How to Use LinkedIn to Market Your Business
With all the hype over Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is a powerful social network that seems to be neglected by those looking to increase their customer base. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, LinkedIn has grown its base to over 875 million users in 200 countries by October 2022, and all of them are looking to connect with others professionally and find services and products that could help them. Therefore, if you haven’t already, it’s time to set up an account and take advantage of all it has to offer!
And once you’re all set up, you may now be wondering, what are some top tips on how to use LinkedIn for business? Foremost, you have to put yourself out there in terms of content and technical optimization. Start by filling out your profile to the fullest extent and then move on to the more advanced areas of LinkedIn marketing.
LinkedIn User Statistics
Of all the social networks out there, LinkedIn provides the most professional user base. This base is strongly made up of businesses, recruiters, job seekers, and professional thought leaders, which means that LinkedIn is the ideal hub for businesses looking to network and promote their services. And although the platform may not always provide as much traffic to your website as the other social networks, the traffic it does generate tends to be more targeted and attract users that are more likely to use your services.
Here are just a few more statistics that showcase the power of LinkedIn to grow businesses’ brand and bottom line:
- As of late 2022, the platform is set to reach more than 65 million business decision-makers. (LinkedIn Business Solutions)
- On average, a user spends 7 minutes and 38 seconds per LinkedIn session and browses through 7 pages. (Similarweb Statistics)
- LinkedIn gets 72.47% direct traffic and approximately 22% from organic search. (Similarweb Statistics)
- The best hour-long periods to post are: 3:00 p.m., 10:00 a.m., and 2:00 p.m. Then, with regards to day of the week (yes, that can also impact your results), they’ve found that the overall best day to post is on a Tuesday.
- According to Statista, as of January 2022, two-thirds of individuals using LinkedIn worldwide are adults aged between 25 and 34.
How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
Just like you have a strategy for your website and your blog content, knowing how to optimize your social media presence is as vital and necessitates as much attention and tenacity. From an optimized profile section to using the right hashtags, enhancing your LinkedIn profile for business growth is key to targeting the right leads.
Use a photo in your profile
If people don’t know what you look like, in this day and age, they are likely not to do business with you. A photo is one of the most important parts of marketing your business online. It speaks volumes to those looking to utilize your services.
Once your profile is created, LinkedIn offers several ways to stay active. You can post status updates similar to Facebook. With LinkedIn, you will probably want to keep these updates more professional. Remember that those you want to do business with are the ones who will be seeing them.
Include targeted hashtags
Stop and think about how you want people to find you. If you sell health insurance for example, make sure that the words “health insurance agent” are in your title. Make sure it’s also mentioned in your summary and experience sections. What this does is help rank your site higher when potential customers are searching the website for this service.
The same goes for the usage of hashtags. You can use hashtags in your profile description, in your LinkedIn posts and articles, and on your business page. The reason why hashtags are advantageous to your visibility as a business is that hashtags are akin to search engine keywords that individuals are searching for on a daily basis. Therefore, if you use the right keywords that describe your business niche or content, your target audience will find your content and will be able to engage with you.
Here are just a few tips on how to use LinkedIn hashtags:
- Conduct a search on LinkedIn with relevant keywords that describe your business, products, and/or services. You can do so by placing “#” in front of the keyword you’re researching. Think about the keywords you use in your website copy or to describe your business and search for them to see the volume of traffic that each keyword receives. And if you need a bit of help to see which keywords are trending for your industry on Google, Google Trends is a free tool that can help you in your keyword discovery.
- Choose keywords that are targeted but not too high or too low in search volume (medium volume keywords are preferable).
- You can also explore similar hashtags to those that you’re searching by clicking the ‘see all results’ prompt.
- If you are not very sure which hashtags to look for or use – or simply need more help with your research – you can explore hashtags by popularity, relatedness, related companies’ hashtags, as well as hashtags often used by the leaders in your industry.
Create a LinkedIn business page
Even if you are a one-person business, having a separate LinkedIn page for your business can help increase your brand awareness and engagement. It will also enable you to connect with other businesses under your brand and showcase your thought leadership in LinkedIn groups and in other user’s comments.
Another reason to create a LinkedIn business page is that you’ll be able to use all the business tools that the page offers to grow your business through sponsored posts, ads, sponsored inboxed messaging, and more.
Another great reason to create a business page is that it can come in handy when you want to hire new employees. Since most individuals use LinkedIn to search for new opportunities, it is the ideal place to showcase your job listing, which will show up on your business page and lead targeted traffic right to it.
Participate in LinkedIn groups
There are groups for any and every purpose. Small business groups will put you in connection with a number of like-minded entrepreneurs. There are also industry-specific groups that will allow you to find those in the same business. Start group discussions, and participate in others’ group discussions. If you like another person’s answer, let them know, and follow them. Keep talking.
The answers forum is also a great place to put your industry knowledge on display. Find a topic that hits close to home and weigh in with your expertise. Again, if you like what you hear from others, let them know.
They also have a spot below your answer for references. This is a great place to fit a backlink to your business.
If you like the work of someone else, recommend them. The recommendations you write, as well as those you receive, go a long way toward helping your visibility and rankings on the site.
