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When LinkedIn was launched in May 2003, it was mainly perceived as a professional networking site. However, in less than two decades, LinkedIn has attracted 562 million users spread across 200 countries.
Today, it is not just a platform that connects job seekers with prospective employers. Rather, it has transformed into an extremely useful marketing tool. It has become important for every business to develop an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy. When executed properly, it can help you build brand awareness and forge long-term professional relationships. It can also be effective for lead generation.
Below are a few points for your LinkedIn marketing strategy:
Write More!
You have 1,300 characters available to you on a personal LinkedIn post. It turns out, at least in this case, longer is better. In fact, some people have reported their long-form updates to receive 10 times more visibility than a short post or link to an article.
1) Provide value directly in the post itself. Before the link, write context about what it is and why people might want to read it. Write this in a way that tells a story and engages with your reader. If you keep them reading the post, they’ll be more likely to click through.
2) Lose the link preview. When you post a link, LinkedIn gives you the option to remove the preview. Do that. People see so many links on LinkedIn that they tend to ignore typical link posts. Removing the link preview is a bit counterintuitive, but it works to catch attention.
Tag People in LinkedIn Posts
Once you’ve formatted the perfect post that provides value to your readers it’s time to tag people!
When you tag someone in a LinkedIn post, their connections and people who follow them will also see that content. Once a few people engage with the post it’s also seen by those people’s followers and connections. This doesn’t mean you can just tag anyone in your post, though. Stick to tagging people you’ve quoted or referenced in the content you are sharing.
Use Hashtags to Get Discovered
LinkedIn users can follow a hashtag to get content on that topic in their feed even if they don’t follow specific influencers for that topic. You may have noticed LinkedIn now auto-suggests hashtags when you post an update. Do a quick search for that topic on LinkedIn and you’ll be able to see the number of followers on that hashtag.
Upload Native Video
In case you’ve been stranded on a deserted island for the past year, allow me to remind you: video is vital. Like most other social platforms that want to keep you on their network for as long as possible, LinkedIn favors native video over links to external videos. Native video means uploading a video file directly to the platform as opposed to simply sharing the link to a video that is hosted somewhere else, such as YouTube. Here are a few great ways to include native video in your 2019 LinkedIn marketing strategy:
- Record a short video giving an overview of the content you’re sharing.
- Review a book or other piece of content and share your review.
- Share videos of client testimonials.
- Do an overview of a product or platform and share a few tips or tricks.
- Create a teaser or trailer to a longer video or episode of a series.
Build Company Influencers Not Just Your Company Profile:
When LinkedIn company pages show up in search, Google previews up to 156 characters from your company description. While having a fully-optimized company profile page is important, you have to go beyond just posting as your organization to be successful.
People want to follow and connect with other people - not just brands.
People on LinkedIn, for the most part, follow people, not companies. So leverage your internal influencers (employees who have larger networks) to post your content. If you don’t already have internal influencers, choose someone to become your face on LinkedIn and work to build them up.
If you want to reach even more people, then you also need people to engage with (comment, like share, watch) these posts, ideally within the first 48 hours. Again, you can leverage your internal team for this, but keep your requests reasonable. While your social media presence may be a priority for you, chances are that it is not for your coworkers.
Stay Up to Date with New LinkedIn Changes:
Make sure you’re measuring traffic from LinkedIn to your own site and use tracking URLs when necessary. If you’re using a third-party tool to publish to LinkedIn, it may be worth reaching out to confirm they are planning to maintain their tool’s functionality. Otherwise, it might be time to search for a new social publishing tool.
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