April 26, 2022
Last update
4.26.2022
09 MIN.
Did you know that LinkedIn accounts for 80% of B2B leads and is 277% more effective than Facebook for lead generation?
Marvellous
LinkedIn is the biggest professional platform in the world. There is no other social media network that gathers as many professionals under one roof. And with over 800 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is a great platform for brands and freelancers to reach out and engage with their target audience.
There are also several other reasons why you will want to maximize your efforts on the platform.
LinkedIn is great for lead generation. It accounts for 80% of B2B leads and is 277% more effective than Facebook for lead generation.
Most professionals also prefer to use LinkedIn than other social media platforms. It is the most-used social media platform amongst Fortune 500 companies. 91% of executives even say they prefer the content on LinkedIn.
These stats just serve as further proof that LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to reach your ideal customers and clients. So in this article, we will look at the best practices to help you boost your LinkedIn marketing efforts.
Let's get started.
Having a great LinkedIn profile is necessary to see success on the platform. With an optimized profile, you will get the following benefits:
Here are some tips to help you optimize your LinkedIn profile for more visibility.
To increase your visibility on LinkedIn, you need to include the keywords you want to rank for in your profile.
For instance, if you are an influencer or freelancer looking for new clients, you should include the keywords that your prospects are searching for in your profile. This will boost your chances of showing up in the search results.
Your headline is the most visible part of your LinkedIn profile. It plays a huge role in determining whether a person will reach out to you. So your headline should show your value proposition; what you are good at or known for. Your headline should give prospects or recruiters a reason to click on your profile.
A simple template for writing optimized headlines is “[Job Title]: Helping X do Y.
In this formula, X represents your target prospect while Y represents what they will gain from employing your services.
At the basic level, your headline should attract your audience while demonstrating your value proposition.
The key thing to remember is that you should tailor the headline copy to your audience. For instance, use job titles that your prospects will easily recognize. Avoid using fancy job titles that might just confuse the prospect or worse, make you look less trustworthy.
Your profile summary should in detail tell visitors to your profile who you are and what you do. Your summary should include:
Your profile picture should leave a good first impression. Some tips to help you optimize your profile picture:
You can add up to 25 skills to your profile. To increase visibility, include the top SEO keywords in your industry.
Your resume should demonstrate your skills and show what you have done in your career so far. Make sure you include all the relevant works and jobs you’ve done in the past.
Positive recommendations from real people increase your authority and trust factor on the platform. And a simple way to get recommendations is to ask your clients and colleagues to recommend you on the platform.
The banner on your profile is a billboard you can use to display a variety of things. You can use your banner to show your value proposition, show off your professional achievements, display brands you've worked with, used as a call-to-action, show off your personal brand, etc.
Here is an example of one of my favorite banners on LinkedIn.
Austin uses his profile banner to highlight brands he has worked with, display his professional achievements, and also advertise his services.
Posting regularly on LinkedIn will help you increase your visibility. But the trick is not just posting regularly, you need to post relevant content that your target audience will find useful.
Here are examples of content you can share on LinkedIn:
Unlike Facebook or TikTok where people don't really care about career achievements, LinkedIn audiences love to hear about it. Sharing your career achievements will also allow you to demonstrate credibility.
Posts showing your growth in your field will usually get a lot of engagement – likes, comments, and connection requests.
For example, this user shared a career achievement and had over 10000 likes and comments on his posts.
Aside from sharing small updates related to your achievements, it's important that you also share your thoughts and insights about your career or industry. This helps you build thought leadership on the platform.
According to LinkedIn, publishing thought leadership content is also one of the best ways to build your audience on linkedIn.
You can share updates on your perspective regarding current news and trends, useful topics related to your industry, tips other users will find useful, etc.
Since not all your ideas will fit into a small post, you can also use the LinkedIn Publishing Platform. It allows you to write, edit, and share longer articles on the platform.
For example, Tom Popomaronis regularly posts articles related to leadership on LinkedIn. In this example below, he publishes a post on how leaders can communicate in a political crisis.
Another kind of content that works well on LinkedIn is content that talks about people. It can be a post celebrating work anniversaries, about new people joining your team, or just a post appreciating customers. The key takeaway is that people like to engage with content that they can have a human connection with. So people should always be at the forefront of what you post on LinkedIn.
To increase the visibility and number of engagements your posts get, you should post when your audience is most active on LinkedIn.
According to multiple studies, the best time to post on LinkedIn is in the early hours of the day. This is when there is usually a lot of engagement.
But note that there is no one size fits all.
While it is good to use these studies as a guideline, it's important to note there is no general best time to post on social media. It usually depends on your industry and your target audience.
To find out the best time for your brand, run analytics. Experiment with different posts times to find out when your audience is most active on the platform. Then create your content schedule around these times.