Comment on other users’ posts
Commenting on other users’ posts is a great way to showcase your knowledge and expose your brand to a wider audience that cares about your industry. It is also an ideal way to connect with similar businesses and create professional relationships.
Commenting on posts and articles will also help your brand seem more approachable, helpful, and trustworthy. Just like your posts and article content, it signals to readers that you exude knowledge and authority in your field. It highlights that you care about your industry and are a visionary looking to contribute to its evolution. So take time to show some love for others’ content!
Publish articles that demonstrate your industry expertise
Just like you would do on your website blog, publishing articles on LinkedIn is the ideal way to showcase your industry expertise, especially on a platform that is ripe with professional knowledge and industry trends.
But the benefits of sharing your knowledge to your targeted audience is not the only perk of publishing articles on LinkedIn. You can also repurpose your long-form blog content and share an excerpt that leads readers to read more on your website blog. This will not only help you get more traffic to your website where you can nurture your leads, but it will also help your website gain domain authority through backlinks.
Post engaging content often
To get on top of your followers’ feed, you’ll have to post often to be rewarded by LinkedIn’s algorithm, which increases posts’ visibility according to the frequency of posting and engagement levels. If your priority is to grow your brand on LinkedIn, it is recommended to post once a day or at least a few times per week.
The type of posts that are the most popular on LinkedIn are the “hero’s journey” posts where individuals and brands tell their story of setbacks and offer advice and inspiration to their readers through personalized anecdotes. Remember not to make the content all about yourself and your achievements, but rather about your visitors and how you can add value to their lives.
When in doubt, follow the 80/20 content rule, where you offer valuable information in every four out of five of your posts, and leave the sales pitch and self promotion to the fifth post. This is the ideal way to grow your following around knowledge and helpfulness, while still reminding your audience about your products and services.
Tie your other social media accounts together
Do you have a blog or a Twitter account? Add them to your LinkedIn profile to let your professional-based network know about the work you are doing. Don’t forget to always tell your readers what you’d want them to do by including targeted CTAs (or calls to action) in your posts and content. “Read more on our blog,” or “follow us on Twitter” are some ideal examples.
How to Use SEO for LinkedIn
Since LinkedIn is a well-known and highly trusted platform, in the world of search engine optimization, it carries a very high domain authority ranking. This means that any content published on the domain will rank higher and faster for certain keywords on Google than on most other websites and platforms.
This provides you with the opportunity to rank your content on LinkedIn faster in order to attract more audience and engagement. Although it is highly advised to build your website and lead generation with a personal blog, LinkedIn is a great medium to share certain key sections from your blog articles as “teasers,” ensuring that your content can be found through multiple sources. By doing so, you can also create more backlinks to your website and customize CTAs that would be appealing to your LinkedIn audience.
Another way to use SEO for LinkedIn is to look for keywords that are currently trending in your industry and write about them as original articles. These articles would be geared toward current news, trends, and discussions as opposed to evergreen content that is more suitable for your website blog.
Since these are “hot topics” and LinkedIn is able to rank content faster and higher than most other domains, your LinkedIn articles may reach the right audiences looking to learn more about trending topics on search engines and go viral! This would provide immense exposure to your brand and expand on your business opportunities.
How Do LinkedIn Ads Work?
If you’ve concluded that LinkedIn is the best platform to target your ideal leads, it is advisable to diversify your lead generation through LinkedIn ads. Unlike many other social media platforms, LinkedIn is not yet saturated with businesses looking to utilize it for lead generation, making it the ideal platform to develop and execute a marketing strategy.
When you set up your LinkedIn ads, you’ll be asked to determine your audience, budget, bidding strategy, and the style of your campaign. There are also different styles of campaign you can choose from, including single and carousel images, video, text, spotlight, message, and conversion ads.
Undoubtedly, selecting the right audience for your ads is of utmost importance for the successful performance of your LinkedIn campaign. Make sure you understand who your customers are, and if you aren’t completely certain, take time to come up with your ideal customer avatar.
Likewise, LinkedIn offers businesses the opportunity to diversify the ad styles for each of their campaigns, enabling them to A/B test their approach and hone in on what works best. You can create multiple ads with different styles, images, and copy, providing you with more likelihood to succeed with one or more ads.
And once you see what works as you observe your various ads’ performance, you can easily tweak them in real time to give them a performance boost.
One ideal aspect of LinkedIn advertising is that it stores past advertising campaigns, giving you the opportunity to repurpose the content of successful past campaigns. This makes it more cost-effective for businesses that are looking to run ads more often by giving them a better idea of their return on investment.
Final Thoughts on How to Use LinkedIn for Business
Using LinkedIn for business is one of the best strategies to grow your authority and trust in your field. LinkedIn can help you connect with like-minded groups and businesses and give your brand that extra boost of credibility. Put yourself out there a little bit, and you should reap the rewards!
Since LinkedIn is still a largely unexplored territory when it comes to business marketing compared to other social media platforms, it is the ideal medium to invest in to grow your brand and business. From SEO opportunities and group affiliations to targeted ads and long-form content solutions, LinkedIn is ripe with possibilities for lead generation.