LinkedIn is an ideal platform to connect with key influencers, industry experts and gain valuable insights.
By Amber Smith, Marist College Intern
LinkedIn – Relationships Matter.
Engage with people that focus on sharing useful and relevant information and content. Let’s start building relationships. LinkedIn has the world’s largest professional community —1 of every 3 professionals on the planet is on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional social network used by individuals and businesses to showcase their services and experience in the hopes of attracting new job opportunities.
As a savvy marketer, you get that meaningful engagement starts with being on the right channel to interact with your colleagues. LinkedIn’s social network platform provides many opportunities to engage with prospects, support thought leadership and connect with other groups.
Rules of Engagement on LinkedIn
1. Establish your presence
2. Attract followers
3. Engage followers
4. Amplify through the network
5. Analyze and refine
Follow the 4-1-1 Rule. “For every one self-serving tweet, you should retweet one relevant tweet and most importantly share four pieces of relevant content written by others.” The 4-1-1 Rule was coined by Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute. While it was originally created with Twitter in mind, it can successfully be applied to your company’s content marketing strategy using LinkedIn.
Your message is much more impactful when you share your engaging content within the context of the conversation. When connecting with people on LinkedIn consider the value they can bring to your business. Pursue clients, community contacts, industry influencers and peers etc. Don’t forget to browse through the People You May Know feature. Be sure to connect with everyone you know offline, as well as those who you meet at business or even social events. Remember to personalize each message otherwise it’s just SPAM.
Join groups and like posts relevant to your business and message. If you have something important to say, say it. If you don’t have anything important to add to the conversation, you can always like something that someone else has said. All together engaging with the crowd, increases your presence and visibility on LinkedIn.
Key influencers in your industry are important connections to make. Regularly review the important influencers in your market and always be on the search for further connections via LinkedIn advanced search.
You may want to track your progress in growing your network by keeping a log or spreadsheet of your connections. Break them down into groups: personal, new, influencers, clients. Be sure to make a note of important groups: how many members are in that group, which members are most active and what the popular group topics are. Look for thought leaders who can amplify your message and who can lend authority and credibility to your message.
Engage with content from sources of inspiration, insights, and information:
News from publishers
Peers on LinkedIn groups
Thought leaders
Brands
Use LinkedIn’s Content Marketing Score to give you insight into the impact of both organic and paid content. The score calculated by measuring engagement divided by total target audience.
Maximize and optimize the impact of your content marketing initiatives:
- Understand the content and topics that resonate with your audience
- Measure the effectiveness of your content-based campaigns
- Benchmark the success of your program
- See how you stack up against your competition
- Rank your brand with a comprehensive score
Showcase your professional brand by optimizing your LinkedIn profile:
- Add rich media such as SlideShare presentations, videos and infographics to your profile.
- Write snappy, compelling titles. Embed keywords within the LinkedIn URL, other URLs you list within your profile. Create profile titles and job descriptions embedded with keywords and links to drive traffic.
- Check ubersuggest.org for popular keywords and consider using specific phrases.
When To Post? Update your statuses at least 20 times / month. Reach will increase dramatically. And post your content earlier in the week. Data indicates people are more likely to see your content Monday through Thursday.
What To Post? All content posted on LinkedIn must be relevant to your industry, as well as your specific business message. Publish carefully. You should be producing original, engaging content that no one in your industry is speaking of as of yet. Remember, you are an expert in your field. Create content that is interesting, exciting and gains the trust of your stakeholders.
- Posts should be original, well-written.
- Create compelling charts, graphs and powerful images.
- Be a problem solver. Create informative useful solutions, tips for your readers. This is a great way to attract more followers and better engage your base.
- Heighten reader’s curiosity with your valuable content. These types of posts will yield wide response rates.
- Match your content to popular and or trending topics for increased reach. Pick a niche and consistently write around it.
Make sure to always ask yourself if what you are posting is relevant to your industry and calling your prospects to action.
Engagement Tactics:
- Find relevant and engaging content based on the people you’re following and the posts you’re reading.
- Share content of your connections and mention them in an update.
- Partner with influencers to expand your reach. Use relationships to get a quote from an impacting connection for a post.
- Effectively market your content and increase leads with white papers and webinars.
- Encourage engagement by ending your post with an open ended question.
- Optimize headlines to let readers know exactly what to expect.
- Articles that answer “why” or provide a “list” are the most popular.
- Tag your post using the LinkedIn’s platform’s categories to optimize your post.
- Create a bio section at the bottom of your posts with links to your blog and/or website.
- Join relevant LinkedIn Groups – they are full of like-minded professionals who can provide quick answers to questions.
- Participate in group discussions. Scan the most Popular and Recent conversations to see what content engages prospects. From this information create an editorial calendar to guide your own content.
- Use the insights from your posts to help you formulate and improve your content marketing strategy. Plan to nurture your relationships both on and off LinkedIn.
To learn more check out these great articles on how to growth hack across social media platforms:
Facebook—Twitter—Instagram—Pinterest—Google Plus—YouTube
To learn more about digital media contact one of our experts today.
Sources
Jaramillo, Kristina. “6 ways to attract more linkedin leads.” Retrieved 6/1/15 from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/6-ways-attract-linkedin-leads/#more-75630
Wing, Henley. “How to publish on linked in for maximum exposure”. Retrieved 6/1/15 from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/publish-on-linkedin-for-engagement/#more-64278
Rognerud, Jon. “5 steps to building quality linkedin connections”. Retrieved 6/1/15 from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/publish-on-linkedin-for-engagement/#more-64278
Sammons, Stephanies. “5 tactics to increase linkedin traffic to your website”. Retrieved 6/1/15 from http://www.stephaniesammons.com/drive-linkedin-traffic-to-your-blog-1/
“The spohisticated marketer’s guide to linkedin.” Retrieved 6/7/15 from https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/marketing-solutions/global/en_US/campaigns/pdfs/Linkedin_SophGuide_011614.pdf
Photo source: http://linkedintobusiness.com/why-linkedin-company-pages-suddenly-became-more-interesting/
Photo source: http://www.getajobtips.com/2012/04/how-to-add-your-linkedin-profile.html
Photo source: http://marketing.linkedin.com/blog/measure-your-content-marketing-with-linkedins-content-marketing-score/
