LinkedIn is a thriving community of more than 500 million members around the globe. Think of LinkedIn a bit like facebook, except that it’s for business professionals with a focus on B2B. Its mantra is ‘networking made easy’ and in just 10 minutes a day you can create significant value if you have the right strategy. More than 20% of LinkedIn users are senior-level influencers and decision-makers so it’s a great place to create business leads. And the good news is that LinkedIn makes it incredibly easy to find rich information and connect with decision makers.
But there’s a challenge: most users have their shields up because too many people are aggressively selling on LinkedIn. You can solve this challenge by standing out positively with a strong profile and thoughtful content. It’s critical to maintain a good content ratio too – our tip is 80% educational vs. 20% promotional content. Here’s how to get started with content marketing on LinkedIn.
1. Define your goal
Your goals might include generating leads, increasing awareness, promoting your products and services, keeping in touch with clients or building subscriptions.
2. Choose your content
Share articles, infographics and videos. These can be shared on your personal profile, company page, via groups, direct messages or InMails. Provide links back to your website.
3. Plan your topics
Plan and schedule your topics such as how-tos, opinion pieces, industry news, events and announcements. Commenting on other posts is a quick option to keep up your profile too. Communicate in a personal and conversational way.
4. Engage with others
It’s essential to engage with others. If a targeted decision maker is liking, commenting on, or sharing relevant content, connect with them, reply to their comment and start a conversation.
5. Visibility
Structure your content for engagement. Always include a question and actively share your content by using hashtags to get discovered by people interested in specific topics.
6. Optimise your profile
Use a professional photo and a header image that communicates authority, create a great headline then develop descriptions and engaging content such as infographics and video.
7. Grow your connections
LinkedIn makes it easy to find and engage with new leads. Grow your connections to a minimum of 500 by actively searching for people in your network then seek endorsements to build your personal brand and trust.
Have you developed a strategy yet for getting the most out of LinkedIn?
