LinkedIn is a great place to keep tabs on colleagues, showcase your skills and personal development, and participate in industry-specific discussions. However, with over a billion users from 200 countries, 310 million of whom are active monthly, LinkedIn is also the perfect platform to boost your business's visibility.
But a simple text post here and there, while fulfilling for your employees and followers, isn't going to propel you to a thought-leadership position. You'll need to leverage all its features to take advantage of everything LinkedIn can offer your brand. In this article, we'll explore those features, outlining exactly how they can maximize your reach.
Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile
To create a LinkedIn page for your business, head to your LinkedIn homepage and select the 'For Business' icon in the top left corner. From there, select 'Create a Company Page +' where you'll be prompted to fill out the necessary information.
Easy, right?
Well, there are a few more steps you'll need to take if you want to maximize your business or organization's visibility on LinkedIn…
- Fill Out Every Page Section - Businesses with 'complete' LinkedIn profiles receive, on average, 30% more viewers every week than those without. Take the time to explore the various sections you can add to your company page. Plan out what you want to convey to viewers, investors, new hires, or customers, and ensure all information is accurate.
- Showcase Your Brand - All LinkedIn pages have the same structure, but there is still ample opportunity to showcase your business's personality to viewers. Of course, your logo is the perfect profile picture, but the option to upload a banner image gives you more room to play. A high-resolution profile picture and banner made up of a collage and your slogan, product photos, or a snap from a recent office get-together are all great choices.
- About You - As well as the images on your page, you'll need to fill in the 'About Us' section. Here, you can provide background information on your company, where you're based, and how to contact you. It's also a great chance to list any awards your company has achieved or any widely-used products you sell.
- Inform Your Employees - While they aren't directly visible on your company's page, LinkedIn allows individuals to list their place of employment. Asking your employees to add your company to their work experience will direct those viewing their pages straight to yours. It also adds a lot of legitimacy, signaling that your business is active, credible, and invested in its team.
When and What to Post on LinkedIn
LinkedIn offers a surprising variety of posts to its users. Here's a breakdown of their benefits and when they can be of use:
Text Posts
The bread and butter of most social media sites, text-only posts allow you to catch your viewers' attention with a simple sentence. If you last posted a while ago, these short posts are a great way to remain active throughout the week. Plus, they only require a little prep, so won't take up too many of your resources.
Image Posts
LinkedIn supports single and multi-image posts, so if you'd like to showcase multiple angles of your product, you can include them all in one upload. Visual content captures attention, which is why image posts generate 1.26 times the reach of text posts. So, if you have a relevant business or stock-free image to hand, add it to your planned text posts.
Videos
If your business creates videos for marketing purposes or if you have the resources necessary to film videos for LinkedIn, these posts can create a personal connection between you and your followers. They can showcase product demos, share customer testimonials, or provide a peek into company events or team dynamics. While LinkedIn supports videos up to fifteen minutes long, shorter is usually better. A sixty-second video won't take up too much of your viewers’ time or challenge their attention spans, encouraging further engagement.
Articles
Articles allow you to dive deep into industry topics, share your experiences as a business owner, and establish yourself as a thought leader. They're also sharable outside of LinkedIn, bringing visitors from across the web to your company's page. However, articles take longer to research and write, so you may prefer to post only one a week on a specific day.
Newsletters
Reward your most dedicated viewers and encourage users to return to your page with newsletters. You can share weekly or monthly updates in these posts, tease new launches, and send valuable insights straight to your subscribers' inboxes. Additionally, newsletters reinforce your credibility as a business by consistently delivering relevant, high-quality content.
Documents and Presentations
If you've worked hard on a particular report or created a stunning end-of-year presentation, why not post them straight to LinkedIn? In addition to providing your audience with tangible resources they can share among their networks, these posts aren't widely used and will set you apart from others in your industry.
