4 Secrets to LinkedIn Success Every Brand Should Know

LinkedIn (@LinkedIn) offers the perfect opportunity for your company to connect with industry professionals. 

It’s the most professional of social networks, and arguably the most important for B2B networking. In fact, LinkedIn traffic has the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%.

But like any social strategy, you must have a grasp on your approach before you can maximize the benefits.

I recently watched a webinar hosted by Jonathan Vazquez, Customer Success Representative at LinkedIn, called “How to Get the Most Out of LinkedIn Company Pages.”

Outlined below are four actionable takeaways businesses should follow to enhance marketing techniques for their LinkedIn company pages.

1. Focus on the Three Buckets of Content

Creating the right content is your golden ticket to increase audience engagement. When publishing content to your page, focus on the three buckets of content:

• Company brand news. Inform your audience of milestones, events, product updates, new hires, etc. related directly to your company.
• Employer brand news. Showcase content that aligns with the “image” or vision of your company’s brand. Provide audiences with the opportunity to dig deeper into who you really are with culture-centric content.
• Industry news and trends. By staying up-to-date with the latest and greatest news and trends within your industry, you provide your company with the opportunity to establish a thought leadership position.

To give your audience a healthy mix, consider publishing from each bucket once a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Publishing a variety of information showcases all your company has to offer.

2. Engage Your Employees

Your employees are your most valuable advocates when it comes to building your company’s brand awareness. So, why not utilize them for distribution?

Assure all employees are correctly linked to your business’s page in the “Company Name” section of their personal profiles. Once they have done this, encourage them to share company content on a regular basis. The more employees share branded content, the better opportunity you have to tap into new networks and expand your reach.

People want to connect with people, not just a logo. By encouraging your employees to get involved with publishing and sharing, you are allowing individuals to get to know the faces behind the brand.

3. Utilize LinkedIn Analytics

Did you know LinkedIn provides you with the opportunity to measure and evaluate core metrics and trends? With LinkedIn Analytics, you can dive into insights, such as:  

• Followers: Determine where traffic is coming from, different demographics, specific trends and comparison of competitors.
• Updates: Evaluate the overall performance of page updates, reach and engagement within this tab. Provide your company with valuable data for impressions, clicks, audience, etc., and adjust shares based on what’s performing well.
• Visitors: Give your company insights on metrics such as page views, page clicks, unique visitors and visitor demographics.

Use this information to help provide insight for your company page’s progress in addition to the performance of your content strategy. Have an in-depth understanding what works well and what does not so you can adjust processes in the future.

4. Keep Updates Compelling

Overall, you should always keep in mind that your updates should be compelling and appealing to your audiences. Companies like Evernote (@evernote) and Marketo (@marketo) tailor their updates to the wants and needs of their audience by offering valuable tips, news and content from all three buckets (see tip 1).  

Some best practices to follow when posting updates are:

• Avoid being “salesy”—focus on being helpful.
• Be conscious of timing.
• Engage your audience with thought provoking questions.
• Include clear call-to-actions.
• Provide images and rich media.

More LinkedIn-related reads from PR 20/20:

• Check Your Pulse on LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform
• How To Create a LinkedIn Group
• How To Manage a LinkedIn Group

What best practices do you follow for a successful LinkedIn company page? Share them with us in the comment section below.

Image Source: Esther Vargas via Flickr Creative Commons