Today, LinkedIn is the largest professional network where individuals and businesses can connect. LinkedIn is the best place to look for freelance work, jobs, career advice, a customer base, and ideas from thought leaders. Unlike Facebook, where users surf for cute pictures, or Twitter, where users surf for brief microblogs, LinkedIn users look for long engaging posts. Some have termed LinkedIn as a serious social media site because of its business-to-business nature (B2B).
Even though LinkedIn is all these things, very few people know how to effectively use social networks to meet their business goals. This article will explore some of the types of content you can post to LinkedIn as a small business to increase your reach and brand visibility.
If your company is not already on LinkedIn, then you may want to read our blog on “LinkedIn Marketing” allowing you to create a powerful profile for your business.
- Use Hashtags
- Mention your connections
- Write Blog Posts
- Give Updates on Industry News and Research
- Give Quick Tips
- Provide Photo Updates
- Write List Style posts
- Conduct polls
- Include Call-to-Action
You maybe also interested in “LinkedIn Stories: 4 Strategies Your Business Should Utilise”.
Use Hashtags
Like on Twitter or Instagram, hashtags on LinkedIn work to categorize the content. If you add hashtags to your content, users looking for similar posts will see yours even if they are not connected to you or following you.
On LinkedIn, users can follow hashtags, and posts containing their chosen hashtags will appear on their feeds. Hashtags broaden the consumer base of your content, which is a plus from a marketing perspective.
You can use hashtags with any post. Just ensure that you do not use too many of them; otherwise, your post will appear spammy. We recommend using between three and five hashtags per post. As a bonus, to make your hashtags more comfortable to read, capitalize every word on the hashtag, for example, #SocialMedia instead of #socialmedia. You can create your hashtags that will grow as you continue posting and gaining readership.
To use Hashtags;
- Click on Start a post at the top of the homepage
- Write your post content
- You can include hashtags in the body by typing them after the “#” symbol or by Clicking on add hashtag at the end of the document. LinkedIn will suggest hashtags as you type.
Mention your Connections
If your audience comprises people, who are not actively looking for content, mentioning groups or individuals is a guaranteed way of getting them to notice your posts. When you tag a person, they are more likely to like, share or comment on your posts.
To mention a user or group on your post on LinkedIn, type “@” before their name. You can tag people at the beginning, middle, or end of a post or article. Use mentions at the middle of a post to tag people who are directly linked in the post’s context and mention people at the end whom you want to read the post but are not directly linked to the post’s context.
When you are tagging someone on LinkedIn, make sure the article or post is relevant to them and use your discretion so as not to irritate the person by mentioning them in every other post. Just like hashtags, refrain from mentioning too many people at a time; otherwise, your post may be viewed as spam. Tag only those connections that will benefit the most from your post.
Write Blog Posts
As stated in the introduction, LinkedIn users are looking for more than fun pictures or brief tweets. They are looking for in-depth, engaging, long-form content in their niches. Here you can position yourself as an authority and drive engagement by writing about what you do best. The blog post or long-form article is the best way to get comments, likes, and shares
LinkedIn can be a great place to backlink to your main blog if you already have a blog. If you do not own a blog, it is the perfect way to get started. LinkedIn’s publishing platform is entirely free to use. All you need is to publish your posts and keep connecting. If you write great posts, your audience will share them with their connections and thus increase your reach even more.
Even though LinkedIn users are looking for long-form articles, you should ensure that you provide real value within every single line in your blogs.
To publish your blogs on LinkedIn, follow the steps below:
- Click on Write Article near the top of the home page
- Click on the Headline Field to title your article
- Click on the Write field to write your content
- Once done, click on Publish
- You’ll be presented with a small dialog box where you can write a short description of the article, choose the audience and add hashtags.
Give Updates on Industry News and Research
LinkedIn is the best place to update industry insight and company news. Most LinkedIn users are looking for industry trends and company news, so you should leverage the 760 million users. Of these, most of the readers are key decision-makers of the industry.
Whenever there are changes in your field, you should post about them on LinkedIn. If your company is celebrating a milestone, or there is new information on your product development, or you have completed a recent case-study, share a post on LinkedIn. This post could be in the form of an article or a post, or an image.
Give Quick Tips
Quick tips are short-form posts that give useful information about your products, services, or brand. LinkedIn is fantastic for sharing quick tips to your customers and people in your industry. These are not to be confused with how-to posts, which are much longer and more detailed.
Quick tips are handy to explain aspects of your product or business or how to unlock additional functionality. An excellent point to start a quick tip is answering some of your most frequently asked questions (FAQs).
Offering fantastic advice for free is a sure way of making your posts stand out and place you as an authority in your industry.
