LinkedIn is becoming an increasingly important social media platform for B2B marketers.
LinkedIn can now help you drive traffic, generate leads, build your thought leadership, and more.
Although LinkedIn can be beneficial for building your personal brand and gaining influence, you will get the most out of it if you understand how it works and what gets the best response. Utilizing the various tools LinkedIn has to offer will also help you maximize its potential.
1. Post regularly but not too much
If you want to maintain a consistent presence on LinkedIn, it’s important to post regularly – but posting too much can be counterproductive.
According to my research at Onalytica, LinkedIn users who post at least 50 times a month see an average of 26 engagements per post. Those who post between 30 and 50 times a month see an average of 56 engagements, and those who post less than 30 times a month see even more engagement, on average.
2. Avoid using lots of automation
Automation can help you save time, but it can also make it harder for people to see your content.
An example of an easy way to set up a rule would be to say, “if there’s a blog mentioning ‘X’ keywords, post it on my LinkedIn feed.” However, we’ve seen people use this to the extreme, posting hundreds of times per month.
If you post too much on LinkedIn, your engagement will go down. LinkedIn’s systems can detect when people are using automation, and your posts will be hidden from everyone.
If you use automation tools on LinkedIn, it’s best to limit your posts to no more than 30 times a month.
3. Share video and visual content
Studies have found that articles that include images are viewed 94% more often than those without images. Videos, slides, podcasts, and documents can also be added to posts to increase viewership. LinkedIn reintroduced the ability to add documents to posts in 2019.
If you have a series of visuals that you want to share on LinkedIn, you can turn them into a carousel post. To do this, upload the visuals as a document on LinkedIn. Once they are uploaded, LinkedIn will display the visuals as a carousel. Users can then side-swipe through the carousel to view the different visuals.
When you post on LinkedIn, try to include a call to action in your post. This could be something like asking your readers to comment on your post, or asking them to share their thoughts on the topic. By including a call to action in your posts, you can encourage your readers to interact with your content, which can help to increase the reach and engagement of your posts.
LinkedIn suggests using images and videos on your company’s page to increase engagement. They claim that images lead to a 98 percent higher comment rate and links to videos can result in a 75 percent higher share rate.
A study of over six million Facebook posts showed that videos uploaded directly to Facebook have, on average, 110% more interactions and 478% more shares than YouTube videos embedded on Facebook. Therefore, it is likely that LinkedIn would prioritize LinkedIn videos over YouTube videos on the feed, similar to how Facebook does.
4. Don’t just share your own content
The four-one-one rule is a guideline for social media posts that was created by Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute. The rule suggests that for every one self-promotional post, a user should share four pieces of content from others, and one post that is purely informative with no marketing message. This ratio can be applied to LinkedIn to help users create a balance between self-promotion and sharing helpful content.
The rule states that:
You should share four pieces of relevant content written by others for every one self-serving post.
If you want to be successful on social media, you should share other people’s content as well as your own. This way you can provide your audience with helpful insights from industry leaders, news, and trends, instead of just your own content.
You can make your social media posts stand out by adding your own opinions and questions in the comments section. This will show that you have read and thought about the post, and it will also make your social media profile more interesting to others.
5. Don’t be salesy
While you want to promote yourself and your business on LinkedIn, it’s best not to be too forceful in your posts.
It can be off-putting for people if you post too much about your product, as it can come across like an advert. A better approach is to get involved in thought-leadership style conversations. If people like what you’re saying, they’ll go and look at your product on your website.
This stage is more about building relationships and making new contacts than anything else.
6. Go live
You could try using LinkedIn live to give a monologue to the camera, or to hold a webinar with guests, or to live stream from an event.
Almost eighty percent of marketers have noted that live video results in more authentic audience interactions, while eighty-two percent of audiences would rather watch a live video from a brand than read a social post.
Live LinkedIn videos see 7 times more reactions and 24 times more comments, on average, than regular video uploads.
7. Tag influencers and employees
If you mention another user in your LinkedIn post, they will be notified about the mention, which will encourage engagement.
You can tag people in your posts even if you’re not directly connected to them. Just make sure the people you tag are relevant to the post, or it might be considered spam.
Choose the people you mention carefully and don’t mention the same people all the time. Try not to tag too many people in a post, as it looks like spam.
8. Create LinkedIn-specific content
There’s a temptation to post your content on every social media platform you’re on, but remember that a lot of your followers are on more than one platform. They’ll quickly get bored of seeing the same content on every platform.
It is better to create original posts for each platform.
9. Use hashtags
If you want your content to be seen and categorized on LinkedIn, adding hashtags is a must.
When you use hashtags, make sure they are relevant to your content. This way, people who search for related topics will see your article. In addition, using hashtags makes it easier for people to find your content.
Click on ‘Discover more’ under ‘Followed Hashtags’ at the bottom left of your LinkedIn homepage to see a recommended list of popular hashtags related to the hashtags you follow. You can also access this by clicking on the hashtags you follow and then clicking the 3 dots and then ‘Discover new hashtags’.
