LinkedIn is the biggest B2B social networking channel in the world. It's an excellent platform to use to build an engaged audience. It is also a good place to establish a reputation as a thought leader in your industry and share your company culture with potential new customers.
As a social network, LinkedIn is different from all those other social channels because of its B2B nature. Here are some ways to maximize your presence and effectively utilize that business focus.
Share blog posts on LinkedIn to increase your reach, build brand awareness, and spark engagement. Be sure to:
- Introduce the post with a brief personal comment.
- Shorten the URL with Bit.ly or a similar app. Bit.ly is a full service, business-grade shortener. It is easy to use. It has a comprehensive dashboard offering you statistics about your links. Shortening the URL makes it easier for the reader to make note of it and helps identify what the content refers to.
- Be certain your thumbnail looks great.
Share industry news and research. Since LinkedIn's users are looking for content related to their industries, it's a good platform for sharing case studies, reports, and whitepapers. By sharing industry updates and news items your business's LinkedIn page can become a go-to source for reliable industry information.
Publish how-to and list-style posts exclusively on LinkedIn. This bypasses your blog and website but offers more visibility on the B2B social channel. These kinds of posts have proven to be popular with LinkenIn’s users and effectively help bring new followers and potential followers to read your content.
Post quick tips that include leadership tips and tricks. Since this is a professional network you should think about topics that encourage productivity, leadership, and professional success. Offer helpful advice and inspiration to make your posts stand out. LinkedIn is positioned to be a hub for cross-industry thought leadership.
Issue company updates. Since your audience is following you for the compelling industry updates and news, take the opportunity to share something about your company as well. Just remember to keep the tone professional.
Don't use headlines that pose a question, and don't bother with videos. These two types of posts just tend to not do well on LinkedIn.
Make your content stand out by making sure it offers value to businesses in your industry, using eye-catching visuals, and engage with anyone who comments on your posts.
You want content that reflects your business's goals, so keep those goals and your branding in mind as you create and share content. Your content should be relevant to your objectives and to your audience. Remember you're seeking to help your LinkedIn community. Think leadership, productivity, and support.
Why choose to publish on the LinkedIn publishing platform when there are other choices out there?
The demographics found in the LinkedIn audience is heavily weighted to professionals, decision makers, and entrepreneurs. If these are people you would like to have follow your posts and articles, then you should publish on LinkedIn. Here are some other reasons to choose LinkedIn to publish your content.
Expand your audience. Use LinkedIn's publishing platform to get additional exposure, more engagement, and new leads.
Bolster your authority using LinkedIn's feature that showcases your latest published post on your profile. As people start to engage by commenting or sharing your article you are building social proof that further increases your reach and authority. Over time you can be seen as the go-to authority in your field. Assuming, of course, your content is always high quality.
LinkedIn published posts are indexed on Google and show up in organic search results.
You will grow your network because LinkedIn encourages you to share your articles as status updates with hashtags that let readers know about your content. Anyone following hashtags related to topics they are interested in will see your content and they are introduced to you regardless of whether there is any preexisting direct connection.
You can use LinkedIn analytics to find the most common industries and positions that follow your blog and demographic insights from the publishing platform to help define your target audience.
Engagement will increase as you regularly provide helpful, professional, high-quality content.
LinkedIn enables you to reach a unique audience and a 2018 survey concluded that 60% of LinkedIn users have household income over $100,000 and other statistics showed LinkedIn is 277% more effective than Twitter or Facebook for B2B lead generation.
Use your best performing LinkedIn posts to find your best content ideas.
Since your LinkedIn network is built with relevant connections and prospects these high performing pieces will be a reliable indicator of what resonates with your target audience. Use this information to plan future articles that will be of interest and value to your network and prospects.
Posting on LinkedIn’s publishing platform helps you to be seen, to gain authority on your topic, and to have natural conversations with your prospects. All this supports your lead generation efforts. Here are some tips and best practices to bear in mind when posting your content on this platform.
- Use a conversational tone.
- Always be specific, clear, and concise.
- Choose topics that are timely and current to increase engagement.
- Avoid self-promotion, instead provide high-value content.
- Use a relevant cover image and check your layout to be sure it's reader-friendly.
One of the hardest parts about blogging and becoming a thought leader is generating a following. You have a built in following comprised of your connections. LinkedIn has put the infrastructure in place for you. Your posts will appear in your connections' news feeds. If they like your posts or comment on them, those posts will get sent out to their connections, and so the network grows.
Connections and non-connections alike can follow your posts and they will...as long as your content is strong. Followers get notified every time you post new content. Since your content will be well-written, timely and informative, you'll get new people tuning in regularly.
Your thought leadership also appears on your own profile in its own section. This provides what is essentially a portfolio on your LinkedIn profile. You can share your experience, skills, relevant writing samples, recommendations, and your professional insights into your particular market segment.
When you publish on LinkedIn you become more visible, which is how you build your brand as an industry expert. Because both existing connections and people who might be interested in your content but are not connected to you are shown your content as it is published you are more visible than you would be relying only on your business blog and website.
LinkedIn users are more likely to engage with the content that's posted. Assuming you want reader engagement, this is the platform to use. These users will thank you, challenge you, applaud your content, and question you and your content. It is gratifying to continue sharing your expertise through comments. Be sure you are prepared to defend your opinion and the veracity of your content.
One of the biggest selling points of posting on LinkedIn is that it's easy to get a conversation going with other industry professionals. This is not as likely to occur on many other platforms.
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