With each passing day, social media continues to be one of the most formidable forces to reckon with, as far as businesses from all industries look for effective communication channels to expand their market reach and growth. For enterprises dealing in B2B, it has become increasingly important to utilize this spike in the preference for social media to connect with the right target audience at the most optimal time.
For taking businesses to people, LinkedIn is becoming the favorite platform for global professionals, who are looking to share their experience and expertise with other people of the same domain. With almost all B2B professionals using LinkedIn marketing for spreading their content, the social media platform has become the hub for all content related to business.
There are a couple of factors that make LinkedIn what it has become today -
- The intense, career-centric approach of the platform.
- A great thought leadership structure, making it the perfect network to share key professional insights.
While companies might be completely aware of having a great page, getting a consistently higher engagement on LinkedIn with an organic reach is a little tricky. But what are the practices that need to be followed to ensure that it happens?
By employing the best practices right away, companies get the liberty of saving a lot of time and effort they spend on LinkedIn. Of course, creation and sharing of quality content are always in the digital marketing strategy of any company, but when it is about an enhanced reach, taking care of a few things can result in much positive growth of business profiles.
Here are ways that will lead to an increase as far as organic reach on LinkedIn is concerned:
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Plausible Awareness of the LinkedIn Algorithm
The prime focus of the LinkedIn algorithm is to ensure that every user gets only the most relevant content on his/her newsfeed. Like any other platform, LinkedIn too wants consistent traffic on its website and prevents low-quality content from being shown on newsfeeds.
To achieve this, LinkedIn’s algorithm monitors clicks, comments, shares, and likes, and tops up the newsfeed with relevant content that is in line with the actions of a user. Being aware of this will help in creating and sharing useful content to boost the interactions mentioned above. LinkedIn is a great platform that can position companies as a very credible source of information and provide solutions for both the present and potential customers.
As businesses, the priority should be to decide about the kind of influence that is to be exerted on LinkedIn, along with the business objectives of being on LinkedIn in the first place. Accumulation of sales leads, sharing of company culture, recruits, or increasing influence as an industry thought leader could be a few of such objectives.
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The Best Practices for A Great First Impression
It is essential to understand that no visitor will ever be interested in spending time on any personal or business profile that is incomplete. This is why LinkedIn’s algorithm not just monitors the content, which is being shared, but also about who is sharing that content for determining the most comprehensive content to spread on the news feeds.
For a better engagement on LinkedIn, businesses should take out a considerable chunk of time and conduct a social media audit of their LinkedIn pages and keep it as comprehensive as possible with all details.
At a bare minimum, business pages should always have -
- Logos
- Images
- Business Location
- Contact information
Other than this, further steps can also be taken like -
- Addition of videos. If that is not possible, videos should still be an addition to the digital marketing and content strategy.
- Usage of targeted keywords in the company description. This can be important because Google previews up to 156 characters from a company’s LinkedIn page and shows them in search results.
- Creation of a vanity URL.
Company-wide initiatives can also be created to help employees in optimizing their LinkedIn profiles. This leads to cohesion among all the team members on LinkedIn and leads to further motivation in adding education and employment history, page headlines, location, and more.
And being a dedicated platform for professionals, it’s a great way to keep the company and all employee profiles as complete as possible.
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Content That Is Loved by Company Connections
There are a few amazing options which companies should consider to fulfill LinkedIn’s objective of keeping its visitors on the platform and also deliver content that is valuable and relevant for the company connections too -
- Text-based updates without the inclusion of any URLs which take the visitors away from LinkedIn.
- Several concise, bulleted lists to break longer posts uniformly.
- Tagging and hashtags in the posts for enhancing the organic reach to visitors on the hunt for specific topics.
- Emojis to break the monotony of text and incorporate a little fun factor in the posts. However, this should only be done if the brand of business permits it.
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Native LinkedIn Video Feature
As a medium, videos should be frequently used following a company’s digital marketing strategy. For keeping users on its site, LinkedIn has a native video feature through which videos can be uploaded directly on the platform, eliminating the need to link it on other video channels like YouTube or somewhere else.
Companies should use this feature to their advantage and upload their videos directly on LinkedIn, which can also include the videos that have already been uploaded on other video platforms. The videos for LinkedIn can be up to 10 minutes long, and the link can be shared directly in a post or on other social media platforms to bring traffic on the LinkedIn page.
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Publishing Articles on Pulse - LinkedIn’s Blogging Platform
As a LinkedIn publishing platform, the intent of Pulse is similar to the Native video feature- to keep the traffic on their site when users share a long-form content with connections.
An ingenious way by which companies can include Pulse in their LinkedIn marketing strategy is by using the existing blogs and tune them as LinkedIn blogs and articles. The only thing to be kept in mind is that the content should be modified to the preferences of the LinkedIn target audience. After an article is published, the link can be shared in the post by using the article excerpts to attract followers.
This activity keeps the users on LinkedIn, arms the company with content to share on its business profile, and also drives people to authentic content. Other contents that can be published includes announcements for new hires, company announcements, and even its views on different kinds of trending industry news.
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The Perfect Time and Consistency
Timing has much importance as far as posting on LinkedIn is concerned. Just a little bit of research on the audience provides companies many insights on deciding the best time for posting content so that it can have a wider reach.
A company’s social media strategy should not just include the motive behind every post and topics that bring high value to the target audience. However, it should also include the best time to share all posts so that the maximum number of people can be reached through every post.
Companies should put several things into perspective to find the optimal time for sharing posts, like the buyer behavior, the time zones of profile connections as well as the specific industry too.
There are a few data-driven time slots that have been put in a general category of being around the optimal posting times, which can further be turned into more accurate slots as per the company preferences-
- Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays between 5 PM and 6 PM are considered optimal times to post.
- Fridays, and any day if the posting time is between 10 PM and 6 AM that is considered as the worst posting time.
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Cross-Promotion of LinkedIn Content
If a company does not miss, including cross-posting in its content and marketing strategy, it will prove to be very beneficial in the long-run. For every post, article, or video on LinkedIn, there should be a plan in place to share their links on other social media platforms. Particularly cross market on Twitter too, which is another of the two most popular platforms among professionals.
This practice helps to get everything that is shared, get more visitors but also satisfies the ultimate goal of the LinkedIn algorithm - to get and sustain more traffic on the platform.
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Active Participation to Become A Thought Leader in The Industry
The primary purpose of social media is to make people more social. Making constant efforts to become a part of different conversations revolving around in the industry can build the image of a business as a genuine thought leader in this aspect.
To begin with this, companies should be aware of the different trends, news, and problems that the industry and consumers face at large and then use these topics as the basis of your opinions and views. As far as LinkedIn is concerned, there is nothing more appealing to it than anything related to a current industry subject.
Teams can also be motivated to like and comment on posts that cover trending industry topics. This not just helps the business to become a thought leader in the industry, but also paves the way for employees to share their experience and expertise on social platforms too.
Final Words
For businesses, LinkedIn really is a superlative platform for learning, growth and connecting with the industry and customers. Being aware of the best practices and ways as to how it operates as a social media platform will always put a company in the best possible position, and positive results will definitely be there for everyone to see, undoubtedly.
For B2B industries, LinkedIn and Twitter are emerging as the most relevant social platforms to network as well as market their products and services. Are you looking for social promotions, organic or paid, to boost your KIPs? Check out this GoodFirms researched and curated list of Social Media Marketing Companies to aid your efforts.
