10 tips to boost your LinkedIn marketing

The opportunities on LinkedIn are vast. As a social network for working professionals , people are primed to be served work-related marketing content. As Daniel Swepson, Head of Marketing for Next Chapter, says;

“LinkedIn is one of the social channels we’ve seen the most amount of engagement and success with for our clients. When people are on LinkedIn, they’re in the frame of mind for work and work related content, so they’re already switched on to engage, as long as the content is relevant, unlike Facebook for example, where people are looking for content from their friends & family, but are also seeing ads from brands trying to sell them something.”

But how can you make the most out of the opportunity to market to a potentially high-engaged audience? Read below for our top 10 tips from our marketing experts.

1. Identify your LinkedIn marketing goals

What is it that you would like to achieve through LinkedIn? What does success look like to you and your company? Whether you’re looking to increase brand awareness and authority, leads, traffic, sales or event signups, make sure you know exactly what you’re aiming for before you ramp up your LinkedIn marketing efforts.

2. Optimise your company profile

The best place to begin is with your LinkedIn company profile. Any social media marketing you do within LinkedIn will increase traffic to this page and so you want it to look good enough for an ideal first impression. As well as making it as professional, attractive, informative and concise as you can, you need to make sure you include your keywords for SEO purposes, that you have created your bespoke URL and that you have posted at least 5-10 interesting posts before increasing your marketing efforts. These three actions will help enormously in getting your page seen and in looking the part. Lastly, be mindful of how old your last post was, as if you leave it too long between posts, you will look less credible and potential clients may wonder if you’re still in business.

“The clients where we’ve seen the most amount of value is our B2B clients, obviously, but that doesn’t mean it’s not relevant for brands selling to direct to consumers – we’re seeing a big increase in the last couple of months in recruitment drives – not only do people use LinkedIn to find jobs, but they also use it to research businesses and teams who they might be considering working with. Making sure your company page is up to date and active is crucial.” Daniel Swepson, Head of Marketing, Next Chapter

3. Don’t forget to optimise your own profile too

What’s quite unique about LinkedIn is people can not only view companies but they can visit profile pages of the employees of that company. We all consider our LinkedIn profiles from a networking and career advancing point of view but if you are trying to grow your Linkedin reputation, then you need to think about it from a potential client’s point of view too. Things you could do to optimise your page for business growth is to have a professional profile photo, a branded company banner, details about your role and experience (don’t forget your keywords) and some outstanding personal recommendations . You should also think about how active you want to appear, as the activity section on your profile is shown above your experience. To become more active, try to engage or share the posts of others that are relevant to your brand and post something of your own when you can.

4. Share regular quality content 

Sharing high-quality content regularly is not only important for growing an audience or community, it’s important for keeping in touch with the followers and contacts you have. Plan ahead with a marketing calendar and think about what you can post or share on both your company and personal profiles at least once a week. Try to keep in mind that you want your content to be engaging, interesting, thought-provoking, topical or in some way adding value to your community or target audience. Think about a mix of photography, graphics and rich media as well as different formats such as a linkedIn carousel post to create a bigger impact and to keep things fresh . Try a combination of short posts and longer, wordier posts to mix things up and to see which works best for you as a linkedIn campaign. To help with filling that content calendar, think about repurposing any existing content that is still relevant and originally worked well. Lastly, consider where your existing content is held currently. Is there already somewhere potential clients could go to read, listen or watch a lot of content e.g. a website, blog, vlog, podcast, or via email updates? If so, be sure to share the resource as a whole.

5. Get your staff involved

When building brand awareness, it’s a great asset to be able to get your employees to share company updates, what they’re working on, industry insights or their own success stories on their personal LinkedIn profiles. Every time you post an update, share the link internally and ask colleagues to like, share, comment or to tag friends they think would be interested in the content. Also, try to encourage each profile to have a professional profile photo (perhaps have a company-wide profile photo shoot to make them match and be on brand) and a branded company banner. You’d be surprised how far a reach you can get through your own team.

Lastly, if you’re looking to build credibility and trust for your brand, then consider giving a face to your employees through ‘meet the team’ posts on your company page. You could also get them to write content with their identity attached – anything from long blog posts or interviews with them right through to small quotes about completed work. This is especially important if you offer a service and your team’s expertise is vital to winning contracts e.g. in software engineering or design. If you’ve got the right team, you should show them off , and prove that your company is more than just a one-man band.

As Daniel advises, “try to encourage and support your team in keeping their personal profiles active and relevant – from a potential employee’s perspective, they’re the face of your brand and future colleagues.”

