9 Tips to Craft the Perfect LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

One popular social network for business is LinkedIn. Although it may not receive as much attention as Facebook or Instagram for business marketing, numerous companies do have a presence on the platform. Not to mention, a lot of professionals and forward-thinking thinkers make use of the forum. Businesses that are involved in business-to-business transactions especially cherish it.

There are over 610 million users on LinkedIn. Of them, 303 million have signed up as active monthly users, with 40% of them coming on a daily basis. LinkedIn is used by 63 million decision-makers and 90 million senior influencers/thought leaders, which is significant for many businesses. LinkedIn is where 97% of B2B marketers distribute their content, and it generates 80% of all B2B leads generated by social media.

The preferred social network for thought leaders, senior executives, and management is LinkedIn. Even though serious decision-makers have little interest in Facebook status updates, Twitter tweets, YouTube videos, or Instagram photos, they frequently read thoughtful posts shared on LinkedIn with great interest.

As a result, the majority of businesses should be active on LinkedIn and incorporate it into their whole online marketing plan. However, companies that sell to other businesses should make sure that LinkedIn is a key component of their marketing plan.

How the LinkedIn Algorithm Works

LinkedIn has been relatively open about how its algorithm works.

• An AI bot examines your content to make sure it is not spam. It is unlikely that your content will appear in many people's feeds if it does not pass this test. Share only top-notch content on LinkedIn.

• A trial audience will be the first to see your post. After that, the algorithm will look at how those first few people interacted. LinkedIn will likely show your post to many more people if they don't seem interested in it.

• If the post was well-liked and shared by your initial audience, the LinkedIn algorithm will verify that the results are reliable for your audience network and that the position is not spam. The group of accounts they feed the post to will grow.

• Human editors will eventually get involved, assuming your post is still performing well. After reading the post, they will determine whether it should be promoted to a larger audience.

Define Your LinkedIn Marketing Goals

LinkedIn marketing is just like any other social media marketing. Every campaign should start with the definition and setting of your objectives. It would help if you asked yourself the specific question of why you are running this LinkedIn marketing campaign. What do you want to get out of it?

Your objectives should be Timely, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, or SMART. Specifically, you must make sure that you can gauge the campaign's effectiveness using some appropriate metrics.

Some common goals (expressed generally here, not fully SMART) include:

• Increasing brand awareness (most likely best assessed with information from the analytics on your LinkedIn page)

• Generating leads (since LinkedIn is the network where you are most likely to find prospective clients or decision-makers in business)

• Interacting with your intended audience (again, you can get information about this from the analytics on your LinkedIn page and less obviously from your involvement in LinkedIn groups)

• Direct product sales are still possible on LinkedIn, though they may be less common.

1. Know Your Target Audience

A key element of a successful social media marketing strategy is having a thorough understanding of your target audience's preferences and areas of interest. It makes little sense to invest time and money in marketing to consumers who will never be interested in your offering. For example, you would only do a little, if any, marketing on LinkedIn if your product was aimed at teenagers who are still in school.

If prospective clients are active on LinkedIn, you should provide more specific demographic information.

It would help if you ascertained the fundamental attributes of the individuals most likely to purchase your product before the organization they work for. Although you may sell business-to-business (B2B) products, the decision to buy your product is not made by a business; rather, it is caused by a specific manager within each company. Therefore, it is important to consider which manager would make the choice or even who is most likely to recommend purchases within a company.

If your LinkedIn company page is already reasonably well-designed, you can use your analytics to get a good sense of the kinds of people who are interested in it. Do people who like and share your posts tend to behave in any particular way?

2. Perfect Your Company Page

LinkedIn features two sorts of pages, similar to many other social networks: company pages and personal pages, where users list their previous positions and accomplishments. LinkedIn will create a company page for you as soon as a manager or employee adds your company as a place of employment. But if you don't update and fill in the blanks, your company page will appear abandoned and neglected.

Any business on LinkedIn needs a visually appealing and informative company page. It'll be among the LinkedIn locations where members of your target audience are most likely to visit. Regardless of whether you sell products or use LinkedIn to increase brand recognition, you should think of it as a virtual store.

You can showcase all of your company's great stories on your LinkedIn company page. It can be used to showcase your group and any honours you've received. Since LinkedIn is primarily a people network, you should highlight the public faces of your company on your LinkedIn company page.

Anyone looking to learn more about your company will look for your company page on LinkedIn. This is a widely used method of researching your business, including what you do, what you produce, where your offices are located, and the identities of your executives and senior management.

All of your other branding should be reflected on your LinkedIn company page. It should have links to your website URL, your official logo, your colours, and your fonts. Consider the questions that prospective clients might have, and be prepared by providing the answers on your company page. You should carefully consider the copy you use on your LinkedIn page, making sure to include relevant keywords in your text, just like you should with all of your online assets.

But make sure you keep your company page updated. You must consistently post pertinent, educational, and engaging content if you want to be taken seriously on LinkedIn.

3. Promote Your Company Page

Although your company page may show up in LinkedIn searches if you use keywords wisely, you really need to promote it if you want people to visit your website. If not, you might only be able to attract one or two new visitors every month.

Anytime you have the chance, you should seize it to promote your page. To encourage people to follow you on LinkedIn, all it takes is a linked LinkedIn logo on your website and other social media platforms. Your chances of success on LinkedIn increase with the visibility of your page.

Once someone follows your page, you will remain in the forefront of their mind as they will continue to see your posts and updates in their feed.

