Guide to LinkedIn Organic and Paid Marketing

LinkedIn is a valuable part of a company’s owned media strategy. The professional social network is one that will not only help generate leads but also provide an excellent way to build relationships with decision-makers and candidates in your industry. LinkedIn has become the preferred network for business-to-business marketing.

What exactly is LinkedIn marketing?

LinkedIn is the platform for brands and marketers use to make connections, share ideas, and build business relationships. LinkedIn is an effective tool for businesses of all sizes, and it’s essential to know how to use this social media platform. For example, it can be used as an engagement opportunity with customers or potential clients, generating leads, increasing brand recognition, cultivating business ties and collaborations, sharing content to develop thought leadership, and driving traffic to your website.

A personal page in LinkedIn is called a profile page. You can also set up a LinkedIn page for your business, school, or non-profit.

Populate all the key fields in your profile and add your company logo.

Make a custom banner for the header and schedule to update it once per quarter. The size is 1128 x 191 pixels or 6 by 1 ratio.

Here is the Milestone LinkedIn page.

Make one or more people an admin that can post to the account. Plan to post at a regular cadence; shoot for twice a week. In Admin View, go to Admin Tools on the right and scroll down to Manage Editors. Only people who have a LinkedIn account can be made editors.

You can promote new blogs or white papers, product or feature releases, new hire information, or thought leadership articles.

Be social. Follow, like, comment, and share from your corporate account. Do the same within the group you participate in.

Have someone on your team follow the businesses that follow you, especially the larger and more influential ones.

What are 4 ways to utilize LinkedIn for business?

• Thought leadership articles and organic growth

LinkedIn is a good place to thought lead with content that used to fall into the PR realm. Progressive companies are seeing LinkedIn as their press room for prospects, customers, employees, and candidates. Build the key positioning and messaging into long-form articles that answer the questions, what does this company do and what is unique about this? When used correctly, long-form material can help business owners establish themselves as innovative leaders and experts. Use some of your short-form posts to promote the long-form articles.

• LinkedIn paid marketing

There are numerous LinkedIn ad formats to pick from, such as:

1. Boost of your posts
2. Sponsored text advertisements
3. Sponsored messaging (to a LinkedIn user’s inbox)
4. Dynamic advertising that can include a user’s information in the ad, such as name, profile photo, and employer.
5. Sponsored job postings
6. Photo carousel advertisements

Furthermore, four out of every five LinkedIn users can influence business purchase decisions. Thus ads can be pretty effective.

• Networking in LinkedIn groups

Virtual meetings and deal-making have replaced the physical office as many of us have started working remotely for our companies due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This means that the brand’s professional network is more critical than ever because it needs to be able to establish credibility with people quickly to make an impression on them. Networking is the entire point of LinkedIn.

According to research, LinkedIn’s discussions between connected users increased by 55% between January 2020 and January 2021. Besides, LinkedIn Groups are a fantastic tool for networking. Because these are private discussion groups, whatever you post there will not appear on your profile. The only disadvantage for businesses is that you cannot join with your Company Page. In Groups, you must use your personal profile.

However, because many Groups allow users to exchange Page material, joining a Group can be a fantastic way to expand your personal network and Page followers.

• Job postings and recruitment

LinkedIn users are already interested in job postings. Every week, 40 million people use LinkedIn to seek a new job. You can post a listing for free, and it will appear on your Company Page as well.

In addition, paying to advertise the job postings might also be beneficial. For example, paid single job advertisements to attract 25% more applications than non-promoted job advertisements. Moreover, LinkedIn features a specialized Recruiter premium account that has long been the standard for recruiters worldwide. They also provide a Lite version for small enterprises.

What should you post on LinkedIn’s publishing platform?

Although the publishing process is straightforward, marketers must still have valuable content to post.

So, what kind of material is most effective on LinkedIn? According to LinkedIn, six out of ten LinkedIn users are most interested in reading about industry insights. Following that, 53% are interested in corporate news, and 43% are interested in new products and services.

The best thing is that marketers can “borrow” the existing content, add important industry insights, and push “publish” to rapidly grow the brand’s profile and potential leads.