6. Grow your LinkedIn network 

Start by identifying who it is you want to target and connect with. Begin by searching for relevant people, influencers and companies and follow and connect with as many as you can. Then, you can search for relevant groups to join which suit your brand and goals. Become an active member within these groups by engaging with other members and joining in the conversation. Post relevant content in the groups, particularly content that will generate interest, spark conversation or is informative to the group’s members. As you become active within the group, you can begin requesting to connect with fellow group members as they are 21% more likely to respond to you. Be sure at all times to avoid any hard sells and, once connected, don’t immediately send some generic sales pitch to their inbox, as it’ll probably get ignored.

Once you feel a bit more confident within the LinkedIn community and you have a good idea, niche topic or some great content to share, you could create a group and promote that across your personal profile. Or, you can organise an in-person or online meet-up, preferably one that involves an expert speaking on a topic or a panel of experts discussing a hot topic. Either way, ask friends and colleagues to share the group or event and be sure to share it on your company page once a month, in different ways. If numbers need a little boost, send direct inmail to contacts who would be interested before launching a LinkedIn campaign with LinkedIn event ads, sponsored content ads, text ads or messaging ads. 

7. Use the LinkedIn search feature

When we consider how to grow our brand profiles, the LinkedIn Search is often overlooked. This powerful tool gives you the ability to search for anyone with incredible filters such as name, industry, past and present company, school, location, connection status and much more. Using this tool, you can seek out specific individuals, groups and companies you either know and want to target or, who you think would be interested in your offering. This almost pin-point accuracy makes it such an invaluable asset for b2b marketing. So, if you’re looking to grow leads , your network or your brand awareness, this is a definite must-try! 

To make the most out of the search feature, you can pay to be able to inmail anyone. This means you can send a direct message to the exact person or people you’re trying to get in touch with and in today’s landscape there aren’t many marketing methods where you can do just that. You might need that exact person onboard, and within LinkedIn, you not only have the opportunity to message them but they are three times more likely to open itthan a regular email. So, be sure to include it in any LinkedIn b2b marketing strategy.

8. Experiment and track results

Digital marketing should always be based on coming up with theories, testing them, tweaking them and tracking the results . LinkedIn marketing is no different. So inform your marketing decisions with data from the LinkedIn platform as well as Google Analytics and any other data you have on hand. Consider setting up bespoke tracking on your website with Google’s Tag Manageror Google’s URL Builderfor extra insight into what works for your company. Once you know more about what promotional methods generate success, you can build on this for all future LinkedIn campaigns.

9. Consider paid LinkedIn marketing solutions

Advertising on LinkedIn can be very beneficial. With a business-minded and career-oriented audience paired with the availability for a set of different audience filters than other social media platforms, LinkedIn offers a unique opportunity to target certain people you might not otherwise be able to. 

There are many LinkedIn ad types to choose from including LinkedIn sponsored content ads such as LinkedIn single image ads, carousel ads, event ads and video ads as well as promoted posts on the company page (organic posts that you boost with a set budget). More specific to LinkedIn, there are also sponsored messaging ads where you can either send a direct message or begin a conversation. Lastly, LinkedIn advertising also offers LinkedIn text ads and Linkedin dynamic ads which are more of a LinkedIn-specific alternative to Google paid search ads and these run throughout LinkedIn and its associated third party network partners. Using one or a combination of these LinkedIn ads along with LinkedIn’s great matched audiences feature will inevitably help your business and LinkedIn profile to grow. It’s worth noting, however, that LinkedIn is usually more expensive than other social media platforms and has minimum daily budgets that must be adhered to. However, if you do have the budget available, you should try advertising as well as LinkedIn Sales Solutions, as the latter is a great way to find new leads. As well as being able to integrate with your CRM, the LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers an advanced company and lead search that comes with lead recommendations tailored to your company.

10. Make the most out of free resources

There are plenty of free resources available to help learn and improve . The LinkedIn Marketing Blogis definitely worth following as a starting point as are the LinkedIn help articles. Here, at Next Chapter, we have put together a helpful LinkedIn paid ads blog if you are looking to expand in LinkedIn advertising or, if you have already have some knowledge of Linkedin ads, you can build upon that experience using the LinkedIn Marketing Lab.

We hope you have found these 10 tips on LinkedIn digital marketing useful. If you need any further advice or are looking for a LinkedIn marketing agencyto help you with your LinkedIn campaign management, then feel free to get in touch with us today.