LinkedIn started out as little more than a convenient recruiting tool. It is not Facebook, but it's still having a special place in the social media sphere. The site has grown into one of the most powerful social media channels on the web. However, many marketers have no idea what to do with it.
What makes LinkedIn unique here is it can act a both a social network and a content hub for distribution platform. The business-oriented and professional networking social network has millions of active users that are contributing to its growth.
As internet marketers and content marketers, competing in an ever-crowded marketing landscape to find new avenues and new consumers, could be difficult. Building your audience as a priority on LinkedIn is often understated and underused. And because it aims for businesses and professionals, content marketing on the social media has a different approach.
But if you can tap into its potential, LinkedIn could be your highly-targeted content marketing landspace, high on visibility and engagement.
Below is some of the strategies you can implement on your marketing efforts:
Business Is Business
Like previously said, LinkedIn is made for professionals and businesses alike. So here, LinkedIn should mean the same thing for you.
As a start, before doing any proper marketing or strategy, it's best for you to be ready for the game. Before taking things seriously, you need to put yourself armed before the race, and that is to pronounce yourself boldly.
Similar to any social media networks out there, your profile should be compelling. This is the first thing people are seeing so there's no reason why you shouldn't keep this at your priority.
From completing your profile, connect with other LinkedIn users and creating call-to-action. There is no limit in how you can promote yourself and your business. You need to be active; you need to be human. After all, LinkedIn is a place for businesses and professionals to connect. People speak with manners, but yes they're humans.
Special to LinkedIn you can at least contribute to the community by recommending others, joining targeted groups, adding your company profile and connect your other existing social accounts.
Tune Your Pitch, Be Professional
Marketers tend to overlook LinkedIn simply because the barriers to entry seem too big. But with a little work, you can rework those marketing materials you've made on other social media, to go well on LinkedIn. But the thing is, it's not that simple.
You need to have a pitch.
As a niche social platform, people on LinkedIn are either trying to get a job, or form a business partner or get influence from industry leaders. Not like people on Facebook or Twitter, people on LinkedIn don't care about your selfies or memes. You need a tone to describe yourself and your professional occupation; you need to be geared towards career development.
So whether you're trying to build leads, find customers or just enhance your online presence, you need to have a corporate avatar. Selfies may work, but still you need to be professional.
As A Distribution Platform
LinkedIn is somehow overlooked, but it certainly have the feature that is able to strengthen networking connection in a way different that most other social networking services. With the ever-changing ecosystem we're having on the web, social media is one of which that changes often. With each change, there is a chance that forces you to also change strategy.
On the web, reaching people and converting them to buyers is becoming more difficult, and even more challenging. Here, LinkedIn could be that platform that stays unique. For that, it may suit your evolving needs of content marketing to attract consumers' attention.
Not only that LinkedIn has high-quality audience, but it also presents a lot of opportunities to connect, engage and re-engage. All that based on your audience's interest in a professional way.
Automate, Optimize and Test
Everything that has potentials, could be used by others to maximize their efforts. LinkedIn is one of them.
There is a concern for marketers, and that is to understand the audience and their needs. And on any social networking platform, is how to know their audience that particular social media.
On LinkedIn, marketing should be tested thoroughly before the main marketing materials are unleashed. Not only because you're seen as a professional in the field on LinkedIn, it's also because you need to match the needs of your audience before engaging with them directly.
You should not be afraid to test new strategies and features, as well as scheduling contents at optimum times. Automation could be done with third-party tools to publish contents on your personal profile or brand's page.
Market Dynamically, But Consistently
Whether it's networking, recruiting or browsing is what brought you to LinkedIn the first place, contents are the main connector that will create the opportunities to market. As a marketer, you need bring that connectivity to your advantage.
Sharing consistently on your profile and pages will give you an advantage of your expanded reach. Using LinkedIn's Pulse for example, you can cross-promote your contents and your groups through your personal profile.
Being consistent here is the key. To enhance your visibility and credibility, you need to have your own voice and pitch. The character you are building will benefit yourself and the brand you are promoting.