7 Secrets to Improving LinkedIn Post Performance

At Milestone we do social for customers and of course for our own account, and we have been running experiments for the last 6 months. Here are how different posts performed: (feel free to follow the links and experience the content and drive the stats a bit more)

1)   Simple or generic poll https://lnkd.in/giDcJCjN
182 engagements and over 12,000 impressions in its first 2 days. This poll by my colleague, Craig Carbonniere, did a jaw-dropping 2803 votes and 120,122 impressions in 2 weeks. https://lnkd.in/g6iXPjQN
2)   Sophisticated poll https://lnkd.in/gRvgvHKi
25 engagements and 5600 impressions. But the advantage here is that you may gain more actionable or publishable information.
3)   Presentation carousel https://lnkd.in/g_Cs9irX These are way easier than you think—just upload a square ppt or pdf.
28 engagements and 4,185 impressions
4)   Presentation advancing as a video https://lnkd.in/giDcJCjN
166 views and 1012 impressions. This is beginner video editing.
5)   Standard image and text https://lnkd.in/g3Di9UhE
4 engagements and 199 impressions. Bread and butter post…from 8 years ago.
6)   Image with the face of the author https://lnkd.in/g9DmWA2g
11 engagements and 212 impressions.
7)   Image with the face of the author and personal message. People want to be inspired and entertained by authentic stories. https://lnkd.in/gBwN76Fy
77 engagements and 3282 impressions

Do you see the patterns? People like easy polls; they like the interaction but do not want to think too hard about it. Remember, a poll that spreads like that gives you hundreds of new people to follow and connect with. The video did rather well on video views to impressions, so learn how to animate a PowerPoint and save it as an MP4. Easy, simple posts often fail to take off. Include human faces in your images; it is social networking after all. Provide context with relevant personal text to go with pictures that include your face.

What are advanced techniques for how to utilize LinkedIn to strengthen your brand?

• Participate in LinkedIn Groups with influencers

LinkedIn Groups are another fantastic way to connect with others on the platform. LinkedIn Groups are the best to locate people in your industry who share your interests but are not yet connected to you. If you join the correct communities, you may communicate with individuals organically without paying for advertisements (best for small companies with a small budget). Marketers can use these discussions to interact with a community and share opinions on subjects or ideas or add thoughts to other industry-leading surveys to enhance the brand’s engagement. One of the most effective method to use LinkedIn Groups is to solicit feedback.

• Use LinkedIn hashtags to boost the client base

Since its inception in the mobile application in 2016, you’ve been able to put hashtags in your posts that “were tappable and led to search results so that you could discover other posts with the same hashtag.” In other words, hashtags help find content on a specific topic that may be relevant to your industry.

Furthermore, incorporating hashtags in a brand’s web content makes it more discoverable to others. A brand may also follow hashtags on LinkedIn, which means that postings with a specific hashtag will begin to display in their newsfeed.

• Send LinkedIn newsletters

While not yet open to everyone, this is something to consider. LinkedIn newsletters are a collection of articles that you publish on LinkedIn regularly, usually about a single topic (like most newsletters). People can “subscribe” to your newsletter. Once they do, they will receive a push notice, in-app notification, and email notification whenever you publish a new article in the newsletter on LinkedIn.

• Using the LinkedIn company and showcase pages for marketing purposes

Although all of the preceding examples focused on individuals inside your company and the actions they can do to assist your business to grow and produce leads, there is also a way for companies to promote their brand identity on LinkedIn.

Your company page should contain the most up-to-date information about your organization. A Company Page allows LinkedIn members to learn about your company, its brand, and career possibilities. Company Pages are also a great tool to establish industry knowledge.

Leverage the power of paid advertisements

Paid advertising is one of LinkedIn’s most intriguing marketing features. Depending on the brand’s needs and goals, marketers can choose between Sponsored InMail, Text Advertisements, and Sponsored Updates. These advertisements allow targeting audience based on LinkedIn users’ extensive demographic data, making them a practical addition to your LinkedIn marketing efforts.

If marketing service providers are looking for a way to increase their client’s company’s visibility and make extra cash, paid ads may be the answer. They can boost the company’s online presence by running paid advertisements. This will help drive significant traffic back to the page, which in turn generates brand awareness!

Here are the essential tips and practices to keep in mind when advertising on LinkedIn:

• Produce compelling copy

Like any other paid advertisement you’ve made in the past, LinkedIn advertisements work best when there is compelling copy involved.

Even though ad space is restricted, you’ll want to ensure that everyone who sees your ad understands what they’re getting by clicking on it. In addition, vague wording will often turn readers off and prevent you from achieving your ideal click-through rate.

• Select an appealing image

Bright colors can catch the eye of the viewer, but neon orange and bright pink may not be the ideal selections for ad colors.

When previewing the ads, make sure the image is clear and appealing. If marketers are not careful, low-quality photographs or images with text can appear pixelated and unprofessional; overly busy images can prevent your viewers from reading further.

• Regularly optimize

Just as every marketer should examine and modify the target audience, they should also assess and adjust the overall campaign and performance. LinkedIn marketing is similar to any other channel or campaign. A brand must update, test, and tweak the ads regularly to ensure they function to their best abilities.

