LinkedIn marketing is fast becoming the go to for founders, entrepreneurs, small business and larger scale enterprise alike. Gone are the days when Linkedin was only a place to find work or recruit. LinkedIn is now one of the best channels for you to build brand awareness, build your community, drive engagement through inspiring content choices and ultimately get traffic and new customers to your website.
The other thing thats become obvious to me over the past six months is that LinkedIn is becoming far more open and inspiring. It’s a great place to establish yourself as not only an expert in your field, but also an amazing platform to share your thoughts on business and leadership.
The world is changing, and so too is how we work. LinkedIn has become a place to gather inspiration. And also share it.
This post explores some of the more meaningful ways to utilise LinkedIn for marketing your business or brand. We’re not going to state the obvious- like use hashtags, get a good Profile pic, or grab yourself a custom URL. That’s all LinkedIn 101, we think.
What we will talk about however is the rise of thought leadership on LinkedIn – (no not the icky kind) … the real, authentic kind and how LinkedIn can help position you as a trusted source in your field. How to utilise some of LinkedIns most powerful, little known features to your advantage. And, show you 2 secret LinkedIn tools that will help you outperform your competitors.
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Why use LinkedIn for marketing?
This ones easy. LinkedIn is fast overtaking Facebook and Instagram as the number one social network to build your brand, secure leads and find willing buyers.
LinkedIn was traditionally established as a corporate networking platform in 2003 by Reid Hoffman. At its very core, it was trying to fill a gap in the market to connect professionals. Helping both not only build networks and professional connections, but also ultimately to help people find employment.
LinkedIn has over 830 million users in more than 200 countries around the glob. This in contrast to Facebook’s nearly 3 billion. However, the one thing for me that sets the two platforms apart is a potential reach and engagement.
LinkedIn Is fast growing in not only users, but also relevance. Take a look at the search graph below. This past year alone, LinkedIn has nearly doubled in the SERPs.
In my experience you’re far more likely to have better distribution (reach/impressions) and far better engagement on LinkedIn. I get far more impressions and far better engagement on LinkedIn than any other platform I’m on.
LInkedIn provides 277% more leads than Facebook or Twitter. Thats a whopping difference.
The thing thats super attractive about LinkedIn right now though is the amount of thought leadership going on. And I don’t mean the kind by annoying salespeople, or “gurus” – I mean the amount of genuine and authentic conversations happening about super important issues.
I don’t know if its just the ecosystem that I am in- Startups, Tech, Women in business… but, I can tell you one thing. LinkedIn is now running rings around any other social media platform for me from both a personal and professional perspective.
I go to LinkedIn to connect with likeminded, smart and inspiring people. People who are out doing their own thing. People who have Quit the traditional 9-5. People who have started or built companies and people who are changing the landscape of what a true leader looks like.
For me, LinkedIn provides reach, great impression stats and way better engagement.
Plus, a bonus – it’s inspiring. And feels like a good use of time. Some of the other traditional social media sites have long lost their lustre.
A new kind of LinkedIn is emerging and it’s not only good for business. It’s good for people.
Still not convinced… how about, 93% of people consider LinkedIn is the best place to drive leads!
Thought leadership on LinkedIn
One of the top ways to reach your sweet-spot customer or your audience is through thought leadership. 66% of marketers agree that thought leadership is a top priority when it comes to marketing.
Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by Survey Monkey – they found that thought leadership was reported to be one of the best ways to achieve great marketing benefits for your business.
You don’t have to be an expert with a large following to be a thought leader. Thought leadership now-days is about communication of ideas and inspiration. Anyone can be a thought leader.
And, while I think the term is kind of icky! Thought leadership in 2022 is all about connection and conversation on the topics and ideas that are super important to our lives today.
Anyone can be a thought leader.
Be authentic. Be vulnerable. Be unique. No one is like you.
The best brands are building connections and trust online on LinkedIn by being transparent, and authentic in their views and opinions.
Working from home, juggling kids, women’s health in the workplace, balance, workplace flexibility, the four day working week, mental health, remote and hybrid work practices, diversity, the gender pay gap… all things that are now being openly discussed on LinkedIn.
Topics that are super important and affect all of us. Topics that have been banished from the workplace for much too long.
From a purely commercial perspective, people buy from companies and people they trust. Thought leadership builds trust.
Additionally, 44% of LinkedIn users take home more than the $75,000 a year. There’s your clincher. Propensity to pay.
You need two things in order to sell your product or service. The first is an audience the second is an audience who has a propensity to pay.
How to create a profile that stands out on LinkedIn
LinkedIn has an exceptionally intelligent search feature and can recognise boolean operators. Boolean search does not work on Facebook! Boolean searches are those that includes operators and modifiers such as and, or, not and quotation marks and parentheses.
These operators allow searches to be incredibly refined and enable you and your business to get found much more easily. But don’t leave it to chance.
Having a well optimised profile on both your personal and your brand page will help the algorithm find you!
Personal Profile vs Business Page on LinkedIn?
So, should you focus on your personal page or your brand page? Well, both. People are looking to buy from others they trust. Building a community around your brand starts with creating a network of qualified and engaged followers and connections.
Theres zero point on focussing on vanity metrics on LinkedIn. You simply don’t need a massive amount of followers to build your community. A community of people who are engaged with your content- who like, comment and join in discussions with you is a far better metric to aim for.
Your personal brand is your ticket towards building trust. Offering real value and positioning yourself as the expert in your field. Your business or brand page is an extension of that.
As an entrepreneur, I’d focus first and foremost on building your own personal brand as your number one activity on LinkedIn.
