Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is a platform focused on networking, building careers, and sharing ideas. It enables users to connect, interact and share content with other professionals including colleagues, potential employers, business partners, competitors, new employees, and customers.
Including LinkedIn in your social media strategy is important and powerful — the platform is an excellent marketing tool both for B2B & B2C businesses. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network generating leads 227% more effectively than Facebook and Twitter, making it an essential platform when marketing your business.
Here’s how:
1. Speak to a B2B audience if you're seen as a B2C company
If you are typically seen as a B2C (Business to Consumer) brand, LinkedIn gives you a great opportunity to channel your B2B (Business to Business) communications.
For example, our client Mackie’s of Scotland is a well known and established retail brand, but they also have a sizeable foodservice arm to their business. LinkedIn allows them to reach foodservice businesses and buyers directly who may not have known that they can use Mackie’s ice cream in their parlour or restaurant.
2. Personal branding - engage yourself with the company's activity
In an environment where authenticity and the personal touch is everything, using your own profile to promote your business is a unique advantage you can utilise with LinkedIn.
Whether you are sharing a post, selling your services, or celebrating some good news, make sure to interject your own style and a sense of storytelling to make your post stand out.
Here are some more tips to make your LinkedIn posting more personal:
Maintain engagement - Respond to comments on your own posts and posts that you share this continues the discussion and allows you to connect with a wider network
Comment posts that catch your attention - Leaving comments on others’ posts helps to build relationships. By doing this you are engaging and contributing to a discussion amongst likeminded individuals.
Connect with others – LinkedIn connections are the new and improved business cards! When you are networking, make a new business connection or spot someone’s content that inspires you – send them a connection request! Per week you are allowed to send 100 connections on LinkedIn. If this is done right, you could grow your audience by 400 people per month.
3. Engaging your employees - employee advocacy
On the flip side of the coin, engaging your employees with the company’s LinkedIn page is a great way to expand your brands reach and reputation. Generally, the employees of a brand have a network that can be at least 10 times larger than the brand’s follower base. Typically, people are far more likely to interact and engage with content when it comes from someone they know rather than a company, as it is considered more authentic and personal.
While only 3% of employees share content about their company, those shares are responsible for driving a 30% increase in the total engagement a company sees.
Some ways you can engage with your employees via LinkedIn:
Share some ‘behind the scenes’ office content
Engage with new employees sharing that they are joining your team/company
Show how you celebrate achievements as a team
Congratulate an employee on a promotion or work anniversary
Share company news and give a special mention to those in your team that contributed
Share client news – helped launch a campaign for a client? Share what you did, why you did it and how you did it.
4. Connecting with your industry - swapping notes or sharing anecdotes
Being active on LinkedIn and creating interactions with your favourite brands helps to generate more engagement and reach from like-minded individuals and brands. This can be useful for brand partnerships, and networking generally.
Some great examples:
Innocent Smoothies
Whilst Innocent are a retail focused company, they have still found their place on LinkedIn by creating fun and playful workplace content that is relatable to many LinkedIn users. By creating relatable content that often refers to common workplace jokes, or popular trends, not only are they engaging other businesses but also individuals across a range of industries.
Unilever
Unilever is well known for its consumer goods but rather than promote its products on its LinkedIn profile, it uses the space to promote its community and sustainability initiatives.
Unilever makes use of all the features available on a business profile. They share upcoming events, videos, page posts, and promote current vacancies.
The value of setting up a profile like this is that it gives users a chance to peek behind the curtain. You can see what Unilever's values are as an organisation and build a connection with them over shared interests and values.
We have covered the importance of LinkedIn as part of your social strategy in a number of ways, but most important is picking a marketing style and strategy that is right for your brands audience. Alongside this, engaging with your employees and general networking is a really good way to build your brand and show some authenticity.
The way you market your brand is so important as it conveys the standard of quality, credibility and experience that you have on offer, which is invaluable especially in times where customers grapple with more choice and uncertainty than ever before.
Here at Curzon Marketing , we offer a solution whether it is on a temporary or permanent basis to provide expert marketing so your business can keep on growing.
Get in touch to find the effective marketing solution for your business and brand growth.