Marketing on LinkedIn can be tough. With 310 million active monthly users, and countless posts on B2B topics spanning all industries, you’re going to face stiff competition as you work to establish yourself as a thought leader and foster B2B engagement.
While a comprehensive strategy for marketing on LinkedIn has a lot of different facets, keeping a few key principles in mind can act as a helpful quick reference, guide your decision-making, and keep your marketing activities on track.
In this guide, we’ll go over ten important do’s and don’ts to bear in mind when marketing on LinkedIn
Do’s of Marketing on LinkedIn
1. Build a Polished Profile
Even if your LinkedIn marketing is mainly a vessel to promote your company’s products and services, LinkedIn is still a social network, and the personal branding behind your posts is very important. Before you engage in any content campaigns, it’s essential to make sure you have a strong, polished profile, complete with a professional profile picture, an eye-catching banner highlighting your expertise, and an optimized profile summary letting your audience know why you’re an expert.
2. Study Your Audience
Like any kind of social media channel, when you’re marketing on LinkedIn, your strategy needs to be informed by a clear understanding of who your audience is. This means looking at their basic demographic information, their interests, and the challenges they face which your business can solve. Using LinkedIn’s own ad targeting, along with third-party analytics tools like our Highperformr suite, you can identify your most valuable segments and tailor your strategy to their preferences.
3. Engage in Two-Way Conversations
LinkedIn isn’t the kind of space where you can just post content, forget about it, and then expect success to materialize. Posting and not engaging in conversations is one of the biggest misconceptions on LinkedIn. For successful marketing on LinkedIn, you’ll need to monitor reactions to your posts and engage with comments. This will let your audience know that you value their input, and hopefully spark stimulating conversations or debates that will draw in people from outside your core audience. When you use LinkedIn as a space to exchange ideas, rather than just to broadcast your message, you’ll be able to nurture a more “switched-on” audience and a higher standard of content.
4. Optimize for Search
Organic search can often be one of the most valuable channels for getting your content in front of your target audience, whether that’s through LinkedIn’s own search function or through Google. When you’re planning out your content calendar, make sure it’s informed by keyword research using a general SEO tool or a social media analytics platform that shows data on trending topics.
5. Measure and Improve
As you start to roll out your content, it’s important that you monitor the impact it’s having and make adjustments based on these findings. Over time, this will help you align your content with the demands of your audience, find patterns in what works and what doesn’t, and create a more comprehensive strategy to bolster your long-term success. For an intuitive tool that will help you highlight the best times to post, the shared features of your strongest content, and more, be sure to check out what Highperformr analytics can do for you!
Don'ts of Marketing on LinkedIn
1. Let Your Content Get Spammy
Every piece of content published by a brand on LinkedIn tends to have some kind of promotional goal behind it. However, if you let this take over your content creation, it can make your profile come off as spammy or desperate, hurting your overall engagement. Even at critical points like when you’re launching a new product or service, diversifying your promotional content with more neutral posts about strategy or goings-on in your industry will save your profile from being seen as spammy.
2. Post Inconsistently
For any given member of your audience, you’re going to be just one in dozens of different accounts populating their feed. If you’re not establishing your presence with a consistent posting schedule, your audience will be less inclined to stop scrolling when they see your name and logo pop up, and less likely to engage. While you don’t want to post so often that you’re clutching at poor-quality content ideas just to keep your account active, it’s still crucial to develop a varied content calendar in advance and establish your profile as one that’s worth following.
3. Dehumanize Your Brand
LinkedIn may be a business-oriented community, but like any social media platform, it’s important to humanize your content and develop authentic connections as much as possible. If your posts are focusing too heavily on hard stats and figures, and are full of niche industry jargon that feels artificial and robotic, you could risk alienating members of your audience and undermining the value of your content. As you strategize your content, make a point to show the human behind the logo by sharing behind-the-scenes content, using conversational language and humor, and telling people about your principles and values rather than your achievements alone.
4. Use Irrelevant Hashtags
Hashtags can be a powerful tool for marketing on LinkedIn when they’re applied in the right way. However, you shouldn’t go overboard by using a long string of hashtags just because they’re popular, rather than because they have real relevance to the content you’re posting. Failing to give hashtags their due consideration will not only limit your reach, but also make your brand come off as spammy if you attach a long string of irrelevant hashtags to the end of your posts. When using hashtags, make sure it has a logical relation to your content and is likely to help your visibility and engagement.
5. Overlook Networking Opportunities
Though networking may not be a top priority for your social media strategy, using LinkedIn for this purpose can be a great way to make your brand more visible in B2B spaces, develop your credibility as a thought leader, and publish more effective content. There are a range of ways you can develop your network on LinkedIn. This can be as simple as making a point to comment on posts by industry peers, or more involved like becoming the star member of LinkedIn groups or running collaborative webinars. If you neglect to network in your niche, you could risk making your brand seem obscure or aloof, and miss out on some great opportunities for organic promotion.
Making the Right Call When Marketing On LinkedIn
Though developing an effective LinkedIn strategy takes a lot of work, keeping aware of the core best practices and pitfalls to avoid can give you a strong foundation for better decision-making. We hope this guide has helped you form some effective guidelines for building your LinkedIn strategy and a useful point of reference as you take your social media marketing into the future.
For more support on your LinkedIn marketing, sign up to Highperformr for free and discover a wealth of analytics, scheduling, and AI capabilities today!
