LinkedIn, Tools For Marketing
LinkedIn, Tools For Marketing
Introduction:
Linkedin may be one of those social media tools that are forgotten or played. Here is a compilation of information to help you figure out how to use Linkedin in your social media marketing efforts.
LinkedIn Strategy:
[1]A robust LinkedIn marketing strategy is crucial for the success of your business. It can help you build brand awareness, increase website traffic, generate quality leads, and much more. Also, it can help establish yourself as an industry thought leader.
However, promoting your brand on LinkedIn requires a set of clearly defined goals and tactics. Developing an effective LinkedIn strategy also demands a deep understanding of your target audience.
Now, let’s now take a look at the steps for creating a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy.
Define Your Goals
The type of content you publish and its approach to distributing it on LinkedIndepends on your final objective. That is why it is crucial to outline your goals at the onset of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
Typically, you may want to target one or more of the following goals:
- Build brand awareness
- Generate qualified leads
- Strengthen brand reputation
- Engage with your target audience
- Sell your product or service
[2]Create a Showcase Page.
LinkedIn created showcase pages for companies to promote individual brands that are extensions of the company.
Showcase pages are the perfect way to segment your inbound LinkedIn traffic; if you can create a business directly connected to a specific target audience, you can a Showcase page.
From your company page, click “Edit” and “Create a Showcase Page.”
Showcase pages were basically custom made for B2Bs to generate leads better. LinkedIn writes, “It makes sense to create a Showcase Page when you want to represent a brand, business unit, or company initiative. These pages are intended to develop long-term relationships with a specific audience.”
Represent? Relationship? Audience? Sounds a lot like B2B marketing to me.
A Showcase page should target one customer segment and provide information that is relevant to them. Your Showcase page gets a larger header image, more above-the-fold update posts, and places to link back to your company. In this way, it differs from company pages in several key ways.
This is what Microsoft’s Showcase page for Office looks like.
[3]LinkedIn Events
Did you realize LinkedIn offers an events feature similar to Facebook’s popular events system? Many users aren’t in the know, but you can find a wide range of virtual meetups, webinars, and other events happening on LinkedIn on any given day. Just search via the top navigation bar and click on the “events” button to limit your query to events.
This LinkedIn feature can help your business: LinkedIn Events serves as a handy networking and learning hub. There are events available for just about every industry for you to connect with peers and learn from them. You can also get a peek into the events your competitors are hosting for their clients and prospects if you want to try your hand at hosting one yourself.
[4]Making Yourself Irresistible
Like most social platforms, LinkedIn is constantly evolving and adding features to help you get the most out of connecting with others, typically for professional reasons. Consider using these features to your advantage by giving your profile a professional makeover. Features that will help position you as an expert in your respective area include:
1) Keywords
Incorporating keywords will boost your SEO and help you become found on LinkedIn and your LinkedIn profile found by search engines. Consider the ideal person your profile would speak to, your buyer personas, and if your profile were side by side with another, what words would make you stand out. Have these words thought-out and ready when you create or edit your profile.
Areas to incorporate great keywords include your headline, summary, interests, job titles, job descriptions, and skills. A keyword-centric headline will boost your profile traffic and makes you more appealing to prospective employers.
Your summary should include keywords that are relevant to your goals and objectives in your area of business. Your interests area is under the additional info area on your profile and another place to incorporate even more keywords related to your business or career goals.
2) Recommendations & Endorsements
Recommendations can be a critical part of your LinkedIn profile, while endorsements have seemed to confuse people. That said, both play a role in how you are found during advanced people searches. Endorsements make it easy for a connection to quickly say that you are experienced in a certain area without putting in the time to write a full recommendation.
It is so easy for a connection to endorse someone makes some LinkedIn users, especially recruiters, dismiss the authenticity of the expertise. However, endorsements add to your LinkedIn presence and can be thought of as a pantry full of your best keywords. There may be some cases where endorsements for specific skills should actually be hidden, so no one can see if the expertise you do not feel is a good reflection of your personal positioning.
To hide an endorsement, go to the pull-down menu at the top of the screen and under “profile,” click “edit profile.” When you scroll to the “skills and endorsements” section, you will see a pencil icon. Click the pencil, and you will see an option to “manage endorsements.” Hit the “X” next to the skill you would like to delete.
Recommendations are important to your profile because the number of recommendations you receive is highlighted at the top of your page when your name appears in a listing of group members. The number of recommendations you have is also a criteria factor for search rankings.
Oftentimes, recommendations can only be acquired if you ask someone to provide one. Be sure the writer includes specifics such as your work results, sales increases, or how your expertise was used. Always thank the connection that provides a recommendation.
