Making meaningful

connections

for business

success

LinkedIn has become the world’s largest and go-to professional networking platform, with over 660 million users worldwide, and seven million in South Africa. The potential to uncover and reach new audiences is immense, with LinkedIn hosting as many as 30 million professional company profiles, according to Influencer Marketing Hub.

The University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, notes that LinkedIn is the platform of choice for Fortune 500 companies, where 99% of these utilise the platform to tell their stories, network and recruit; while Adobe claims that B2B businesses generate as much as 80% of leads via the channel.

Apart from merely a tool to attract new talent, businesses should view LinkedIn as an essential element of any modern marketing strategy. Here are five best-practice tips to get the most out of the platform.

Making Meaningful Connections For Business Success

Refined and complete business profiles are a must​

You only get one chance to make a first impression – particularly on your business LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions notes that profiles and pages with complete information garner 30% more weekly views – greatly improving ranking on both LinkedIn and Google search results.

A business profile must be complete, engaging and up-to-date to improve its contact rate and to optimise it for search. Profiles must make use of logos; keywords; a business overview with relevant terms and phrases that describe the business’s mission and purpose; information about the website URL, location and industry type; and a call-to-action button that will allow the business to track visitor analytics on LinkedIn’s admin dashboard.

Social selling rather than the
hard pitch

People dislike being bombarded with sales pitches in person, so why would they feel any different on social media? Businesses should instead look to creating meaningful and relevant connections and engage with insights to build
strong relationships.

Referred to as ‘social selling’, LinkedIn Business Solutions estimates that those who take this approach enjoy 45% more sales opportunities per quarter. HubSpot adds that it costs 75% less to generate leads on social media than via any other medium, and sales reps who responded quickly to social media enquiries saw a 9.5% increase in annual revenue. Further, sales reps who use social selling as part of their repertoire are 51% more likely to reach quota than those who don’t.

Drive engagement through quality content and conversations​

Influencer Marketing Hub says that 55% of decision-makers use LinkedIn content to vet a business. This means that businesses must utilise the platform as a content publishing hub to drive social engagement and conversation. The uptake of this idea is evidenced by Hootsuite research which indicates content creation on LinkedIn increased 60% in 2020.

Businesses should look to posting quality content that is clickable, audience-specific and visually appealing, and that piques interest and provides value to other users. ProWritingAid suggests this can be achieved through the use of well-written articles, images, videos, blogs, business documents, and even LinkedIn Live. To this end, it’s important to consider the audience that the business is hoping to target, specifically because, as of 2019, as many as 90 million senior-level influencers and 63 million decision-makers call LinkedIn home. Businesses should not only post their own content, but interact with and share engaging content created by others to build meaningful connections.

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Increase visibility by abiding by the algorithm​

With thousands of posts created every second, LinkedIn’s machine-learning algorithm has been engineered to reduce instances of spam or inappropriate content being circulated. It sorts and ranks content as either spam, or low or high quality, all of which determines the content’s reach and audience. Businesses need to optimise their content and ensure that it ranks as high quality by being well-written and grammatically correct, that it includes fewer links, and does not make use of hashtags such as ‘follow’, ‘comment’ or ‘like’. Further, content should be niche and make use of strong keywords that will encourage engagement.

This also means that businesses need to choose the right time to post, with SocialChamp claiming that the best times to post are 7am – 8am, and 5pm – 6pm; with the most clicks and shares coming in on a Tuesday between 11am and 12pm. 

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Take advantage of paid media​

Besides being cost-effective, paid media advertising on LinkedIn leads to higher metrics and offers more than 200 targeting characteristics. It is fast becoming the go-to means of targeted social media advertising, with HootSuite stating that Q4 of 2020 saw an ad reach surge of 25 million people, or a 3.5% increase, from Q3 of 2020.

From sponsored content, text ads, sponsored InMail ads, paid video ads, dynamic ads, carousel ads and others, paid media advertising on LinkedIn has paid dividends in increasing business awareness through targeted audiences. LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager function allows businesses to set a budget, select goals such as clicks versus impressions, and have control over a campaign’s timeline.

