How to Utilize Linkedin to Expand Your Marketing Strategy
How can you use LinkedIn to improve your marketing strategy?
Social media is an exciting and effective way to increase your brand’s reach, but for some reason, LinkedIn is often takes a back seat to other social platforms link Facebook and Twitter. The truth, however, is that creating a LinkedIn marketing strategy can help you expand your reach just like any other platform while simultaneously allowing you to connect with other professionals and potential customers.
Let’s take a look at how you can grow your business by making a few simple changes to the way you use LinkedIn:
Optimize Your Profile
Truth is, a lot of companies don’t touch their LinkedIn profile for years, leading to outdated information and a lack of engagement. Go through all of your company’s contact information, history, past projects, current projects, and any other details that need to be either updated or spruced up a bit. You should also add high-resolution, professional headshots if you’re the face of your company.
Or, at the very least, use a great image of your company’s logo!
Maintain Your Profile
Once you’ve optimized your LinkedIn profile, it’s important that you properly maintain it. Many companies don’t touch their profile for months, despite publishing regular blog posts, which can send a mixed message to potential customers. Make sure that any changes to your company or any big announcements of products or services are reflected in your profile right away.
Publish Great Content
There’s a good chance that many people reading this don’t even realize that LinkedIn has a blogging system, but trust us when we say that people looking at your company are very aware of this feature. Publishing blog posts that utilize proper SEO optimization is a standard part of content marketing, and LinkedIn posts can be indispensable. Their blogging system is very user-friendly, but we’d suggest that you turn to expert copywriters for the content itself.
Add Proper Hashtags
While hashtags don’t seem to be discussed as often as they have in the past, they continue to be extremely useful. This is a wonderful way to add emphasis to your LinkedIn posts, often drawing in new customers and encouraging engagement. Just remember to only use popular and/or relevant hashtags because throwing out hashtags that don’t lead anywhere won’t do you any good at all.
Involve Your Employees
LinkedIn marketing — and the site itself — is all about making connections with people and other companies. When your employees get involved by setting up their own profile pages, this can further your business reach. Getting employees attached through LinkedIn is also a great way for workers to stay informed on your company’s announcements and will make engaging with them that much easier.
Send InMail Messages
If you want to take your LinkedIn marketing strategy to the next level, then you may want to consider signing up for a premium account. One of the most useful features of a premium account is that it allows you to send personalized InMails to business prospects and consumers. This is a wonderful way to generate leads to your products and services who share similar interests.
Use Matched Audiences
For companies that want to go even further than sending private InMail messages, there’s the Matched Audiences feature. This LinkedIn marketing strategy allows you to send relevant ads to members of your target audience who have visited your website or are connected through your email contacts. These potential customers are already familiar with your brand, which makes them easier to convert to an actual sale.
Add Visual Elements
Sending out text in the form of a blog post is a very useful LinkedIn marketing strategy, but it’s even better when you incorporate visual elements. It’s a simple fact that human beings are visual creatures, so if you can add images or videos to your posts, you’ll be a step ahead. This not only drives up your overall reach, but it also tends to increase your engagement rate because people are more likely to comment on a visual rather than text.
Write Short and Long Posts
Many companies tend to limit their blogging to long-form engagement. Instead, considering switching it up every once in awhile. Write up a few 800-word blog posts and then publish a quick, 150-word post to discuss a company or product announcement. Although the longer type of post is more likely to add engagement because it gives you more opportunity to provide information, periodic short posts can be digested quickly and will keep you in the minds of your customers.
Share External Articles
There’s a lot going on in the world and you can use that to your advantage. No matter what type of industry you’re in, there are certainly external articles about that industry being posted every single day. There’s no reason to inundate your customers — and you should definitely avoid political or controversial topics — but sharing relevant articles that can lead them to your own company’s posts, products, and services is a great way to gain new customers and maintain existing ones.
Publish Consistently
No matter how glorious your content is, potential customers will have trouble noticing your company if you’re posting too sporadically. If you can’t commit to specific days each week, at least post once or twice every week at some point. Some companies go several weeks or months between posts, and that’s a big mistake.
Connect to Social Media
Social media marketing is one of the most useful tools in today’s business climate. Make sure that your LinkedIn profile is connected to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. This creates a more fully formed network that will make it easier for you to engage with your customers and interact with them on a regular basis. This is also a great way to extend your reach to new and exciting audiences.
Contact P3 Agency to Expand Your LinkedIn Marketing
The P3 Agency can help you take your LinkedIn marketing efforts to the next level. Our professional staff has spent years perfecting the use of social media, lead generation, analytics, and web design in Clearwater, in addition to other strategic marketing efforts. If you have any questions or would like a free, no-obligation marketing assessment, give us a call at (800) 515-9422 today.