Making connections is a huge part of LinkedIn. The platform is all about building professional relationships. It's also important that you are building the right connections while on the platform.
Why?
When you post content, your connection and followers will be the first people to see the content. They will be the one to first share, like, and comment – which will allow their own connections to see your post.
What this means is that if your 1st-degree connections are not engaging with your content, it's very likely that your content will have limited reach.
So it's best practice to connect with people who have similar interests or are in the same industry as you. They will be more likely to accept your connection request and also engage with your content.
Here are some examples of people you should connect with on LinkedIn:
Joining LinkedIn Groups is an effective way to connect with people in your industry. Groups are a great place for you to share your expertise, build strong relationships, and seek advice from other professionals.
While groups have been around for a while, not everyone uses them effectively. To get the most out of LinkedIn groups, here are some best practices you can follow:
To find the best group for you, search for groups that match your industry and interests. You can search using either phrases, keywords, or titles.
You should not limit yourself to joining only groups that are directly related to your interests or industry. You can also join groups you have other affiliations with like an alumni group or entrepreneurship group. These groups are usually useful for building relationships and finding opportunities.
For influencers and freelancers you should also join groups where your target clients are. After joining, become an active and engaged member. This will help you maximize your chances of getting new jobs.
Get started with one or two groups and grow from there.
LinkedIn has a feature called “Companies to track”. The feature allows you to compare metrics like follower gains and losses, engagement rates, and number of updates to similar organizations like yours.
This feature allows you to benchmark your LinkedIn performance against your competitors. You can use it to run useful analysis like:
For example, you can monitor brands that are similar to yours in terms of follower count but get more engagement than you.
When you learn what is working for other brands, you can experiment with those ideas for your brand too.
LinkedIn offers different ad types and targeting options for running advertisements. And while it is crucial that you understand your target audience, it's also important that you experiment with each ad format to see which one resonates best with your audience.
Depending on the ad format, you can either prioritize images, text, videos, or any other type of content. So it's best you test all the types of LinkedIn ads to see the one that will offer you the best results.
But if you are just starting with LinkedIn advertising, you might want to start with Sponsored Content.
Sponsored Content is a native ad format that allows you to reach a highly engaged audience in the LinkedIn news feed. With this format, you can make your ads appealing with either images or videos. You can even use carousels to tell a story.
For LinkedIn ad targeting, LinkedIn allows you to choose from a range of targeting options. You can target your ads based on demographics, education, company, job experience, and interests.
If you are new to advertising and don't have a solid grasp on your audience, you can set up your targeting by using an audience template. The audience template will help you target your key audience such as marketers, millennials, recent university graduates, founders, etc. Using a template will help you save time while effectively reaching your desired audience.
Tip: Also avoid hyper targeting your ads. Hyper targeting will hurt your campaigns when starting out because your ad reach will be limited. It is best to add no more than two or three targeting options for your initial campaigns. According to LinkedIn, it's best to keep the target audience over 50,000 for Sponsored Content and Text Ads, and over 15,000 for Message Ads.
Just like any other social media platform, rich media works very well on LinkedIn. Do not stick to just text posts. Adding images and videos to your post will help you better capture the attention of your target audience.
A report from LinkedIn says that adding an image to your post can result in 2x the comment rate. Video is also very effective; it can drive up engagement by 5 times. The same goes for Live videos. Using LinkedIn Live as part of your marketing strategy can increase engagement by 25 times.
You can use images and videos to tell a story or explain something better. If you are not using rich media, you should start now – for both organic posts and sponsored content.
Finally, it's important that you analyze the performance of your strategy as you progress. Analytics will help you determine the strategies that are helping you grow on LinkedIn and the ones that are a waste of effort. You can use the native LinkedIn analytics data to see how your posts are performing.
For advanced insights into your performance, you can use Iconosquare. Iconosquare offers advanced analytics that you can use to analyze the engagement and growth rate of your brand’s LinkedIn profile. Sign up for a free trial - no credit card required!
With the right strategies, LinkedIn can be an effective platform for growing a brand whether you are a freelancer, influencer, or business owner. The tips in the article will give you an idea of the best practices to follow to give your LinkedIn marketing efforts a boost.
The key thing to remember is that you have to deliver value on the platform. As you offer value to users, you build your brand authority and become a thought leader. When you have brand authority, potential clients and customers will trust you more because they believe you understand their pain points and can offer suitable solutions. This can lead to more job and partnership opportunities.
It's also crucial that you are targeting the right audience. None of the strategies above will be effective if your posts and updates are not reaching the right people.
Which of the practices will you add to your LinkedIn marketing strategy?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Hi! I'm Marvellous, huge fan of Iconosquare as a product, and determined to help experienced social media marketers thrive in the various aspects of their career.
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