It doesn’t get as much attention as other platforms, but LinkedIn has been steadily growing over the past few years, both in terms of total users and active engagement.
Over the last five quarters, LinkedIn has reported record levels of engagement, each quarter, while the platform is now up to 740 million members. Which still feels like a bit of a cop out – ‘members’ is not the same as ‘active users’ – but even so, the stats show that LinkedIn usage is rising, along with its potential audience reach, and as more regions look to get back to normal in the wake of the pandemic, business activity will also increase, which will inevitably see even more users coming to LinkedIn more often.
Which is why it may well be worth re-examining your LinkedIn marketing approach. To help with this, LinkedIn has been sharing a range of case studies that highlight how to use its promotional tools and options, while today, it’s also provided some new tips on how to maximize your company presence, and grow your company page followers.
Here are LinkedIn’s key tips:
1. Get the Basics Right
First off, LinkedIn advises brands to ensure that they fill in all elements of their company page, and include content and descriptions that convey what their business does and who they’re looking to help.
“Be sure to include pertinent keywords in your business description, as LinkedIn Pages are crawled by search engines and can often rank highly.”
LinkedIn suggests that brands should also add a LinkedIn “Follow” button to their own blog, website, and/or newsletters to boost exposure, while company page admins should also encourage their first-degree connections on LinkedIn to follow their company Page by using the “Invite to Follow” function.
2. Publish Thought Leadership Content
This may be easier said than done, given the additional work it requires in research and creation, but LinkedIn’s next key point is that brands should look to publish thought leadership content.
“The best way to capture the attention of [LinkedIn’s] audience is to publish compelling content about industry news, trends, and other relevant topics. In fact, 88% of business decision-makers agree that thought leadership content plays a crucial role in uplifting their perception of an organization.”
Interestingly, LinkedIn also acknowledges the challenge here, by noting that only 17% of these same business decision-makers rate the quality of current thought leadership content available online as “very good” or “excellent”.
Creating content is easy, and there are now more avenues than ever before to put together a post or video and publish it to a broad audience. But creating great content remains as challenging as always, and while there are newer tools that can highlight key trends and data insights which can inform your approach, the key lies in providing your own insight, and interpreting these trends from the perspective of what your business offers.
That can take work, but the way to stand out on LinkedIn, according to LinkedIn’s advice, is to publish “well-researched, useful, and relevant content”. Which makes sense, and is a good tip. But it will take some time, and focus, and writing skill, to put together unique, valueable insights for your target audience.
LinkedIn also suggests that businesses look to use its page Content Suggestions feature to glean further insight into the topics resonating with your LinkedIn audience.
3. Join Conversations that Matter to Your Brand
LinkedIn also suggests that brands look to engage in relevant conversations on the platform to boost awareness of their presence, and expand their connections in the app.
One way to do this is through LinkedIn’s Community Hashtags feature, which enables LinkedIn company pages to choose up to three specific hashtags to associate with their Page.
You can then interact with these topics as your company page, which can help to boost exposure for your brand presence on the platform.
LinkedIn also suggests that company page admins find and host related events, which enables more opportunities for interaction and exposure to those within your niche.
4. Know and Grow Your Audience
LinkedIn also suggests that company pages tap into their page analytics tools to view data about the demographics and traits of their page audience, and how people are coming to their page.
“You’ll also be able to identify which of your posts and updates are driving the highest engagement. With these insights in hand, you’ll be able continually optimize for better audience alignment, providing the type of content they find most valuable.”
5. Activate Your People
Lastly, LinkedIn says that companies should encourage all of their employees to ensure that they’re linking to the company page from the work experience section of their LinkedIn profiles, again increasing potential exposure, while page admins should also look to re-share their employees’ best posts, notify employees of the most important Page posts to share (you can notify employees 1x per day of page posts to share), and recognize team moments or employees with a shout-out from your Page.
I mean, I’m not sure I would personally like to see too many of these internal news posts on LinkedIn, but maybe that’s another consideration to boost engagement and awareness.
LinkedIn also says that brands should look to foster internal engagement by building an employee-only community on LinkedIn via the My Company tab.
The My Company tab, which LinkedIn added in February, includes ‘Recommend’ and ‘Coworker content’ listings, which enables businesses to facilitate direct sharing of relevant posts, and increase internal engagement with such among employees.
That can help to amplify selected messages and updates, and boost engagement, which, in turn, can increase employee advocacy and help maximize your company presence.
There are some good tips here, and while they’re not all necessarily easy to implement, the guide notes and tips here should help in putting together a more effective plan of attack to grow the LinkedIn presence of your company.
You can check out LinkedIn’s company page growth tips here.