Why Your Company’s Social Media Presence Matters for Lead Generation
May 12, 2021
Stop Going Slower Than the Speed Limit and Start Driving Traffic to Your Website
August 10, 2021LINKEDIN CRASH COURSE
How to Grow Your Brand Awareness
With over 756 million members and 303 million active users, LinkedIn is an extremely effective marketing tool. To create ongoing engagement with your target audience, however, there are a number of best practices you should be implementing to grow your brand and networks -- or in LinkedIn jargon, connections. Although there are many paid advertising and boosting options available, there are a plethora of ways to increase your engagement levels organically.
GETTING STARTED
When you build your company LinkedIn page, or update it, it is important that you complete all of the information requested. Pages with complete information get 30% more weekly views than those with missing details, such as website links or company logos. Be sure to include your location and company contact information. After completing your organization’s information, insert your accurately sized, high resolution company logo and cover image. The overview section should lead with relevant terms and phrases which describe your organization’s capabilities. This section should optimize keywords to help the right audience find your page.
HOW + WHEN TO POST
Posting on LinkedIn should be frequent and consistent. Companies that post weekly see a 2x lift in engagement. When possible, try to include photos or videos with your post. Images result in a 2x higher comment rate, and custom image collages with 3-4 images per post perform especially well; videos get 5x more engagement, and live videos get 24x more engagement. It is best practice to post once per day or a few times per week, and you should try to post Monday through Friday between 9am-5pm, as members are most active during the work week. To be more specific, Tuesdays from 11am-12pm receive the most clicks and shares, and 7am-8am and 5pm-6pm are the best times to post. It is also recommended that you schedule your posts out 24-48 hours in advance using tools like Hootsuite or Sprinklr. These posts should include at least 2-3 relevant hashtags to allow more people to discover your page by exploring particular topics of interest. Although consistent posting is necessary to gain traction, it is also possible to post too much to where you will get “penalized” by LinkedIn and receive less engagement. Companies should avoid posting more than 30 times in one month, or once a day.
You want to ensure you are utilizing your own content, and other pages’ content. It is critical that you reshare posts that @ your company, interact with and respond to your audience in the comment section in a timely manner, and react and comment on hashtag feeds. The more active you are on LinkedIn, the more opportunities you have to be found by your target audience.
Incorporate a call-to-action button. This can be a link to your website, an invite to register for an event, a contact button, or virtually anything else that prompts your audience to engage with your brand. On the flip side, you should also add a “follow” button to your website that allows for people to follow your LinkedIn page directly from your site. Invite your personal page’s first degree connections to follow your company page(s). You can also add a link to your company’s LinkedIn page on all employee email footers.
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Notify your employees when a post goes up on your company page, and encourage them to engage with your content. Make sure your employees correctly connect their personal pages to the company page. Additionally, it is important to spotlight employees to provide insight to your company culture -- this includes recognizing significant team moments, employee anniversaries or a new member joining your company.
READABLE, RELEVANT, REPEATABLE
Understand the LinkedIn algorithm. Each social media platform has different algorithms which filter through posts in order to decide which ones will appear more often on users’ feed. LinkedIn prefers quality over quantity. Current, relevant topics and news will receive higher priority and will be pushed onto people’s feeds more often. Incorporate questions into your post to create conversation and engagement between you and the users. Showcase innovation and advancements which set you apart from the competition. When possible, leverage giveaways and contests that require engagement from users in order to be entered to win.
Cross promote your content on other social media platforms. While many potential connections are using LinkedIn, they may miss your post, but they might see it on another platform like Facebook or Twitter -- if you link back to it. It is important to get as many eyes on your content as possible, and redirect them to LinkedIn.
KEYS TO LINKEDIN SUCCESS
By implementing the LinkedIn tactics included in this guide, you are on the path to success for increasing your engagement levels while generating organic traffic to your page and website. Be sure to focus on best posting times, optimal posting content, engaging with your audience, company-culture your brand, and making your company page as information-rich as possible.
Not sure where to start? We can help. Contact us!