With more than 660 million members around the world, LinkedIn is a social media platform that can’t be ignored, especially for businesses looking to promote their products, services, causes and events to business leaders. Your organisation has likely created a LinkedIn page by now, but are you making the most of this platform? If not, you may be failing to engage with your customers and prospects, grow your audience and communicate your brand values and important updates.
LinkedIn is the number one platform for professionals around the world to network with one another. This is the place to talk shop and to promote what your organisations brings to the table. It provides an opportunity to discuss business challenges and share tips that help corporations improve their operations, people management and more.
The below best practices will help ensure that your corporate LinkedIn page stands out among the rest:
To keep audiences interested, the best LinkedIn business profiles post several times per week with rich content that is engaging, relevant and shareable. Create an editorial calendar so that you can keep track of your posts from week to week and month to month.
Content examples include blogs, videos, photos and infographics. Remember to balance between content related to your company and thought leadership content and news that relates to the industry and communities in which you operate. You want to keep your followers informed, cover key trends, offer a unique perspective and make your content memorable. Keep in mind that visuals generally secure greater engagement, so incorporating images and videos should be a priority.
Budgeting ad spend for LinkedIn can help your business put content in front of the right people. For example, sponsored updates allow you to target specific users on desktop and mobile, placing your interesting content in their newsfeeds. You can target audiences according to industry, job title, geographic location, group memberships, interests and even skills. This enables you to reach people who have a higher probability of being interested in your content and offerings.
Additionally, LinkedIn’s Sponsored InMail feature goes a step further than sponsored posts. With this tactic, you can send a personalised inbox message to your target audience. This is ideal if you want to promote a new e-book, webinar, event or white paper.
Your employees can and should be your company’s biggest advocates, including on social media. Encourage them to share your rich content so that it is amplified within their own networks. Many of your employees’ connections likely work within the same industry as them, and some may be influencers and thought leaders themselves, so it is important to get your content in front of these audiences. Use Hootsuite Amplify to see the potential reach of your social media posts based on the size of your organisation.
With metrics like total clicks, click-through rate, engagement rate and more, LinkedIn’s analytics allow you to gain insight into the most engaging content on your page. You can see what types of content are working best and what types may need to be improved upon or abandoned. Whether you do so on a weekly or monthly basis, take a close look at your data so that you can identify trends and work in posts that will yield similar, successful results.
Showcase Pages allow you to highlight other business units or initiatives and are accessible from your main company page. If you have enough content to devote to a separate page and want to target a specific industry or even country, these are an ideal choice. Follow the same rules for these that you would for your main page. Give your Showcase Page a clear name so that people understand how this page connects to your overarching brand.
When you hear the word hashtag, you might think of Twitter first. However, LinkedIn does support the use of hashtags in your post and their use is increasing. LinkedIn also allows people to follow topics, which makes the use of hashtags in your content even more important. Do your research and find relevant hashtags that will be of interest to your target audience. Then, use them consistently in your schedules.
LinkedIn is certainly a powerful social media platform for businesses. It can be used to share corporate updates, thought leadership content and even help attract talent. By following established best practices, you can connect with business leaders and managers who have purchasing power and influence. In turn, you will set your business up for success.
The best LinkedIn business profiles take the above information into consideration. Need additional assistance? Contact Mulberry to successfully execute your LinkedIn strategy.
Jess Messenger is an Account Director at Mulberry Marketing Communications, an award-winning full-service B2B communications agency based in Chicago, London and Australia. She enjoys developing PR campaign strategies and writing for B2B audiences across numerous verticals such as retail, foodservice and healthcare.