Are you getting your money’s worth out of LinkedIn?
Don’t worry so much about answering literally. Many business users don’t pay a dime to use LinkedIn, and that’s okay. There’s a lot to be done with the platform’s impressive menu of free capabilities, tools, and services.
Nevertheless, many LinkedIn users aren’t using the world’s most popular business social media platform to its fullest potential. Most don’t know what they’re missing.
If you’re among them, the good news is that LinkedIn isn’t especially difficult to leverage for all it’s worth. With a few changes to your weekly routine and a tweak here and there to your marketing allocations, you can turn LinkedIn into a lead-generating machine that fires on all cylinders.
Where should you start? Easy: with these 10 tried-and-true LinkedIn tactics that countless business owners before you have employed to great effect. First up, developing and deploying a consistent tone and messaging throughout your LinkedIn content.
1. Use Consistent Tone and Messaging Throughout
Each element of your LinkedIn presence should feel like part of a cohesive whole, not a random museum piece in a disjointed collection. To achieve this effect, you need to employ a consistent tone (some call it “voice”) and messaging (“theme”) throughout. In other words, today’s update should look (“sound,” if you prefer) like it was produced by the same team putting out updates six months prior.
2. Be Sure to Use the Correct Country Domain When Directing Prospects to Your LinkedIn Page
This one is of the utmost importance for organizations based outside the United States. (U.S.-based companies don’t have to worry as much because their LinkedIn default is “linkedin.com,” without a country-specific suffix.)
Why does it matter that you direct prospects to the correct country domain for your domicile — .fr, .uk, .sg, and so on? Because your LinkedIn profile almost certainly speaks to prospects in your homeland, even if you have ambitions to market (or already do market) to customers far beyond its borders. The LinkedIn profile for Asiaciti Trust, an international trust and corporate services provider, makes this plain: Its content clearly caters to clients and prospects in its home region, and the “.sg” suffix only reinforces its local credibility.
3. Avoid Corporate Jargon and Buzzwords
You’re the expert on what your organization does, that’s for sure. Just don’t forget that most of the visitors to your LinkedIn page aren’t experts. You shouldn’t treat them as such — which means you shouldn’t bombard them with jargon and buzzwords that you, your competitors, and just about nobody else understand.
4. Make Sure Your Employees Follow Your Company Page
Just this once, you want to be the center of attention. More accurately, you want to appear to be at the center of a universe of your own creation. The first step to achieving this: making sure every active employee (and contractor, if possible) in your organization follows your company page. The more, the merrier.
5. Tell a Clear, Compelling Story With Your Company Description
Your company description shouldn’t be a dry, point-by-point recounting of “vital” statistics that most prospects couldn’t care less about. It should be a compelling story about how your organization fits into your industry and why you and your team feel driven to do what they do. That’s what sells — not some industry award you happened to pick up last year.
6. Publish at Least One Original Piece of Longform Content on LinkedIn Each Week
Fun fact: LinkedIn is an under-appreciated outlet for corporate longform publishing. Call it a blog if you must; its utility can’t be denied. Make it a priority to publish at least one original post — published on LinkedIn and nowhere else — per week, covering general-interest topics related to your business. If you’re new to blogging or just a little rusty, take a crash course in blog writing and get busy.
7. Showcase Your Employees’ Accomplishments Whenever Possible
It’s true that your LinkedIn page shouldn’t merely recount your most recent corporate wins, tempting as it is to go that route. But there’s no harm (and quite a bit of good) in showing off your employees’ accomplishments where it makes sense. You’ll look better by association.
8. Add LinkedIn Buttons to Your Corporate Website and Blog
Don’t assume everyone who wants to find your LinkedIn page will find it while browsing LinkedIn or trawling Google, especially if your company has a common (or commonly confused) name. Leave breadcrumbs in the form of LinkedIn buttons on your corporate website and blog.
9. Post Multiple Short Updates Per Week (Even If You Don’t Have Much to Report)
You surely frown on “busy work,” but LinkedIn is different. Short, substantive updates let your followers know that you’re still in the game, even if you don’t actually have much news to report. Put another way: letting your LinkedIn page languish is a surefire way to raise suspicions about your organization’s viability, founded or not.
10. Use LinkedIn’s Analytics to Refine Your Marketing Strategy
Last but far from least, LinkedIn has a powerful analytics suite that — in capable hands — can turbocharge your social media marketing strategy. If you’re not familiar with the platform’s capabilities, begin with this overview from LinkedIn itself.
Does LinkedIn Really Work for You?
It’s a simple question with a simple premise: that LinkedIn is built to work for you, not the other way around. All it asks in return is that you leverage its capabilities to the fullest extent possible.
In the foregoing sections, we’ve described 10 tactics that will allow you to do just that. None requires a singular understanding of LinkedIn’s inner workings (or, frankly, an unusual degree of aptitude in general). You have what it takes, right now, to make the most of your company’s LinkedIn presence.
It should be clear by now that your company’s success depends, in part, on your ability to follow through on this. Companies that leverage LinkedIn as it’s meant to be leveraged tend to be more successful than those that fail to do so. Now that you know what needs to be done, there’s only one thing left to say: Let’s get to work!