Think of your LinkedIn personal profile like a landing page.
How to optimize your LinkedIn profile
Optimise your personal page (and your business page) for the following three things:
- Adding value to your audience – how can you solve someones pain points?
- Positioning yourself as the expert in your niche – thought leadership
- Creating a funnel to your offer or CTA – what do you want them to do next? Whats the action you wish them to take?
Your offer might be your ebook, your coaching course, your product or your online services. This applies to any industry.
The great news, is that once your audience becomes followers you can then invite them to follow your business page. This is a direct link to having your business page messaging and content hit their feed every single time you post. Super powerful!
How to add a URL to your LinkedIn profile
Don’t forget to utilise the URL space on your profile to create a CTA that links out to your website. Simply edit your profile introduction, scroll to the bottom of that page and add in your link and unique CTA text. Voila!
If you see below Gary has this link set to roles he’s hiring for. So clever!
How to turn on creator mode on LinkedIn
This is by far one of my greatest tips on building your brand on LinkedIn. Turn on the creator mode function!
Creator mode can help you grow your influence, strengthen your personal brand and attract high quality followers.
When creator mode is turned on your Connect button automatically updates to a Follow button. And this follow button is now displayed at the top of all your content!
In creator mode you can also create a 30 second video to use instead of a static image as your profile pic. That’s super cool!
To turn on creator mode:
- Click View Profile
- Scroll your private dashboard until you Creator Mode
- Click into Creator Mode
- Toggle Creator Mode to ON
- Add topics (hashtags) to for topics you want to be found for
- click DONE
How to add a “talks about” section to your LinkedIn Profile
The “talks about” section on LinkedIn helps you to be found for topics that are in your niche. In creator mode you will see creator hub and creator tools. Add your topics as hashtags to your profile, you can add up to 5 topics. And, you can switch certain hashtags on and off as you wish.
Creator tools will also have an option for you to create a Newsletter that will get sent to ALL your followers. LinkedIn live and Audio events are also additional options for you to try.
Plus, as a creator you will now have the added benefit of a Subscribe Bell on your profile! The Subscribe bell allows notification of your new content to be given to people who have clicked the bell on your profile. This is a super effective way to get noticed in your followers feeds.
How to create a profile banner on LinkedIn
Finally, don’t forget to create an inspiring banner for your profile. Either a banner that represents your passions or who you are or a banner to drive conversations or with a CTA.
The ideal banner size and dimensions for your LinkedIn personal profile is 1128×191 pixels.
You can easily create a profile banner in Canva for free by selecting their LinkedIn banner option.
Choose from over free 5000 designs.
You can even ask people to RING the bell on your profile banner! If they follow you, they will see the notification bell on your profile – popping a CTA to ring the bell encourages them to subscribe to your content in their feed.
LinkedIn Content Strategy
We talked about thought leadership a bit above. Your content strategy should include a plan on how you intend to use content marketing on Linkedin. What sort of content you plan to publish, how often and what your metrics for success will be.
- What are you trying to achieve? Is it traffic to your website or maybe a bigger following so you can capture leads?
- What is your brand or personal tone? how do you want people to perceive you?
- Create a content marketing calendar with the types of topics and themes that you and your company are working towards being recognised for.
- Think of 2 or 3 main themes that you are passion about and that will resonate with your audience.
- Don’t be scared to get personal. Use anecdotes. Create a feel of trust.
- Post consistently. Show up. Create a cadence and a rhythm to your posting. Use a good LinkedIn Post Scheduler to plan and schedule your posts.
- Give value and encourage conversations and dialogue in your ecosystem.
- Think about what metrics are important to you and your business. Is it outbound clicks? is it engagement? is it getting more followers? is it engagement?
- Space put your content so that you maintain consistency. And, did you know that Thursday is the best day to post on LinkedIn?
- Don’t get bored of your own messaging! Often people have not seen your message the first time around. Don’t be scare to up-cycle content.
- Try the new native carousel post option on LinkedIn (currently in Beta) for videos or imagery for greater reach and engagement. Jake Poses from LinkedIn shows a great example of this new feature here.
Secret LinkedIn Analytics To Level Up Your Game
Apart from followers, updates and visitors on your business page there are two more tools in your analytics tab that you really have to pay attention to.
The first is competitors. This is SUPER useful. You can add up to 9 competitors onto your list. Don’t know who to add? Type in a known competitor into LinkedIn. Take Nike as an example;
Next, scroll to the right hand side and you will see “Pages people also viewed”.
This will show you similar results to your own business page.
Add these to your competitor list.
Your analytics dash will show you followers and content engagement over time. Super useful! And, how you rank.
The second is a lead gen form. Using the same drop down, select the type of leads you want to collect, add your privacy policy, then voila! Your leads will be available in your analytics tab as a download.
Two super simple, often overlooked tools that can move the needle for your brand marketing.
Wrap Up
LinkedIn being the boring, selly, recruitment site of the early 20’s is no longer. It’s a vibrant platform full of unearthed opportunities to both create community and connect with your ideal clients and customers.
They are constantly rolling out new features and tools to make your marketing better and provide an excellent return on your marketing investment when it comes to time spent on social media.
I’m a fan. And the more I learn about the power of LinkedIn marketing the more excited I become for the potential of this very untapped platform.
So, ditch facebook and get yourself over to where the cool kids now hang out. It’s certainly not just for recruiters anymore.
The post How to use LinkedIn Marketing to quickly level up your personal brand appeared first on Quit the nine to five.