10. Post industry trends, how-tos, and thought-leadership content
What you choose to post on LinkedIn will depend on your overall marketing goals. However, there are a few types of posts that tend to perform well on LinkedIn. These include:
-Posts that offer helpful tips or advice
-Posts that are relevant to your industry
-Posts that highlight your company’s culture
-Posts that feature customer testimonials
If you’re not sure what to post on LinkedIn, start with one of these types of posts and see how it goes. When considering what to post on LinkedIn as part of your marketing strategy, think about what will help you achieve your overall marketing goals.
When engaging with others on a social network, it is beneficial to personalize your message to fit your audience. This can be accomplished by sharing industry trends and how-tos, as they are great for developing relationships.
BuzzSumo analyzed headlines of 10 million articles shared on LinkedIn and found that industry trends and how-to articles are the most popular.
- Industry trends and news: “the future of”, “in the world”, and “of the year”
- How-to articles: “X ways to”, “how to get”, and “how to make”
Thought-leadership content
They also shared that “publishing thought leadership content on your Company Page is one of the most powerful ways to grow your LinkedIn audience“. Here are the three types of thought leadership that LinkedIn suggests:
- Industry thought leadership: Your perspective on news and trends
- Organizational thought leadership: Embodied in the vision and ethos of your company
- Product thought leadership: Centered on being the best solution for your customers
11. Make use of the analytics
Besides measuring your LinkedIn marketing performance, your Company Page analytics is a great tool for understanding what content your followers like. Here are two ways to make good use of the analytics:
Understand what content does well on your Company Page
The “Updates” section of analytics provides a lot of information about recent LinkedIn posts, including data such as impressions, clicks, and social actions. It also calculates the clickthrough rate (CTR) and engagement rate for each post.
Learn about your followers and visitors
Under the “Followers” section of your analytics on Facebook, you can see information about the demographics of your followers. This can be helpful if you have had your Company Page around for a while and have gained a sizeable following.
We can share content that is specific to our audience’s interests by knowing what information they are looking at. For example, if we know our audience is interested in marketing, startups, and technology, we can share content related to those topics.
In addition to the most popular job functions, you can also see what industries your followers are in, their level of seniority, where they are located, and more.
12. Use data to find your best time to post
LinkedIn has found that updates posted in the morning usually earn the most engagement, with a slight bump occurring again after business hours. They advise that you experiment to see what works best for your company.
At Buffer, they used to believe that there was a universal best time to post on social media. However, with LinkedIn’s algorithmic feed, the concept of a “universal best posting time” is now less relevant. Instead, it’s better to focus on your brand’s best time to post. Here are two methods of using LinkedIn analytics to determine your brand’s best time to post.
Here’s how to find your best time to post to LinkedIn, with LinkedIn analytics:
- Experiment with different posting times and record those times
- Go to the “Updates” section of your LinkedIn Company Page analytics
- Identify the few top posts with the highest CTR or engagement rate, depending on your goals
- Compare those posts with their posting times
13. Study other company pages
We really like the Facebook “Pages to Watch” feature as it’s helped us improve our Facebook marketing a lot. LinkedIn has a similar feature called Companies to track which we think is just as useful for LinkedIn marketing.
This table can be found at the bottom of the “Followers” section of your analytics.
Using this information, you could benchmark your LinkedIn Company Page performance with theirs. For example, here are some of the analyses you could do:
- Is my Company Page growing as fast as other Company Pages that have roughly the same number of followers?
- How do my number of updates and social engagement compare with similar Company Pages?
- What types of content are doing well for them? (You can click on their name to visit their Company Page.)
14. Optimize your company page for search
A well-optimized LinkedIn Company Page allows your target audience to easily find you on and off LinkedIn (e.g. Google). To optimize your Company Page for search, LinkedIn offers these suggestions:
Insert keywords
Make sure to use keywords that accurately describe your company in your company profile. This way, potential customers will be able to find you more easily when searching for your product or service. To figure out which keywords to use, consider what terms a customer would use when looking for your business.
15. Help your colleagues help you
Your colleagues can be a big help when it comes to LinkedIn marketing. Give them a hand by boosting their posts and increasing your company’s visibility on the site.
Encourage them to engage with your posts
If you want more engagement on your LinkedIn posts, a good strategy is to engage with the posts of your colleagues. This will help spread your posts to more LinkedIn users.
LinkedIn members who are employees are more likely to engage with updates than the average LinkedIn user.
You can increase engagement from your colleagues by sending them links every time you post and when important updates go live. Asking for engagement can sometimes be all that is needed to get colleagues involved.
Encourage them to fill out their LinkedIn profiles
LinkedIn offers a lovely explanation of how your individual LinkedIn profiles influence your brand:
Your LinkedIn profile, as well as the profiles of everyone else at the company, come together to form the brand’s mountain range.
What have you found works best for you on LinkedIn?
What are some of the main obstacles you have encountered while trying to maximize your LinkedIn marketing potential?
If you want to understand how well you did in terms of gaining visibility with the right people, it’s helpful to take a look at which posts performed the best. Consider why those posts were successful and see if there’s anything you can replicate.
As we move beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, LinkedIn is likely to become an increasingly influential platform. Those who start building their platform presence now will stand the best chance of capitalizing on this and maximizing their potential on the platform.