LinkedIn has transformed from being a professional networking platform to an integral marketing tool used by businesses in over 200 countries. 66% of B2B organisations said that LinkedIn generated the best overall content marketing results for their organisation, reports CMI.
Unlike other social media channels, LinkedIn offers a unique perspective from industry experts and global businesses through sharing content and creating new business opportunities daily. The transformation has only accelerated in the last few years due to the pandemic, and according to Business of Apps, the number of organisations that joined LinkedIn from 2019 to 2021 was 27 million.
The key to getting the most from LinkedIn for your B2B is to create a social media marketing strategy that works towards achieving business objectives.
Setting SMART Goals
For LinkedIn, your goals could be about building brand awareness, generating leads, increasing sales, or improving engagement.
To succeed, you should focus on one component at a time and create a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART) goal and measure it using KPIs.
An example of a SMART goal would be ‘by August, we will increase our LinkedIn following by 200 followers.’
Who is Your Audience?
Three basic features you should know about your audience before posting any content are the location, industry, and job title. This guides you to create content that caters to solve challenges or questions that these people face in their region, career, and business.
Buyer personas are a useful way of ensuring you are targeting your audience correctly and keeping your goals customer centric.
Optimising LinkedIn Pages
HubSpot reports that, on average, fully completed LinkedIn pages get 30% more views than incomplete pages. This is due to the LinkedIn algorithm that ranks profiles using search engine results pages (SERPs).
A complete LinkedIn profile includes logo, overview, organisation info, cover image, call-to-action/customised button.
Creative Core Content
Providing consistent educational value to your followers will build trust, and when the time is right, you will be in the forefront of their minds when it comes to seeking the products and services that you have to offer.
Creating a social media content calendar is the best way to keep track and prepare what content to post, and using software such as HubSpot will allow you to schedule posts at optimal times and analyse all social media activity in one place.
Advocating Agents
Using your employees to promote your posts will increase the reach and engagement with your content. According to LinkedIn, employees typically have 10x more reach than their company.
This will also increase brand trust, as the LinkedIn study also shows that the click-through rate (CTR) on a piece of content is 2x higher when shared by an employee versus when shared by the company itself.
Test, Analyse and Test Again
Refer to your original SMART goals and KPIs to find out if you were successful at regular intervals. Not all goals are met first time round, but it is important to learn from your results.
LinkedIn has in-app analytics where you can see interactions with posts and follower demographics, as well as customisable time periods, such as a 30-day view, to track your progress as you move towards your goal deadline.
Repeating the testing and analysing process will help you to constantly improve your knowledge of your audience, so you can continue to provide relevant and valuable content that they will find helpful.
If you would like to learn about getting started on LinkedIn, read our blog here https://bit.ly/3KMkWpP