More than 59 million companies use LinkedIn pages to connect with the platform’s 875 million members. A well thought out LinkedIn marketing strategy is the best way to stand out from this crowd.
LinkedIn is very different from other social platforms. Creating an effective strategy will require some planning and perseverance. But once your LinkedIn efforts are up and running, the results can benefit multiple areas of your business.
Read on to learn how to build a LinkedIn strategy that will help you build an engaged community and effectively market your business on the platform.
What is a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy?
A LinkedIn marketing strategy is a plan for using LinkedIn to achieve specific marketing goals. LinkedIn marketing can include everything from hiring the best people to building your brand.
LinkedIn is a unique network. On most platforms, brands are giving way to personal connections. But on LinkedIn, business networks are the name of the game. This means companies of all types need to be more visible and involved in the conversation.
LinkedIn is well known as the social network of choice for B2B marketers. But B2C brands can also succeed on LinkedIn. All you need is a solid strategy based on well-planned LinkedIn goals that fit into your larger social marketing plan.
General LinkedIn Marketing Tips
So where do you start? Here are a few key steps for any brand interested in building an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy.
1. Set clear goals
The first step to any marketing plan is to figure out what you want to achieve. Consider how LinkedIn fits into your overall marketing strategy. What specific goals do you want to achieve on this business platform?
The ways people use LinkedIn are quite different from the ways they use other social networks:
- Keep up to date with news and current events: 29.2%
- Tracking or researching brands and products: 26.9%
- Posting or sharing photos or videos: 17.7%
- Communication with friends and family: 14.6%
- Looking for funny or entertaining content: 13.8%
And of course, LinkedIn is also the social network most used for recruitment, as well as the leading platform for B2B lead generation.
This is important information to consider when planning your LinkedIn strategy goals. But it’s also important to think about how your organization style fits into the LinkedIn ecosystem.
As mentioned, for B2B companies, LinkedIn can be a goldmine for lead generation and relationship building. For B2C companies, LinkedIn can serve primarily as a recruiting platform. Only you and your team can decide what makes the most sense for you.
Don’t know where to start? Check out our blog post on how to set goals for social media marketing.
2. Make the Most of Your LinkedIn Page
No matter what goals you’re working towards, make sure you have a complete LinkedIn page that uses all of the relevant tabs and sections. LinkedIn data shows that full pages get 30% more views per week.
Browse all tabs on Microsoft’s LinkedIn page. You can find as many details about life at the company as you like by browsing through the various tabs.
Source: Microsoft on LinkedIn.
For larger organizations, storefront pages can help focus content marketing to the right audience. Try to customize them for different initiatives or programs in your company.
And don’t let your main page content get outdated: LinkedIn recommends updating your cover page at least twice a year.
3. Understand your audience
The demographics of LinkedIn users are different from the demographics of other social platforms. Users age and tend to have a higher income.
Source: Global State of Digital 2022 by Hootsuite (October update).
But this is just a starting point. It is important to understand who your specific audience is and what information they are looking for on your LinkedIn page.
LinkedIn analytics is a good way to find demographics specific to your audience. Hootsuite’s Audience Discovery Tool for LinkedIn can provide even more insight into your LinkedIn audience and how they are engaging with your content.
4. Track and improve performance
As you begin to understand your audience better, you will also get a better idea of what content resonates with you the most. Tracking the results of your LinkedIn content gives you important insights. Apply them over time to refine your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
Again, LinkedIn analytics provide important strategic insights. LinkedIn Analytics’ own tool provides a good overview of your LinkedIn page and post performance.
The best way to highlight the results of your LinkedIn marketing is to share your results. Regular LinkedIn marketing reports are a great tool. This allows you to see patterns emerge and refine your strategy over time. They also create greater opportunities for brainstorming strategic improvements.
5. Be human
LinkedIn research shows that employee networks have, on average, 10 times more connections than a company. Content gets twice as many clicks if it’s posted by an employee rather than a company’s business page.
When it comes to hiring, employees are more likely to have LinkedIn connections in their areas of expertise. When they share jobs, they reach a much more targeted audience than your company’s LinkedIn page.