3) Professional Gallery with work examples, photos, video & use of Slideshare
If you’d like to really stand out on LinkedIn and attract more business opportunities, a great way to get noticed is through visual content and creating a portfolio of work examples. There are a few ways you can create a portfolio by adding project examples, images, embedded video, and SlideShare presentations to your profile page. Here’s a video that will walk you through the process of creating your LinkedIn professional portfolio.
4) Use Your Profile Link
One way to customize your LinkedIn profile is by acquiring your unique URL. By not customizing your profile, you limit your exposure to prospective connections, partners, and clients. Having a unique URL also improves your search engine’s ability and targets targeted people. Each LinkedIn user is automatically given a default address when you set up your profile. A customized address is much easier to remember and use when directing people to your LinkedIn profile.
[5]Features on LinkedIn
Whether your goal is building brand awareness, generating leads, or boosting conversions, these five fundamental functionalities can provide a big assist if you aren’t taking advantage of them already.
#1: Robust (and Now Simplified) Audience Targeting
LinkedIn recently overhauled its Campaign Manager tool (the interface through which marketers build, manage, and measure ads) around an objective-based advertising framework initiative. This initiative’s basic purpose was to make it easier for users to align every element of their campaigns with the overarching objective. One of the slickest improvements to come out of this is the audience setup experience, which is now simpler and more intuitive.
From a B2B marketing perspective, the depth of available professional targeting parameters is by far, LinkedIn’s biggest relative advantage compared to other social platforms. Nowhere else can you accurately filter audiences based on facets such as Job Title and Job Seniority. This provides an unparalleled ability to reach decision-makers and purchase influencers directly.
The revamped interface makes it quicker and more straightforward to select a qualified audience in line with your campaign goals.
#2: Revamped LinkedIn Analytics
The latest Social Media Marketing Industry Report via Social Media Examiner found more than half of respondents (54%) either uncertain or disagree that they are “able to measure the return on investment (ROI) for my organic social media activities.”
This is another area of Campaign Manager that LinkedIn recently spruced up. Given that advertising on this platform tends to be more expensive than other social networks, it’s essential to ensure you’re getting a return on that spend. The new reporting experience makes it easier to see results at a glance and optimize the fly.
The underlying appeal of LinkedIn’s targeting facets also applies to its reporting mechanism; you can get an aggregated look at who is viewing and engaging with your content (i.e., which companies, which job titles, which experience levels). These insights can help you align your LinkedIn strategy and even your content marketing strategy more generally.
#3: Content Suggestions
Can’t figure out what to share on social media? That’s a common enough challenge. The Content Suggestions tab, found on the top nav bar within the LinkedIn Page admin center, offers ample inspiration. It serves up a list of third-party articles your defined audience engages with — essentially a readily available stream of targeted, trending content.
Not only does this make it easy for marketers and social media managers to find share-worthy content that’s more likely to resonate with their followings, but it can also fuel employee advocacy efforts.
#4: Website Retargeting
Retargeting is a popular digital marketing tactic, which involves serving ads to people who’ve already encountered your brand. The element of familiarity, plus a concrete demonstration of past interest, tends to drive considerably higher clicks and conversions than standard ads.
LinkedIn allows you to place a pixel on your company’s website through its Matched Audiences feature, then serve ads to people who’ve visited it before while they’re on LinkedIn. It’s a great way to follow up with someone in a different context. One especially savvy approach is to create customized retargeting creative based on the specific section of your site a person visited (i.e., upper-funnel messaging for someone who went to your “About” page, and lower-funnel for someone who checked out a solution page.)
#5: Lead Gen Forms
This might be my favorite marketing tool on LinkedIn, and it definitely seems like one that more B2B brands could be utilizing. Lead Gen Forms are leveraged in combination with various ads, enabling your company to collect valuable contact info (and additional data about a prospect) from an individual who downloads something of value with minimal friction.
Unlike most gated-asset forms, which require a user to tediously fill out multiple fields, Lead Gen Forms automatically populate based on the member’s LinkedIn profile data. As such, it takes only a couple of seconds to get through the process. Because you’re attaining a more comprehensive snapshot of people who download, you can better qualify them as leads in comparison with other form-fills that often procure only a name, phone number, and email.
Conclusion:
If you require assistance with your LinkedIn marketing strategy, please contact hughesagency.ca today.
Article compiled by hughesagency.ca and all reference links is listed below.
References:
- https://shanebarker.com/blog/linkedin-marketing-strategy/ ↑
- https://neilpatel.com/blog/linkedin-strategies-b2b-marketing/ ↑
- https://www.outboundengine.com/blog/linkedin-features-can-help-your-business/ ↑
- https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/linkedin-features ↑
- https://www.toprankblog.com/2019/06/linkedin-features-marketers/ ↑
