Optimising your company’s approach to LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a powerful resource when it comes to social media marketing and is an important tool in particular for B2B companies, but it has the lowest frequency of visitation of all the major social networks. This is important to know, as your company’s messaging should be targeted towards less frequent usage.

LinkedIn is a powerful resource when it comes to social media marketing and is an important tool in particular for B2B companies.

Launched in 2003, with a focus on professionals, job-seekers and companies, LinkedIn has more than 500 million members in more than 200 countries (about a quarter of Facebook’s membership) including more than 8 million Australians (more than half of the working-age population).

Out of the major social networks, LinkedIn has the lowest frequency of visitation with only 38% of users logging in at least weekly – compared to 87% on Facebook, 73% on Instagram and 60% on Twitter. This is important to know, as your company’s messaging should be targeted towards less frequent usage.

The basics

There are two types of profiles on LinkedIn: professional (individual) profiles and company pages.

Professional profiles are managed by the individual, seen as more authentic and there’s less opportunity for the company to manage any quality control.

A company page is 100% about the company, enabling quality control for all messaging.

How do you build a strong company page?

Building a strong LinkedIn Company Page with consistent high-quality and eye-catching branding, making your expertise and industry focus absolutely clear, is a must.

1. Complete your profile
   1. Add images, a logo and a high-resolution cover image
   2. Be sure that the About Us description is SEO-friendly, use keyword-rich copy instead of brochure-marketing descriptions
   3. Include words and phrases that describe your company, its expertise and industry focus
   4. Create a Showcase Page for each service / industry focus
2. Share relevant content weekly
   1. Optimise headlines and keep your introductions concise
   2. Ensure the tone of your content is helpful and friendly instead of salesy (not promotional) but include a clear call-to-action, such as a link
   3. Sometimes ask a thoughtful question to involve your audience and generate higher engagement
3. Review analytics
   1. Company page shows engagements
   2. Set targets and optimise

LinkedIn best practices for companies

After you’ve set up your Company Page and are distributing useful and engaging content, you should work towards building connections and getting recommendations.

You can further expand your company’s reach by:

• Leveraging your employees’ own professional networks, by advocating for them to optimise their profiles and share your content.
• Joining discussions and sharing content in LinkedIn groups
• Utilising paid advertising strategies (cost-per-click or cost-per-impression, with comprehensive targeting options)

Implementing an employee advocacy strategy

Ramping up your company’s LinkedIn organic success can happen as easily as having as many of your team members as possible disseminating the content posted by your Company Page.

This can be a win-win for company and employees, helping expand your company’s reach, engagement and influence while also enabling staff to build their professional network while positioning themselves as industry experts.

Engaging with LinkedIn groups

Joining existing groups can offer many opportunities for individuals to be seen as knowledgeable, expand their network and enhance their LinkedIn experience. As moderators of groups have the ability to directly email group members once per week, creating a group relevant to your industry (but not a promotion for your business) can also be useful for content-sharing given most LinkedIn members only visit the site sporadically.

When it comes to groups, however, it’s important to dedicate time to participate in the conversation regularly. If you simply “post and bounce”, you’ll struggle to get any worthwhile results. Instead ensure content you post is highly relevant to the group’s audience or try asking valuable, clearly-bounded questions and thanking people for their honest answers.

Find groups to join by searching keywords in the Search Box on the homepage. Alternatively, browse under the Work icon in the top right, select Groups and then click Discover.

Targeting paid advertisements

Like Facebook, LinkedIn provides the benefit of targeting advertisements because so much is known about the users. The difference, however, is that LinkedIn users are on the site considerably less frequently – and that can actually make promoted content even more effective.

Any content you share can be “boosted” to a targeted audience based on job titles, industry and geographic location. It’s also possible to reach any targeted audience directly within the user’s LinkedIn message inbox.

Increasing brand awareness through traditional display ads, or dynamic ads that personalise your message to a user, is also possible.

Text ads are also an option.

 

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