To ensure that a particular advertisement feature isn’t negatively affecting its performance, try swapping and changing the wording, CTA, or image from time to time. You can also check out other offers or items. For instance, just because one ebook does not do exceptionally well does not imply that your next ebook will not give stellar results.

How do you maximize followers on LinkedIn?

To effectively maximize LinkedIn followers, the brand’s hashtags and storytelling-driven content are crucial. But, it’s essential to organize webinars or events relevant to the target industry or niche and promote them from the company’s profile. When enough value is given to the attendees, they share the key takeaways along with tagging the brand name. Ultimately, it generates enormous user-generated content and significantly increases followers.

What are tips for a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy?

• Improve your LinkedIn profile

Optimizing the profile might also help you provide a make a more lasting impression. Fill out the firm details, for example, but don’t just describe what you do. Instead, emphasize what distinguishes your organization from the competition. Additionally, when including photos (such as a logo or cover photo), ensure that they are of good quality.

• Identify your target audience

By defining the target demographic ahead of time, marketers can adapt the company page accordingly. For example, if a brand offers accounting software from New York City, the marketers might target CPAs on the East Coast.

LinkedIn makes it simple to target. Consider all of the information you have to enter to build your profile. Every other LinkedIn member should have done the same! Thus, you can target contacts and interactions based on region, company size, industry, etc.

Decide who you want to reach out to. For example, assume a company provides local corporate catering services to giant corporations. Then marketers can look for local businesses based on their size.

• Make a content calendar

Don’t just set up a LinkedIn page and forget about it. Posting content regularly can help you establish yourself as a thought leader on the site. In addition, creating a content marketing calendar ahead of time can be beneficial.

This will help ensure consistency and capitalize on major occasions for content. For instance, if you are the dental clinic owner, you may share actionable recommendations for improving dental health on World Oral Health Day.

Posting around larger events or industry occurrences can also help you achieve traction using hashtags. It’s also an effective method to meet new people. So make an effort to comment on other people’s stuff and your own.

• Make posts that are video or image-based

Your LinkedIn marketing content does not have to be written entirely by you. In reality, including visual information such as videos or photographs can help to generate more engaging and fascinating content.

Photos and infographics with relevant data, for example, could be used as images. An FAQ video, an interview with your company’s CEO, or a how-to guide for a product you sell are all examples of video content. The format will rely on your industry.

• Make use of clear calls to action

Marketers could assign CTA buttons when setting up a brand’s LinkedIn presence. These direct visitors to take specific actions, such as visiting the website. CTAs should also be included in the content.

Remember to keep CTAs relevant to the target audience. People don’t want to feel as if they’re being sold something. So, for example, you could end a blog post about a relevant issue for your audience with a CTA to download a more detailed whitepaper.

What is tracking is available in LinkedIn Analytics?

When utilizing LinkedIn for business, tracking LinkedIn Analytics must be an integral part of marketing strategy. In Super admin view, select Analytics from the menu just below.

There are 5 types of LinkedIn Analytics:

1. Visitor analytics – This metric shows who are visiting the page but aren’t followers. These analytics can help marketers determine the demographic data to help the brand spot patterns and convert the visitors into followers.

2. Update analytics – It demonstrates how effective the LinkedIn updates are, such as whether followers find them engaging, etc.

3. Follower analytics – It highlight who’s interacting with the page content and updates. LinkedIn shows this data according to the followers’ industry, job, location, seniority, company size, etc.

4. Competitors – You can input other companies in your space or ones you want to use as a benchmark or aspire to perform like. Competitive benchmarking is a good way to get executive attention, support, and resources.

5. Employee advocacy analytics – It allows marketers to gauge trends in member and employee engagement with content suggested to employees on the tab named “My Company.” 

Conclusion

As you can see, there’re countless methods for brands and marketing service providers to use LinkedIn to strengthen the company’s identity and extend their network. Don’t pass up the opportunities provided by LinkedIn marketing simply because you lack the time or resources to put the above suggestions into action.

While LinkedIn marketing is complex and has many intricacies, there are a few best practices that apply to many parts of marketing. The information in this guide should have given you a better understanding of navigating LinkedIn and why it’s such an essential network for marketers.

Whether you use paid advertising or simply promote your blog articles to groups, LinkedIn can provide you and your organization with various possibilities to raise exposure, generate leads and increase traffic—whatever your objectives are.

Milestone increases acquisition by enhancing digital experience and increasing content visibility. Contact us at sales@milestoneinternet.com or call us at 408-200-2211.