LinkedIn wants to continue as the premiere B2B social network. Their niche has worked for 20 years and by sticking to what works they aren’t trying to be Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Staying on brand and working with the algorithm will garner better results.
Social media platforms are effective tools for communicating your brand, industry specialties, and services. With that said, multi-channel marketing is important so auditing the effectiveness of your branding and messaging is imperative to success.
1. To begin with, are you staying in your lane of expertise like LinkedIn has?
- Is your messaging on-brand for you and your company?
Inconsistent branding leads to confused customers; you either stand for nothing, or your messaging is confusing, and a confused mind never buys. - Are you demonstrating your industry expertise? People will pay for experts versus people who are overly broad and unfocused on an expertise. For example, are you a realtor who works with everyone or a realtor that specializes in first home buyers in XYZ region of a city.
- Is your profile clear on what you do, who you serve and why you’re credible?
2. Are the ‘right’ people seeing your posts?
When you post on LinkedIn, a percentage of your connections see those posts. In addition, a percentage of your connections networks also may see your posts. Ask yourself, if you have the ideal people you want to influence in your network.
Think of it this way, you follow people because you want to see their content – you can always unfollow people or remove them from your network if they are not what you consider ideal.
When you post on LinkedIn, a percentage of your connections see those posts. In addition, a percentage of your connections networks also may see your posts. Ask yourself, if you have the ideal people you want to influence in your network.
Think of it this way, you follow people because you want to see their content – you can always unfollow people or remove them from your network if they are not what you consider ideal.
Cleaning up your network from time to time and adding new connections will help your marketing messages get in front of the ideal people you want to influence.
3. Are your posts sharing knowledge and advice?
I wrote previously in the article announcing the latest algorithm changes, posts that share “knowledge and advice” are being prioritized throughout the platform.
Here’s how LinkedIn views ‘knowledge and advice’
“We are looking to see that you are building a community around content, and around knowledge-sharing that you are uniquely qualified to talk about,” Roth says.
“The way I like to think about it,” Roth says, “is that every piece of content has its own total addressable market. And you have to think about, well, who am I trying to reach with this thing?”
LinkedIn is thinking about that too. Its system looks at every post and basically asks: Who is this relevant to?
Sometimes, the answer is a small number of people — maybe you’ve posted about your family, and so the system decides it’s only relevant to your closest connections. Or maybe you’ve posted about B2B marketing, and the system will start showing it to people inside that community.
4. Mix up post styles
Create graphics in the form of:
- Video
- Document posts
- Single image posts
- Multi-image posts
(example – document post)
According to LinkedIn colleague Richard van der Blom, who recently reported the optimum post characters:
Text – 1200 – 1800 characters
Video – 400 – 1000
Document/carousel – 500 – 1400 (Keep text on the graphics to a minimum)
5. Make your goal engagement
LinkedIn favors engagement, so your goal should be to obtain comments on your posts within the first 60 minutes of posting and then throughout the first day of the post. Always respond to comments as quickly as possible to when they are made, this encourages other people to comment. The more comments you receive on a post, your post will be shown to more people.
To write an effective post, a compelling post start out your first sentence with a hook that draws the reader in. This could be an astounding fact, a controversial idea or use headlines like you’d see on the front of a magazine. The magazine writers are brilliant copywriters.
QUICK TIP: be intentional about leaving thoughtful comments on the posts of anyone you want to stay top of mind with and/or want to help shine a light on their work. We can help each other by leaving comments.
Hashtags are no longer as relevant to a post as in the past year. We used to recommend 4-6 hashtags per post, I would continue to add 4 but know they are not having much effect as of this writing.
CONCLUSION
What results do you want from LinkedIn? Do you have a marketing strategy?
Every customer interaction presents an opportunity. (Partnerships, referrals, new prospects?) Content builds trust for your expertise and credibility, when done well, you raise the stakes – are you making the most of these interactions?
Work with me to update or create a content strategy. Schedule a free consultation.