Provide Photo updates
Even though LinkedIn is not meant to share funny pictures, articles with images tend to attract more interaction than plain text. Uploading an image with your post is especially helpful for marketing your business. Recently, LinkedIn allowed users to upload multiple photos per post. This is very good for showcasing numerous angles of your product.
Images help the audience remember the brand and understand the message better. You can include pictures in your article to break the monotony of plain text and keep your readers intrigued.
Photos are a great way of showing your brand personality. Share photos that were taken at your office facilities or at a company event to create an attachment to your brand.
Just remember to use high-quality images that you own the rights to and that the image should complement your message. Also, it is advisable not to overload your articles with images.
LinkedIn supports a maximum file size of 8 megabytes per image.
To upload Images on LinkedIn;
- Click on Photo, on the top left just below the Start a post letterbox on the homepage’s top.
- Choose an image on your computer that you’d like to use for the post
- Craft a catchy accompanying description by typing into the “What do you want to talk about?” section.
- Below the image, include a complementing hashtag.
Write List Style posts
Listicle-type posts, by far, get the most engagement on LinkedIn because of their length. These tend to be longer and explain products or services in great detail. It also helps that people manage to find lists easy to read. List style posts tend to save readers time, are intriguing (because a good one would not reveal the critical contents in the title), are organized in a fun way, give the reader fewer options, and are easy to return to when distracted. Examples of listicles include how-to guides and the top ten lists.
Unlike quick tips, your List style posts can be in-depth. You can include images and charts with your article to not only educate but also increase awareness.
The process for writing a Listicle on LinkedIn is the same that you’d use to write an article. Just remember to use bullets or numbers instead of long paragraphs. You can mention relevant people and attach hashtags relating to the subject matter.
Conduct Polls
Polls are a terrific addition to any brand’s marketing strategy. With LinkedIn, you can commission polls from your mobile device or your desktop computer.
You can use these polls to find out your LinkedIn audiences’ top goals, find out what kind of content they prefer from you, get feedback for your products and services, gauge interest in your new products or services, or find out their overall opinion of your company. In the end, if polls are done right, you will turn your LinkedIn followers into email subscribers and eventually into paying consumers.
To conduct polls;
- Click on Start a post from the top of the homepage
- Click on the add sign below the text box
- Click on the Create a poll button
- Choose an appropriate question
- Provide two or more Options, and you can add answers by clicking Add Options
- Choose a duration for your poll, either 1 Day, 3 Days, 1, or 2 Weeks
- Once you are finished, click Done
- You will be presented with a dialog box to add a short description of the poll, and you can include hashtags
Poll posts remain long after they have concluded. If you’d like the information available only a short time, remember to go back and delete the post.
Utilize the Call-to-action
The call to action is the icing on the cake for all your LinkedIn activities. It invites your readers to engage further outside the platform. They make it so that your readers turn into leads and then customers.
Call-to-action campaigns motivate your readers to take action. They serve as a way to guide readers who are interested in you on the next steps. If crafted well, they can turn your experience into a very successful venture.
Recently, LinkedIn integrated the ability to add a custom call-to-action to your company page. You can include buttons for Contact Us, Register, Learn More, Sign Up and Visit Website. What’s more, these new features are packed with analytical tools so you can gauge how they are performing.
You will need to be an administrator of your company’s LinkedIn page to integrate the call-to-action.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is the best place for businesses to make connections with professionals, consumers, industry, and thought leaders as the largest professional network globally. As long as your page is regularly updated, the gains will be monumental in the long run. You will notice more traffic to your webpage, more brand awareness, and more avenues of feedback for your products and services.
According to The Manifest, most of the readers on LinkedIn are key decision-makers in their organizations. This means that your content will potentially be viewed by Vice Presidents, Chief Executive Officers, senior company managers, and other executives.
If you utilize LinkedIn’s different content types, you should see your audience numbers growing steadily and consistently. With regular updates about your company insights and news comes brand loyalty. With steady quick tips and how-tos, you become an authority in your field. Your company becomes more relatable with the use of images and pictures.
LinkedIn offers an alternative channel of communication to your current and any potential customers. This is especially useful to small businesses and can be done without breaking the bank.
In order to be successful on LinkedIn, you must plan ahead of every post, work on a regular schedule for posting and engage the readers that react to your posts
As you prepare content for LinkedIn, keep your business goals in mind. Your content should be in line with your business objectives. Share content that matches your goals and helps your LinkedIn community. The reward is growth in terms of reach, customer base, and feedback.
We have also published “11 Effective LinkedIn Marketing Insights” that you maybe interested in checking out.