Asking all of your managers and staff to follow your company page is a good place to start in this process, as it should provide you with enough initial data to look credible. Links to your LinkedIn profile can be added to newsletters and email signatures, among other things. Remember to extend an invitation to your current clientele to visit and follow your redesigned LinkedIn business page.

4. Create and Share Useful, Engaging Content

LinkedIn requires social interaction, just like any other social media. It cannot be regarded as set-and-forget advertising. Having people follow your account is only useful if they get something in return. Over time, they would add you to a long list of ignored and followed reports and eventually forget about you.

It's crucial to keep in mind that LinkedIn is a more "grown-up" and mature social network than many of the others, so sharing your cat memes there is probably not the best idea. Still, it's an ideal platform for writing and disseminating blog entries that appeal to your intended audience. LinkedIn is a great place for Thought Leadership articles because it lets you show off your knowledge of your industry.

While you can share links to posts you've already published on your blog, research indicates that LinkedIn's algorithm prefers content published on the network over links from offsite sources.

You can write blog posts on LinkedIn directly from the platform. Although it isn't currently accessible through their mobile app, members can write, edit, and share articles on LinkedIn using the LinkedIn Publishing Platform.

It's okay for you to write unique content for each LinkedIn post. If you come across any other articles that your target audience would find valuable, you can share them. Recall that the main objective of your LinkedIn profile is to assist your intended audience, and gathering pertinent content from other people can help you accomplish this just as much as creating original content.

5. Use Images and Other Media in Your Content

LinkedIn is still significant even though it is less dependent on visual media than YouTube or Instagram. An abundance of text will never result in greater engagement than a strong visual. Instead of sharing the image or text by itself, you should include it in a text-based article.

You should use visual media to enhance your shared post, even though the text is its main component. The majority of the time, someone will be drawn in to read your article by the images or videos. Hopefully, they will follow your page if they enjoy your posts overall.

Instead of sharing YouTube videos, LinkedIn now encourages you to upload videos directly to the platforms. You can include multimedia in your posts for the LinkedIn Publishing Platform anywhere in the content, including tweets, slides, podcasts, videos, and images.

6. Be Active in LinkedIn Groups

Engaging in conversations on LinkedIn Groups is an additional method of projecting a social media persona on LinkedIn. This is a great approach to connect with other business experts through networking. You should have more time to concentrate on communicating with your target audience if you are picky about the groups you join. LinkedIn's search bar allows you to look for relevant groups.

You could start and run a group where you can specifically target your desired demographic. It goes without saying that you will need to invest time in order to maintain the discussion and encourage people to join in.

7. Include LinkedIn Ads in Your Campaign

Similar to most social networks, you can purchase ads on LinkedIn to improve the performance of your brand. With LinkedIn's powerful targeting tools, you can make sure that your ads are seen by the people you want them to be.

8. Ads that you can purchase consist of:

• With sponsored content, you can amplify the content you share by paying for it. This implies that compared to what you could accomplish naturally, your posts reach a far wider audience.

• PPC advertisements, known as text ads, can be found on a variety of LinkedIn pages, including the group, profile, search results, and home pages.

• Sponsored InMails: similar to email marketing but conducted through LinkedIn, these let you send members of LinkedIn personalized messages.

9. Study Your LinkedIn Analytics

You ought to choose SMART objectives for your LinkedIn marketing campaign. Your goals must be measurable in order to meet one of these requirements. As a result, you should assess how well you're doing in achieving those objectives.

Most of the time, LinkedIn Analytics has the pertinent information for your company page. This will provide you with useful information about who is visiting your page and how they are interacting with your content.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I include on my LinkedIn company page?

For any business, having an informative LinkedIn company page is essential. Consider your company's LinkedIn profile a virtual store, regardless of whether your business sells goods or uses it to build brand awareness. Here, you can highlight your team, share success stories about your business, and discuss the accolades you have received. To put it briefly, you should use it to draw attention to your company's public face. Answers to queries that your target audience is likely to have are also available.

How do I promote my company on LinkedIn?

In addition to using keywords, there are a few other things you can do to promote your company page on LinkedIn. First things first: request that all of your managers and staff members follow your company page on LinkedIn. You may also invite your current clientele to attend. Secondly, ensure that your website, other social media accounts, and email signature all include a link to your LinkedIn page. Your company's chances of success on the platform will rise as more people see your LinkedIn page.

How do LinkedIn ads work?

LinkedIn ads can be purchased to boost brand performance. Sponsored content, text ads, and sponsored InMail are among the advertisements that you can buy. By using sponsored content, you can increase the reach of your posts by paying to amplify the content you share. PPC advertisements can be found on a number of LinkedIn pages, including the company homepage, profile pages, and search results pages. Last but not least, you can send LinkedIn members customized messages using Sponsored InMail, which functions similarly to email marketing.

Should I use images in the content that I share on LinkedIn?

Although visual media platforms like YouTube and Instagram are less important to LinkedIn, images are still important. No doubt, adding an image will increase engagement. Using LinkedIn, you will be adding photos to text-based articles rather than just sharing ideas. Your article's text will still be its main focus, and an image will be added to add interest. Fortunately, adding multimedia to your article is very simple and can be done anywhere.

What is the best content for LinkedIn?

Compared to many other social media platforms, LinkedIn is a more serious and mature platform. This is where you can write and publish blog entries that will appeal to your intended readership. It works particularly well for thought leadership articles that let you demonstrate your industry knowledge. Although posts published on the LinkedIn platform have been shown to yield better results, you can still share links to blog posts that you have uploaded to your blog.