Thought Leadership Articles
Position yourself as an industry expert by publishing long-form posts on trends, best practices, case studies. Include visuals, statistics, quotes to make it interesting for visitors.
Infographics
Infographics simplify complex information into an easy-to-digest, visual format. They can convey industry research, process workflows, guide buyers, and much more in a memorable format.
Behind the scenes
Give a peek into your company culture through photos, videos and posts about events, office spaces, employee stories. This humanizes your brand.
Repurpose content
Refresh old blog posts and presentations into new infographics, quick tip posts. Repurposing saves time while keeping content fresh.
To maximize reach, post content natively on LinkedIn and also link to content from other platforms like your website blog.
Engage With Your Network and Visitors
Growing your followers is nice, but engaging that audience is critical. Actively interacting with your connections, followers and visitors fosters relationships and builds brand loyalty. Some ways to engagement include:
- Like and comment on updates from your connections
- Share relevant industry articles, thought leadership content with your network
- Reply to comments and messages promptly
- Give endorsements for the skills of your connections
- Send congratulatory messages on work anniversaries and promotions
- Follow up with connections after initial outreach
Make engagement a habit, not just a one-off task. Schedule time regularly for engagement.
Run Targeted Ad Campaigns
With a follower base in place, LinkedIn advertising can help you reach a wider audience beyond your immediate network. With its depth of member demographic and behavioral data, LinkedIn makes it easy to target your ads. Some options include:
Sponsored Content
Publish your content as a “Sponsored Update” to reach a wider segment of members based on your targeting criteria.
Message ads
Engage your target personas through attention-grabbing message ads that use video, imagery and captions.
Text ads
Eye-catching text ads can help you increase website visits, downloads and followers.
Dynamic ads
Automated ads tailored to each visitor based on their profile data and browsing history.
Focus on quality over quantity – take time to create compelling creative ads that align with your brand identity.
Join and Engage with LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups offer a way to directly connect with your target audience and industry peers in a community setting. By joining Groups related to your industry, solutions, target personas – you can tap into new connections, insights, prospects and opportunities. Ways to engage include:
- Comment on Group discussions with your perspective
- Create polls to survey Group members to get insights
- Ask the Group questions to learn about issues, challenges
- Share helpful articles, case studies and thought leadership
Choose quality over quantity when selecting Groups so you can build trusted relationships with an engaged community over time.
Cultivate Employee Advocacy
Your own employees can be powerful amplifiers of your brand on LinkedIn. By sharing company updates, content and engaging with their connections – employees act as organic evangelists. Tactics to spur advocacy include:
- Train employees on best practices
- Set goals for advocacy activities
- Recognize top advocates
- Make it easy to share with pre-written posts
- Focus sharing on employee expertise areas
According to LinkedIn, employee posts on LinkedIn generate 2x the engagement of brand posts. Leverage this to boost reach.
Grow With LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms make it easy to collect lead contact information right within the LinkedIn messaging experience. Visitors simply click a “Request a demo” button on your LinkedIn posts and Company Page to open the form and submit their details. You can then export these leads and import into your CRM system. Lead Gen Forms are a powerful way to convert LinkedIn content views into measurable leads.
Integrate With Marketing Automation Platforms
To track LinkedIn engagements and nurture your LinkedIn leads, integrate your LinkedIn presence with marketing automation platforms like HubSpot, Marketo or Eloqua. These tools can track key LinkedIn activities like:
- LinkedIn content views
- Follower growth
- Page visits
- Lead gen forms
- Engagement like comments, shares
This data feeds right into your MA system, enabling you to score and nurture leads. Integrations also allow you to publish content directly from your MA platform to LinkedIn.
Monitor and Measure Results
Like any marketing activity, you want to monitor LinkedIn analytics to see what content and strategies deliver results. Key metrics to track include:
- Follower growth
- Engagement rate
- Content views, likes, shares, comments
- Website clicks
- Leads generated
- Sales influenced by LinkedIn
Continuously optimize your efforts based on insights from your LinkedIn analytics and A/B testing.
Cultivate Relationships With Influencers
LinkedIn influencers and thought leaders with large followings can amplify your content and brand recognition. Tactics to build relationships include:
- Comment and share their content
- Congratulate them on big news/projects
- Collaborate on content like co-authoring articles
- Ask to be interviewed for their blog/podcast
- Invite them to speak at your events
Aim to provide them value before requesting promotion. Personalized outreach and slowly building a relationship is key.
Conclusion
With these tips, you can develop an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy to increase brand awareness, leads and revenue. Remember – organic, relationship-focused efforts deliver the best long term value on LinkedIn. Consistency and patience are key. What steps will you take today to step up your LinkedIn game?