Milestones
If one of your employees recently completed a training course or you hit a sales target two months early, LinkedIn's milestone posts give you an excuse to show off. As well as humanizing your business, these posts increase rapidly in reach because they encourage employees and followers to join in with the celebrations. More eyes on milestones means more eyes on your page.
Questions
Finally, LinkedIn offers question posts or polls. These do wonders for engagement because they offer the equivalent of audience interaction. You can conduct small-scale market research by asking followers about your content or products or quiz LinkedIn users on facts about your industry. Set out a specific time for question posts so that these posts become an event.
Tips to Maximize Visibility on LinkedIn
Certain post types will suit your business more than others. For example, if you run a photography business, you can use LinkedIn's image posts to showcase parts of your portfolio. If you host a podcast, uploading interesting clips with a small text summary is a great way to increase visibility on your podcast's page. Whatever your aims are for LinkedIn, here are some tips to make the process easier.
- Your Strategy - If your business already has a social media strategy, it's worth incorporating LinkedIn into it. Add any goals you have and break down how you'll use LinkedIn to boost your visibility. This might include what types of posts you'll upload and how often.
- Thought Leadership - We mentioned the term 'thought leader' above. These individuals or businesses excel in their field and are trusted to provide quality information and insights. As such, LinkedIn users are often directed to their posts by others and will return if they require information on a certain topic in the future. Becoming a thought leader means posting content that few others in your industry have touched on before. So, engage in industry discussions, post long-form articles, comment on relevant trends, and be active in conversations that give you a chance to demonstrate knowledge.
- The Content Cycle - Posting a reminder on LinkedIn when you upload a blog post or a new image to Instagram will direct your followers to your other social media pages. Similarly, if certain posts perform well on your blog, there's no reason you can't repost them to your LinkedIn Page.
- Relatability - People connect with authenticity. Share stories that detail challenges you've faced, explain how you hire and welcome new employees, and post behind-the-scenes moments that double as learning opportunities. Creating relatable content fosters a personal connection with your audience and encourages them to engage with your posts.
- Include Summaries - LinkedIn users often skim through content quickly. Including summaries or highlights at the top of your posts, along with some colorful emojis, can help grab attention. Whether it's a short headline for articles or a key point from your video, these summaries help users immediately understand your content's value.
- Don't Forget SEO - Like any web content, SEO is vital in making your LinkedIn posts findable. Incorporate relevant keywords into your profile, post titles, and articles to enhance your visibility and help potential clients or connections discover you.
- Monitor Your Analytics - LinkedIn has built-in analytics for individual posts and your overall page. Monitor these to find out which types of content perform better than others, and update your LinkedIn strategy accordingly. With informed tweaks, you can refine your approach and maximize the visibility of your posts.
In Conclusion
LinkedIn is unique among social media sites. While you can't run digital marketing campaigns or sell products through the site, you can establish and build your brand's credibility, expand your professional network, and increase the overall online visibility of your business.
A complete company page is a good start, but you'll also need to make regular, thought-provoking posts that are relevant to others operating in your niche. Take advantage of different media, such as photos, videos, and presentations, to bring variety to your followers. Eventually, you'll position your LinkedIn company page as a valued and trusted resource, encouraging shares and appearing on search engine results pages.
As you grow your LinkedIn presence in tandem with other social media platforms, monitor your analytics and explore all the features the site offers. LinkedIn has enormous potential for boosting business visibility, and while it will take some trial and error, your effort will be rewarded.
Sources and Resources
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-reasons-why-your-company-should-have-linkedin-kyla-mclean/
- https://www.hallaminternet.com/benefits-linkedin-company-pages/
- https://nonprofit.linkedin.com/resource-hub/posting/types-of-posts
- https://blog.hootsuite.com/linkedin-company-page-business-guide/
- https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7252302270095089664/
- https://rockcontent.com/blog/thought-leadership-examples/
- https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a525196/
- https://www.mbamission.com/blog/simple-strategies-for-increasing-your-visibility-on-linkedin/
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