This is one of the many reasons why it’s important to include personal profiles in your LinkedIn marketing strategy. This could mean teaching senior executives how to effectively use LinkedIn to create content for cutting edge ideas. Or it could mean encouraging your employees to share their work lives on LinkedIn.
Remember that users can subscribe to personal profiles. So they see content from people they want to learn from but don’t know well enough to submit a connection request. This further expands the reach of everyone who works at your company, from entry-level employees to the CEO.
Make it easy for employees to share content on their LinkedIn profiles with an employee advocacy program. Hootsuite Amplify helps you manage and share approved content. You can also use this advocacy and social media marketing tool to measure results and increase employee engagement in your advocacy program.
6. Focus on leads, not sales
LinkedIn is more about social selling than social commerce. As mentioned earlier, this is the best brand for B2B lead generation. It’s the perfect platform to build relationships and connections that will eventually lead to sales.
It is less effective as a platform for instant purchases. It’s just not the place people go when looking for the latest trending items to buy.
So instead of trying to sell directly through LinkedIn, focus on building relationships and trust. Reach out when you see an opportunity, but offer expert advice, not hype. You will be the center of attention when it’s time for a customer to make a purchase call.
However, using LinkedIn to increase online sales is not impossible. If you want to use this approach, be sure to position your product or service in the right context for your business. It might be helpful to work with a relevant influencer, as Days did in this LinkedIn post about its non-alcoholic beer.
7. Build your employer brand
Building an employer brand is about more than just posting jobs. It’s all about demonstrating what it’s like to work for your company so that candidates feel motivated to join your team.
A strong employer brand makes life much easier for everyone who works in your recruiting department. After all, no matter how great a particular role may seem, no one wants to work for a company that makes them doubt or seems inappropriate for the culture.
One of the best ways to showcase your culture is to capitalize on the enthusiasm of your existing employees. For example, on Hootsuite, employee advocacy accounts for 94% of employer brand organic content impressions. The employee advocacy tool allows employees to share approved brand content with their networks.
And the chorus of high-profile corporate culture accolades from the people who actually work there provide exceptional social proof for potential new hires.
Businesses can also add a “Employee Relevant Content”galley to their LinkedIn page. It is based on related hashtags such as this example from Google.
Source: Google on LinkedIn
8. Participate in the community
LinkedIn is about participation. Remember, you are building a reputation that will eventually lead to sales. Replying to comments and joining the conversation is an important part of building that reputation.
Look for opportunities to contribute. Congratulate your colleagues and acquaintances on their achievements and career advancement. Show support for those who may be looking for a job for the first time.
Source: Tamara Kravchenko, PhD on LinkedIn
Most importantly, follow the comments on your LinkedIn content and respond so that users know you hear and appreciate them. Remember that their interaction with your content expands its reach exponentially.
Hootsuite Inbox ensures you never miss a chance to connect with your followers. You can reply to comments directly or assign them to the appropriate team member. You can also integrate your CRM with Hootsuite to see the full picture of your customers at every touchpoint.
Be community oriented when sharing content as well. LinkedIn recommends posting an update from an external source for each piece of content you share, as well as four pieces of content from others. Posting content you’re tagged in can be a good starting point.
Use Hootsuite’s social listening streams to find even more relevant content to share with your audience. The LinkedIn Content Suggestions tool is another great resource.
LinkedIn Content Strategy Tips
9. Write Long Posts (Sometimes)
Consider repurposing expanded content as influencer articles to post on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn accounts for just 0.33% of web traffic clicks from social media. (Compare this to 71.64% for Facebook.) Instead of focusing on driving traffic away from your site, offer value in the LinkedIn articles themselves.
But not too long too often. LinkedIn recommends that articles be between 500 and 1,000 words. However, Paul Shapiro of Search Wilderness found that articles in the 1900 to 2000 word range performed best. So, you need to do some testing to find out what works best for your audience.
LinkedIn adds SEO titles, descriptions, and tags to LinkedIn articles. This will help other users find your original content. If you regularly post long content. Consider creating a LinkedIn newsletter.