Aggressive But Keep Your Ears Open
Being shy won't get you anywhere far, especially on the web where marketers are trying their best to speak their words out. Aggressive promotion will get the words out more evenly throughout your audience. As more contents are shared on the web, a great piece of content could pass without anyone noticing. Aggressive promotion will make your post come "straight to your consumers' face."
But what you need to keep in mind here is, how aggressive you should be. No one wants to be irritated, so timing is key.
And after you're doing that aggressive approach, the next thing to do is to observe how your audience responds. Are they liking it? Or do they tend to avoid it?
Leverage Connections
Social media is all about being "social". As human as we can be, there is no point of trying to interact without having someone to interact with. Here LinkedIn has what most others social media networks don't, and that is the avenue of influence by employees, co-workers and employers.
LinkedIn is nothing but a network for professionals. A well-connected individuals within your company can help you in maximizing the profile of your company as a whole.
So whether it's about leveraging your own connection or your business, see who has the most connection and then combine it with the topic that interests your audience.
Learn From Influencers
They are those people that "influence". With their ability to spread their words out, and by making others listen, influencers can be great marketers if they wanted to.
There is a quote that said: "good artists imitate, but great artists steal." Referencing to this, as a marketers, you can take advantage of the ecosystem by taking examples from what influencers have made on their field. By learning how their successful strategy work, you can recreate their existing strategy to create one on your own.
You can take examples from big brands on LinkedIn. Then have employees to share your post. Employees are your biggest advocates, and getting them to spread the word will get maximize your content marketing effort on LinkedIn. Looking at the numbers, on Linkedin. 99 percent of the top global brands had employees share to their networks.
Create Quality Contents
The internet is already cluttered with all its unnecessary things. Adding more into it that has no much good will just add the mess. More marketers are flocking to social media networks to promote their businesses, but not that many of them are having that high-quality contents people call "great".
So instead or alluring people to click on a link to your site to impress just a few of them when they arrive to your site, it would be better to attract less people but convert more.
In short, skip the click-baiting techniques and opt to the quality you're about to give. It is better to have a quality content read by few readers that are indeed interested, than having a content that is already said by many.
On LinkedIn, quality contents won't just make your connection smarter, but also will reflect a positive state to your brand.
Aim For Long-Term Strategy
If your content doesn't fade away with time, it would be nice if you can repurpose it. This has been done with many bloggers out there.
Repurposing a content here is to make sure that the content is seen. Since there is too many of similar things out there, getting your content seen is difficult (especially if you're doing things organic). Never hope for a piece of content to go viral if you don't know how to repurpose what you have in your disposal.
Just like on any other social media networks, most contents on LinkedIn can go unnoticed. In order to have even your best content seen, consider reusing it, reposting it to at least several times on different days and times with different creative and copy.
One piece of great content can turn into a huge opportunity as long as you can reuse and recycle it properly.
And because LinkedIn is a business-oriented social media, keeping your page up-to-date is a must. Whether it's a new project or just a news, every piece of content added and updated can boost your credibility, making others see you as a professional. On LinkedIn on average, 99 percent of top brands post an average of 12 update a week on their page.
Use And Leverage Visuals
The time when the World Wide Web is just full of text is gone already. Now the power of marketing is somehow based on how it can leverage visual to connect those text into visible or interactive media. One single image could mean a thousand words, and images could catch the eyes a lot faster than having readers to read the length of your post.
The idea here is to get the content of yours to reach its maximum potential. Strong visuals will help your content to be more appealing and engaging. People like visuals, so there is no reason to not including them into your posts.
LinkedIn is a professional platform, but even the very best professionals like visuals. Images or videos can be appealing, they can attract more eyes than text; they can speak without saying a word. Visuals powerful form of marketing that could be shared and forwarded with more relative ease.
Leverage Direct-Sponsored Content
Focusing on creating content is meaningless when you're not constantly optimizing that content for maximum reach. LinkedIn has a Direct Sponsored Content which can help marketers to optimize their content to reach more people.
Promoting a content can appeal to a broader range of people because the content could be suited to a variety or active LinkedIn profiles.
This will give that content a positive momentum that will increase engagement.