More than 50 million companies worldwide will be using LinkedIn by 2021. But not just because it’s the ultimate social network for recruiting and hiring top talent. With some 740 million members at their disposal, more and more brands are using the opportunities and solutions offered by the US platform for marketing to network, showcase their expertise and most importantly prospect and generate leads to make sales.
In this guide, we will show you how to use LinkedIn and give you some tips to help you get the most out of your marketing strategy on LinkedIn.
But let’s start with the basics: creating your LinkedIn business page.
The basics of creating your LinkedIn page
Before your company can start considering any kind of marketing strategy on LinkedIn, it needs a LinkedIn business page. Here are all the steps that will help you set up a professional LinkedIn profile quickly.
1- How to create a LinkedIn page:
Visit the “LinkedIn Pages” section of the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions website. Then click on “Create your page”.
Then choose the appropriate category for your company.
Then fill in all the necessary details about your company. On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a preview of your homepage to see how it looks when you add content. Choose a URL that is relevant to your brand, and if possible make it contain the same username as on other social media sites attached to your business.
Finally, you still need to upload your company logo and add your brand’s tagline. Although optional, this step is essential: businesses that post a logo receive six times more visits than those that do not.
Click on “Create Page” and you’re ready to go.
2- Complete your Page
Now you’re going to take your LinkedIn Page and your professional social network presence to the next level by adding more details. This will provide visitors with additional information about your business and improve your ranking in Google and LinkedIn search results. This is part of the reason why full pages get 30% more views.
To add this information, click on the pencil icon below your company name.
Here are the elements you’ll need to add:
- Company Description
In this section, talk about your vision, mission, values and offer a description of your products and services in three or four brief paragraphs. Google search results preview up to 156 characters of text on your page, so optimize your description for SEO by including keywords. - Location
Specify where your store or office is located. You can add multiple addresses by selecting “+Add Location”. - Hashtags
You can add up to three hashtags to make your profile more searchable on LinkedIn. Choose hashtags that are commonly used in your industry and that are most relevant to your business.
- Cover Photo
Choose an image that showcases your business and gives you every chance to attract leads. Avoid busy or cluttered shots. Recommended size is 1584 (width) by 396 (height) pixels. - Custom button
Adding a button to your profile is essential to encourage users to take action. The options included on your dashboard are “visit website”, “contact us”, “learn more”, and “sign up”. Make sure you add the corresponding URL so that people who click the button land on the right page. - Language Management
If you have a global brand or a multilingual audience, you can add your name, tagline and description in over 20 different languages.
3- Share your page
Let people know that your LinkedIn page is now operational on the internet and all around you. If you have employees, send an email to the whole company. Let them know how they can follow the page and add it as a workplace. Sharing a strong sense of belonging, connecting visitors to your company’s leaders, and giving potential customers a glimpse into your company culture is how you’ll start your LinkedIn journey in the best way.
To advertise your page to your customers, use all your digital touch points (newsletter, social networks, website) and ask them to subscribe, explaining the inherent benefits. This can be job and career opportunities, access to your LinkedIn Groups, LinkedIn Live sessions, etc.
4- Add LinkedIn buttons
Add icons for LinkedIn – and all your other social networks – prominently on your website, preferably at the very top of your homepage, so that your prospects and contacts can easily find your LinkedIn page and connect with you.
You can also add “Share” and “Follow” buttons with LinkedIn plugins.
5- Create a LinkedIn marketing strategy
With your company page ready to go, it’s time to think about your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
What goals does your company want to achieve on LinkedIn? Are you going to use the platform to hire, generate leads, do social selling, increase revenue, etc.? Do you plan to run ads as part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy? Advertising on LinkedIn, like on Facebook and Google, requires a good knowledge of how its ad network works, but it’s a powerful lever for delivering perfectly targeted ads.
Before writing your marketing plan, take the time to familiarize yourself with LinkedIn’s demographics. It’s a good starting point for knowing who uses the platform and the audience you can reach. Also, do an audit of your main LinkedIn competitors and find out how they use the platform.
Once you have your marketing plan outlined, establish a LinkedIn content calendar. Having a content strategy is essential to shine on the social network. Plan your posts to prepare your content, search for images, and write high-value articles.
There are tools that can help you plan and publish your content, like Hootsuite Planner. They help you get a clear overall picture of your content plan, which makes it easy to rectify any gaps and find a good balance for your content marketing on LinkedIn.
Let’s take a look at 3 tips to optimize your marketing efforts on the platform.
3 tips to perform on the professional network LinkedIn
Here are 3 tips that will allow you to optimize your marketing on LinkedIn like a pro.
1- Share publications and content in rich media format
Posts that include photos and videos generally work well on all social networks, and the same goes for LinkedIn.
According to LinkedIn, posts that incorporate images receive 98% more comments than those that do not. LinkedIn also finds that custom collages that include 3 to 4 images in a post work well.
Try using custom images and visual content, as they tend to get more engagement. You can also upload PDFs and PowerPoint presentations to support your posts.
Videos, meanwhile, garner five times more engagement on LinkedIn than any other type of content. One of the benefits of native video on LinkedIn is that it plays automatically when a user scrolls through it. In addition, videos hosted on the platform are prioritized by the LinkedIn algorithm.
2- Optimize your posts for reach and impact
When it comes to publishing posts on your company page, it’s best to take into account and follow a few best practices.
Indeed, LinkedIn’s algorithm ranks publications according to the following signals: personal connections, relevance of interests and probability of engagement. In other words, the algorithm offers people content that is likely to interest them, based on the accounts they connect with.
Here are the best practices for publishing professional posts on LinkedIn:
Share relevant, high-quality content
Grab attention with an image or video
Keep the text format short
Find strong titles for your posts
Ask questions to elicit answers
Always include a prominent CTA
Tag the people and pages mentioned
Include two to three relevant hashtags naturally
Display key statistics and quotes
Create LinkedIn polls to drive feedback and engagement and respond to comments as quickly as possible
3- Publish at the right time
Finally, publishing regularly is essential to building and growing an audience on LinkedIn. The platform reports that brands that post once a month get followers six times faster than those that don’t. Companies that post weekly see twice as many engagements, while brands that post once a day become even more popular.
Regardless of how often you post, aim for the time slots that have the most impact. The best times to post on LinkedIn are around 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., between noon and 1 a.m., and in the late afternoon, around 6 p.m. The best day for B2B brands is Wednesday, while for B2C brands, Mondays and Wednesdays are better.
