While the social landscape continues to evolve, LinkedIn endures as the premier professional network for businesses. LinkedIn can help you prove credibility, gain visibility, articulate your value, promote events, solidify connections and generate business. It offers value for those who are seeking to grow their knowledge, happily employed, freelancing, job searching, or managing a business.
LinkedIn saw 15.4 billion sessions in Q2 FY22. Over 40% of visitors engage with a page organically each week. With the new year upon us, read on for ideas to fire up your LinkedIn game.
1. Converse – don’t soapbox
Relationship building is a key element to successful social content. Company leaders should ditch the company-speak; instead, converse openly and thoughtfully as a person. Express humanity and encourage dialogue by asking a question or inviting input. And be sure to reply to every comment with a personalized and authentic response.
2. Company’s voice: Take a back seat
Research shows that audiences — potential customers, partners, investors, suppliers and so on — are more interested in what a company’s leader or executives have to say, than what the company thinks. Reader engagement is meaningfully improved when a company’s leader posts first, and the company shares the leader’s content.
3. Less can be more
Brevity is key for effective company posts; don’t require readers to click to read the complete post. A a sentence or two should be sufficient for a company post. In contrast, the best performing posts from industry experts or company executives are thought-provoking and express a personal viewpoint.
4. Plan and execute directly on LinkedIn
While there are many scheduling tools that enable users to publish content to multiple social platforms, there are some advantages to scheduling in-platform. If LinkedIn is your primary social network, or if you manage both a personal account and a Page, the embedded scheduling tool can help maintain a consistent posting cadence on both accounts.
To schedule content as your Page: Access your Page admin view and click Start a post. Beneath the post content, next to the blue Post button, there’s a small clock icon. When you mouse over the icon, you’ll see an option to Schedule for later. You can also view all of your scheduled posts to help maintain a regular cadence. Here’s a step-by-step view.
To schedule content as yourself: The steps to schedule posts as yourself are the same as from your Page, but the starting point is the Home page.
Pro Tip: Schedule posts as yourself and share later as your Page to feed LinkedIn’s algorithms and increase reach for your content.
5. Get the party started on LinkedIn
After a hiatus, LinkedIn events are back. Individuals and Page admins can create, host and/or simply publicize events on the platform.
- In-person or external events can be promoted on LinkedIn via an information or registration link
- Online events can be created and publicized through LinkedIn. Audio-only and LinkedIn Live options are available. (To host live events, your profile must meet certain criteria)
By capitalizing on your network of LinkedIn connections, an event host can reach a larger audience than using a list of email subscribers. Events can be promoted via status updates, sharing to groups, LinkedIn articles and newsletters.
6. Movement captures eyeballs
Not surprisingly, video posts generate the highest engagement on LinkedIn. Social Insider notes that LinkedIn is pushing more video content into user’s feeds, increasing impressions and likelihood that users will interact with it.
If video doesn’t feel like the optimal channel for your business messaging, carousel posts offer a perfect alternative. Generated from a series of pages, they create an interactive experience as users swipe through each screen. With five times as many clicks as any other post format, carousel posts are also a great way to generate engagement.
7. Share your labors of love on LInkedIn
You know all those blog posts and email newsletters that you have copiously crafted and finessed … ad nauseam? Good news: LinkedIn offers two very effective ways to leverage your long-form content and generate increased visibility and engagement: articles and newsletters.
Channel your LinkedIn Superpower: Publish and share articles
Take advantage of the power inherent in your leadership position (see #2 above) — and flex some muscle with articles.
Utilize LinkedIn’s embedded publishing platform to create new articles or repurpose blog posts, videos, white papers, press releases and other content you’ve previously developed as articles. This functionality is underutilized and offers a unique advantage to those who opt to embrace it. After publishing, share your articles in status updates, within your groups or on your Company page.
Newsletters are LinkedIn’s Secret Sauce
Newsletter engagement is much higher than engagement with posts in your feed, and newsletter readership has tripled in just the past year (Forbes).
In a prior blog post, we lauded the value of LinkedIn newsletters:
LinkedIn’s embedded publishing platform enables users to publish articles (blog posts, videos, white papers, press releases or other content you’ve previously developed). This functionality is underutilized and offers a unique advantage to those who opt to embrace it. Articles can be shared in status updates, within your groups, via LinkedIn messaging or on your Company page.
