When we think of social media marketing, we often focus on Facebook, Instagram and other consumer-focussed platforms, but when it comes to B2B marketing, it’s a mistake to forget about LinkedIn marketing. Here’s an ultimate guide to LinkedIn marketing for your business to help get you started – and make an impact.
Step One – Creating Your Business Profile
LinkedIn has a very user-friendly profile set-up process that creates a page dedicated to your business, much like your Facebook business page. It performs a similar function too, telling people on the platform who you are, what you do, and where to find you. This adds to your online presence and authority.
Tips:
- Always include images on the company profile. Use your logo as your profile picture and then set a background image of your offices/facilities or something relevant to the industry. Profiles with images look more trustworthy, and tend to get as much as 6 times more traffic than those without.
- SEO counts. Your description section tells viewers who your company is and what you offer, and has a character limit of 2000. However, the first 150 characters are what pops up in Google searches for your LinkedIn profile, so these need to be the most high-impact sentences. Try to put a few highly-relevant keywords in this section and really make it pop.
- Add your specialties. There’s a list in the profile section where you can put your company specialties. This is important, because it immediately tells visitors if they have come to the right profile. If you want to take a unique approach, phrase these services/products in terms of how they address client pain points, rather than having a simple list.
- Full in the entire profile. Other than the description and specialities, there are a few other less important boxes that many companies skip – don’t. These still matter to your audience and help establish your company as something authentic, trustworthy and legitimate. Include your website URL to drive traffic to your site, select your industry (this helps people filter their searches for your business), year funded and company type/size.
Step Two – Develop Internal Connections
Now that your profile is set up, you need to start creating a network around it. This won’t happen on its own at first, so a bit of work needs to go into it.
Start by setting up each employee’s LinkedIn profile along the same lines as the company profile, sharing the website, their role, company specialties and the various pain points the company can solve for its clients. A catchy professional title as well as high quality images is essential, so it’s a good idea to pair this project with a quick professional shoot that can be used on the website, for other social media profiles, brochures, etc.
Next, get each employee to connect with the company profile. Generally, employees have 10 times more first-degree connections than a company does followers, so this helps your business tap into a large network.
Tips:
- Encourage employee LinkedIn engagement. It’s a good idea to encourage your employees to be active on LinkedIn through their professional profiles, as this will help grow their network – and therefore the company’s. A quick LinkedIn training session from a digital agency or even a set of tips can help make this process a lot easier and show employees how to connect with industry professionals, who to connect with, how to publish and share articles, the kind of content they should share, and much more.
Step Three – Set Audience Parameters
You don’t want just anyone in your company network; you want people who are most likely to do business with you, where you can generate leads, recruit talent and establish your business as a leader in the industry to build credibility and authority.
Tips:
- Create customer avatars. These are idealised versions of who your highest-value clients are – representatives of different sections of your target audience. You should note important characteristics of each avatar, from their goals and values to the challenges they face (that you can address), their job occupation and title, and role in the purchase process. This will help you create a targeted network and define the type of content that should be shared on employee profiles.
Step Four – Content, Content, Content
Like all social media marketing platforms, regularly publishing content is vital to gaining and holding a high-value audience.
Tips:
- You can’t publish or share content on a company profile. Currently, LinkedIn does not allow you to publish articles, news or content from a company profile. This is why your employee profiles are so important, as they become the content engines that support the company profile.
- Publish once a week for optimal effect. LinkedIn users are interested in breaking news, thought pieces and industry innovations. Don’t just rely on publishing your own content – share content from high-quality external sources to show you are emersed in your industry and focussed on its future. Be creative and share articles, YouTube videos and whitepapers – anything that grabs attention for all the right reasons.
- Tag interested parties. If a piece of content is especially relevant to a particular connection, tag them in it by name when they are part of your network. This will ensure that they see it and will encourage engagement. Only do this when the content is especially relevant or interesting, so you don’t annoy your followers.
- Be responsive. LinkedIn is about professional engagement and driving responses through your content, so when someone comments, sends a message or tags you in content, be sure to respond quickly and follow up.
Step Five – Advertise
LinkedIn allows you to advertise content on your platform, just like Facebook and Instagram.
Tips:
- Sponsored content raises awareness. Hosting an event or initiative? Sponsored content will raise awareness and get your message out there, increasing qualified web traffic, post engagement and follower count.
- Sponsored InMail content works as personalised advertising. This works like a segmented, personalised email – ensuring specific content is only sent to the people most likely to be interested in it. It’s ideal for lead generation, advertising your webinars or eBooks, or bringing prospects into the sales funnel.
- Text ads work like Google ads. These are highly-effective PPC (pay-per-click) ads that target user home pages, group pages and search pages based on the keywords in the ad. This ensures your ad only gets displayed to people who have shown interest in those types of products/services.
Get Started with Your B2B Marketing LinkedIn Strategy Today
LinkedIn is a powerhouse for B2B marketing and should play a central role in your social media marketing strategy. For expert assistance in getting your LinkedIn marketing strategy up and running, contact our social media marketing team today.
Written by
Michelle van Blerck – Communications Manager
I take a spark and turn it into a fireworks show! From internal client communications to LinkedIn authority articles, social media, and blogs, I write it all. My aim is to represent clients authentically with high-quality content that Google loves. I’ll show consumers why you’re the business they want to work with, buy from, and follow for life!