A Practical Guide to Making the Most of LinkedIn

Is your business on LinkedIn? If not, you have to rethink your marketing strategy. With nearly 1 billion members and 69 million companies listed, LinkedIn is a powerful portal that can help you build better brand awareness and attract potential clients. Whether you are a small business barely a year old or an established company with a well-recognised brand, you need to harness the potential of LinkedIn, but to do so properly, there are a couple of things you need to do to make the most of this platform.

Optimise Your Company Page

Your company page is like a storefront for your business on LinkedIn. Now, if a potential customer walks into a physical store and finds it looking outdated, bland, and disorganised, do you think they’re going to make a purchase? No, of course not, so your company page must be professional and informative by doing the following:

• Complete all fields: Clearly display your business name and prominently feature your services and offerings in both the headlines and the About section. Fill in your website URL, industry, company size, and location. Include testimonials, certifications, and examples of portfolio work in the Featured section. It is imperative that you keep this information up-to-date and accurate at all times.
• Use professional visuals: The value of professional images can never be underestimated. Use a clear company logo and high-quality, compelling images for your cover image that reflect your brand instead of generic stock images.
• Add keyword-rich content: Keywords make the digital world go round. Using the right keywords in the right places will help you to show up in search results. This is especially true in the About section on your page. Here, you are not only telling people exactly what they can expect from your company, but you also help search algorithms – both LinkedIn’s and Google’s – identify what your company is about with the use of finely selected keywords. Note that the first 156 characters in your About section are critical for search previews, so make sure you start off strong.
• Add a Call-to-Action (CTA): The great thing about LinkedIn is that you can add a customised CTA button which allows you to guide visitors, e.g. “Contact Us”, “Learn More”, or “Visit website”. Better still, you can track its performance in your analytics.
• Employ Showcase pages: If your business has an array of offerings, you should create dedicated Showcase Pages to highlight each. This will allow visitors to engage with the specific product, service, or initiative that interests them specifically.

Communicate and Connect with Content

You should have a content strategy in place to engage with your audience. Consistency is crucial here, as the top-performing LinkedIn pages post on average 3-5 times per week. What you post about is equally important because this is where you can communicate about developments in your business, your industry, and much more. If your posts are done right, they will draw the attention of the right people, allowing you to connect with your target audience, i.e. potential clients.

Use a balanced content mix: The 4-1-1 rule is a popular framework many companies implement to build authority and prevent audiences from getting tired of constant sales pitches. It consists of one hard-sell post about your company, one soft-sell post that gently ties in with your product and/or service, and four value posts from other sources that focus on education, entertainment, or inspiration.

Prioritise engaging formats: Here, you can use videos, carousels, polls, and thought-leadership articles. Video posts, for instance, get as much as 5x more engagement than other types of posts. Polls are a terrific way to get feedback whilst encouraging participation, whereas thought-leadership articles can help to build a loyal audience.

Write content that captivates your audience: Keep your written posts short but engaging by asking thoughtful questions that will get the conversation going.

Use hashtags: To increase your discoverability, add 3-5 hashtags per post that are relevant to hot topics doing the rounds, particularly if it has something to do with your industry or location.

Stay actively engaged: Not only should you react promptly to comments and messages made on your posts, but you should also engage as your Page to relevant industry posts. This will allow you to reach a wider audience and create more brand awareness.

You can also use LinkedIn for lead generation, helping your business to grow.

Measure and Refine

The biggest advantage of platforms like LinkedIn is that they have built-in analytics that allow you to track, measure, and optimise everything you do digitally in order to refine your strategy. Be sure that you do the following to get the most out of your LinkedIn strategy:

• Track key metrics
• Use tracking links
• Monitor competitors
• Adjust based on the data

Time To Get Your LinkedIn Page Working for You

To get you ahead of most of your competitors on LinkedIn, simply implement all the basics covered above in this practical guide. Yes, it will take time to get it all done, and yes, it will require you to stay actively involved, but the results are measurable. With the right marketing strategy, you will soon find that LinkedIn is a fantastic way to build your brand online and connect with potential customers you may never have met before.