If you’re seeking entertainment or amusement, you might scroll through Facebook or Instagram.

LinkedIn however, feels a bit more like work. And that’s exactly why your business needs to be there.

Why your business needs a strong presence on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is no longer just a recruitment platform. It’s now primarily a professional networking site. People are using it to educate and inform themselves and to build a strong professional reputation that will enhance their careers. It’s a platform designed for business-to-business (B2B) networking and outreach.

LinkedIn boasts that it hosts the ‘world’s professionals in one place‘. Among the audience, you’ll find 61 million senior-level influencers and 40 million decision-makers. More CEOs use LinkedIn than any other social network.

The key people in your field may not yet agree to meet with you or take your phone calls but they will see your posts on LinkedIn.

When you market your business effectively there, you’re reaching an audience of influential people with authority and money. People who make decisions for their companies. People who can sign lucrative contracts with your company.

The other good thing about LinkedIn is that most of the audience is too busy to post much themselves. Of over 722 million users, only 3 million post content each week. LinkedIn has far, far more users than posters. It’s not crowded with content. If you put the effort in, your posts have a good chance of being seen by the people you want to influence.

SPLICE MARKETING TIP:
LinkedIn has far, far more users than posters. It’s not crowded with content. If you put the effort in, your posts have a good chance of being seen by the people you want to influence.

Setting up your LinkedIn page

You need a properly set-up business page to get started on LinkedIn. If you’re not sure how to do that, then follow these tips from LinkedIn.

Then you need to find and connect with the right people in your industry to grow your network.

What should you post about on LinkedIn?

Now your page is up and running, what should you post about?

Well, remember the reason why busy people devote time to LinkedIn. They want to be successful, influential, up-to-date professionals.

Post about things that help them achieve that. Focus on sharing relevant and actionable insights about your company and industry.

According to LinkedIn:

60% of members are interested in industry insights
53% are interested in company news
43% are interested in new products and services.

Think of LinkedIn as you’d think of networking over drinks at a conference (in the pre-COVID days when we could do that easily!). Your LinkedIn posts will cover the same sort of material that you’d mention in conversation at a networking event.

SPLICE MARKETING TIP:
Your LinkedIn posts should cover the same sort of material that you’d mention in conversation at a networking event – who you are, what you do, who you help, how you help and interesting stats and facts.

Developing a content plan

Sit down (with your team if possible) and think about the next few months.

What company news do you have to share?

You could profile new staff, mark your company’s first year in business, or share news of an exciting project or partnership. You can also let people know that you’re speaking at an upcoming conference. And you should definitely post any positive media coverage you’ve received.

What products or services can you promote? Share something about your key offerings, helping your readers understand how you can help them and encouraging them to book a demo, start a trial or register their interest.

Work with their favourite algorithms

Behind any social media platform is an (often changing) algorithm designed to achieve a certain goal.

LinkedIn’s algorithm favours relevant, engaging content.

Relevancy is about what you post. Your LinkedIn marketing strategy starts with knowing your audience. Data analytics can help you do that, matched with your own understanding of what people in your industry care about.

Engagement is about how and when you post.

You’re trying to start and contribute to conversations about your industry. That means you need to be active on LinkedIn, posting at least weekly, being a friendly face, celebrating others’ successes and sharing your own insights.

Good ways to increase engagement on LinkedIn include:

Using a compelling headline
Opening with an interesting fact or question
Getting comments within the first golden hour (so tell a few people you’re posting and ask them to comment ASAP to get the ball rolling).
Make clear when you’re targeting a certain audience, e.g. ‘One for the finance gurus’ or ‘Working parents need to hear this’.
Adding images to your posts – LinkedIn reports that this simple step can increase comments by 98%
Replying to other people’s posts
Sharing your own content (see above)
Sharing other relevant content, e.g. articles you’ve read that others might find interesting
Creating a LinkedIn poll
Tag any people or companies you mention
Include a small number of relevant hashtags (don’t go crazy!)
Respond to people’s comments fairly quickly

As for when to post, Hootsuite’s research shows that:

The best time to post on LinkedIn is 7:45 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 12:45 p.m., and 5:45 p.m. EST.
The best day for B2B brands to post on LinkedIn is Wednesday (followed by Tuesday).
The best days for B2C brands to post on LinkedIn are Monday and Wednesday.

LinkedIn is also a bit of a selfish beast and likes its members to stay on its platform, not follow links to elsewhere in cyberspace. Its algorithm does not smile on posts that contain external links. So, keep the main body of your post free of these (if you really need to include the link, put in as the first comment below your post).

SPLICE MARKETING TIP:
Work with LinkedIn’s algorith to get greater exposure on your content. Do this by creating relevant, engage on others posts and creating posts that will engage others, keep people on the LinkedIn platform.

Mix it up

Vary your posts to keep your feed interesting. Possibilities include:

Long posts sharing in-depth insights about changes and opportunities in your industry (break up the text with dot points)
Short video clips of your team at an event
Animations or videos of your products in action
Infographics to help people understand a difficult topic more easily.

How Splice Marketing can help

Running your business takes most of your time and focus. That’s why it’s often wise to outsource your social media marketing to experts.

There’s a knack to performing well on LinkedIn, just as with any other social media marketing.

Here are Splice Marketing, we’ve helped many health professionals and health organisations with their LinkedIn presence and we can apply these skills to you by: