Five Tips for Harnessing LinkedIn’s Marketing Potential
When it comes to recruiting young, driven job candidates with college diplomas, there is no better social media platform than LinkedIn. More recently however, the world’s most popular professional social network has reached out to businesses in an attempt to make its platform more social media friendly. Today, LinkedIn possesses great untapped networking potential for both companies and and their clients. Below are just a few tips for how businesses looking to grow their social media following can harness LinkedIn’s marketing capabilities to reach their desired targeted audience as effectively as possible.
Get the whole business involved. For any company’s marketing strategy to be successful, it must work to ensure that all of its employees are involved. Have members of the business link back to the company page via blog or website, and encourage them to follow the business on LinkedIn, sharing and responding to content updates when possible. Don’t forget to make sure that they’ve added the company to their work profiles to direct traffic back to the business.
Take advantage of LinkedIn’s many resources. What many businesses fail to recognize is that LinkedIn offers several services of its own, just waiting to be tapped into. Businesses can visit the Analytics tab on their company page to track and better understand the community they are attracting. They can then adjust their marketing plan accordingly, either by catering more heavily to their main demographic or by switching up their strategy to expand their reach. Additionally, businesses can promote their brand via LinkedIn groups, simply by finding a community that relates to their industry and joining in the conversation, driving attention back to the company page.
Update content regularly. The best way to grow and maintain a broad consumer reach is by keeping content up-to-date and engaging with the community on a regular basis. Posting at least once a week will let potential customers know that you’re active and ready for their business. Keep these updates simple, but make sure that they contain an interesting image or hook that captures the audience’s attention and urges them to continue reading. More importantly, stay engaged with followers. Address any questions or comments they may have as soon as possible—particularly when negative—in order to avoid any undesirable attention.
Post strategically. Regularly updating social media may be easy, but a company’s message will be lost if it cannot effectively target its customer demographic. Make sure to keep posts varied. Share new job opportunities, answers to popular questions regarding the company’s product or services, photos that capture the audience’s attention, and videos that help the customer feel more familiar and comfortable with the products or services being offered. Because LinkedIn has a large professional following, make sure to post at 6am, 12pm, or 7pm when the majority of users will be off-work and checking their social media accounts in order to maximize the number of people who view each post. Work to ensure that the brand’s voice is clearly maintained in each post for consistency and credibility, but don’t be afraid to adjust its message to fit the more formal tone of LinkedIn. A business’s approach towards attracting followers on a casual social network like Twitter will not necessarily translate as effectively on platforms that cater towards a different type of user.
Try paid advertising. When a company is just starting out or is smaller than its competitors, it may be beneficial to try LinkedIn Advertising. While costly, LinkedIn’s ad platform allows businesses to fine-tune filters that include targets such as role, company name, and industry, in order to effectively reach their customer demographic. Several large companies such as Microsoft, Adobe, and Lenovo have already experienced success using LinkedIn Advertising and Sponsored Content.
Targeting potential customers on social media can be a daunting task, but by maximizing the resources already available, any business can grow and maintain its number of subscribers on networks like LinkedIn. For more tips on how your business can expand its social media following, visit https://www.sociallybold.com or call us today at 904-574-9775. #WorldlyWednesday
– Written by Caroline Bauer
Socially Bold is a digital marketing firm located in Jacksonville, Florida providing marketing services to small to mid-sized local businesses. Specializing in social media and content marketing, Socially Bold focuses on aligning with clients, the ‘Socially Bold Community’, to deliver innovative ideas and translate those into refreshing results. For more information about Socially Bold, visit sociallybold.com. Join the #SociallyBold conversation on Twitter @sociallyboldjax, Facebook @sociallybold, Instagram @sociallybold, Pinterest @sociallybold or Google+ @sociallybold.