Note. Your typical LinkedIn updates can be much shorter, ideally just 25 words.
10. Experiment with different types of content
You can use the various tabs on your LinkedIn page to showcase just about everything that’s happening at your company. Company news, corporate culture, and information about upcoming products are just a few examples.
There are many different content formats to experiment with. When planning what to test, keep these important LinkedIn content statistics in mind:
- Images get 2x more comments, and image collages can work even better.
- Videos get 5x more attention, while live videos get 24x more attention.
But again, this is all a starting point. Experimentation is key to finding what works for your brand on LinkedIn. Implement an effective testing strategy and monitor your analytics to find out which content formats are best for your purposes.
11. Turn on the hook over the “fold”
Remember newspapers? Like in real paper newspapers that were sold at newsstands? To get your attention, they put the biggest story in the top half of the first page. This half is, of course, above the fold. You see this as soon as you look at the paper without picking it up, and it will intrigue you enough to buy the paper to read more.
Your screen may not have a literal crease, but there is a metaphorical one. In this case, “above the fold”refers to content that is visible without scrolling or pressing the “more”button. It is content that can be seen without the effort of picking up the metaphorical paper and turning it over.
Make the value proposition for your content clear in this prime real estate. Why should anyone read further? What can you say that is worth scrolling the page for?
LinkedIn Publishing Strategy Tips
12. Determine the best time to post
Hootsuite research shows that the best time to post on LinkedIn is 9am on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. When you first get started with the platform, this is a good place to start.
But the best time to post your specific brand depends on your specific audience. Specifically, when they are most likely to be online and ready to interact.
Hootsuite’s “Best Time to Post”feature gives you a heatmap that shows you when your content is most likely to make an impact. You can also find custom post time recommendations on your LinkedIn page. They are based on whether you want to increase brand awareness, increase engagement, or drive traffic.
13. Plan Your Posts Ahead
Of course, the best time to post for your audience may not be the best time to post for you. This is one of the reasons why it’s a good idea to create your posts in advance and schedule them to automatically post at the best time.
Another reason is that posting early allows you to regularly set aside time to create LinkedIn content. This is easier and more efficient than publishing on the fly. Especially when you’re creating longer content, it’s a good idea to carve out some time in your schedule and really turn on your brain.
Proactively creating content also allows you to get more team members involved, from senior executives who contribute to the development of ideas, to editors who carefully review your work.
Finally, planning and scheduling your content ahead of time allows you to see how your Linkedin posts fit into your larger social media calendar.
14. Set a Regular Posting Schedule
LinkedIn recommends posting once or twice a day. If that seems like overkill, consider posting at least once a week—that’s enough to double engagement with your content.
Once you’ve determined the best time to post, post consistently around that time. Your audience will expect fresh content from you in your schedule and they will be ready to read and respond to it.
LinkedIn DM Strategy Tips
15. Send personalized messages
Bulk direct messages can save time, but they don’t produce the best results. LinkedIn data shows that InMail messages sent individually receive 15% more replies than messages sent in bulk.
For maximum impact, include a detail in the email that shows you actually read the prospect’s profile. Did they mention a skill that is critical to the role? Do you have a particularly good bio on LinkedIn? Highlight something that tells them why you’re interested and that they’re not just potential cogs in the machine.
16. Send shorter messages
If you’re sending InMail to a potential contact, employee, or candidate, you might be tempted to package the message with the details of the opportunity. But a recent LinkedIn study found that shorter InMail messages actually resonate much more.
Source: Linkedin
Messages up to 800 characters receive above average response, while messages under 400 characters perform best.
However, 90% of LinkedIn recruiters send messages longer than 400 characters. So sending a shorter message can really help you stand out from the crowd.
17. Don’t ship on Friday or Saturday
It makes sense that weekends would be slower days to post on LinkedIn. But, oddly enough, the messages sent on Sundays are significantly ahead of those sent on Fridays.
Source: Linkedin
Other than avoiding Fridays and Saturdays, it doesn’t seem to matter much what day of the week you send InMail messages. Remember, however, that this is different from the best times to post content on your LinkedIn page.