Artboard 13

Making meaningful

connections

for business

success

 

LinkedIn has become the world’s largest and go-to professional networking platform, with over 660 million users worldwide, and seven million in South Africa. The potential to uncover and reach new audiences is immense, with LinkedIn hosting as many as 30 million professional company profiles, according to Influencer Marketing Hub.

The University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, notes that LinkedIn is the platform of choice for Fortune 500 companies, where 99% of these utilise the platform to tell their stories, network and recruit; while Adobe claims that B2B businesses generate as much as 80% of leads via the channel.

Apart from merely a tool to attract new talent, businesses should view LinkedIn as an essential element of any modern marketing strategy. Here are five best-practice tips to get the most out of the platform.

 

Refined and complete business profiles are a must​

You only get one chance to make a first impression – particularly on your business LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions notes that profiles and pages with complete information garner 30% more weekly views – greatly improving ranking on both LinkedIn and Google search results.

A business profile must be complete, engaging and up-to-date to improve its contact rate and to optimise it for search. Profiles must make use of logos; keywords; a business overview with relevant terms and phrases that describe the business’s mission and purpose; information about the website URL, location and industry type; and a call-to-action button that will allow the business to track visitor analytics on LinkedIn’s admin dashboard.

 

Social selling rather than the hard pitch

People dislike being bombarded with sales pitches in person, so why would they feel any different on social media? Businesses should instead look to creating meaningful and relevant connections and engage with insights to build strong relationships.

Referred to as ‘social selling’, LinkedIn Business Solutions estimates that those who take this approach enjoy 45% more sales opportunities per quarter. HubSpot adds that it costs 75% less to generate leads on social media than via any other medium, and sales reps who responded quickly to social media inquiries saw a 9.5% increase in annual revenue. Further, sales reps who use social selling as part of their repertoire are 51% more likely to reach quota than those who don’t.

 

Drive engagement through quality content and conversations​

Influencer Marketing Hub says that 55% of decision-makers use LinkedIn content to vet a business. This means that businesses must utilise the platform as a content publishing hub to drive social engagement and conversation. The uptake of this idea is evidenced by Hootsuite research which indicates content creation on LinkedIn increased 60% in 2020.

Businesses should look to posting quality content that is clickable, audience-specific and visually appealing, and that piques interest and provides value to other users. ProWritingAid suggests this can be achieved through the use of well-written articles, images, videos, blogs, business documents, and even LinkedIn Live. To this end, it’s important to consider the audience that the business is hoping to target, specifically because, as of 2019, as many as 90 million senior-level influencers and 63 million decision-makers call LinkedIn home. Businesses should not only post their own content, but interact with and share engaging content created by others to build meaningful connections.

Increase visibility by abiding by the algorithm​

With thousands of posts created every second, LinkedIn’s machine-learning algorithm has been engineered to reduce instances of spam or inappropriate content being circulated. It sorts and ranks content as either spam, or low or high quality, all of which determines the content’s reach and audience. Businesses need to optimise their content and ensure that it ranks as high quality by being well-written and grammatically correct, that it includes fewer links, and does not make use of hashtags such as ‘follow’, ‘comment’ or ‘like’. Further, content should be niche and make use of strong keywords that will encourage engagement.

This also means that businesses need to choose the right time to post, with SocialChamp claiming that the best times to post are 7am – 8am, and 5pm – 6pm; with the most clicks and shares coming in on a Tuesday between 11am and 12pm. 

 

Artboard 8

Take advantage of paid media​

With thousands of posts created every second, LinkedIn’s machine-learning algorithm has been engineered to reduce instances of spam or inappropriate content being circulated. It sorts and ranks content as either spam, or low or high quality, all of which determines the content’s reach and audience. Businesses need to optimise their content and ensure that it ranks as high quality by being well-written and grammatically correct, that it includes fewer links, and does not make use of hashtags such as ‘follow’, ‘comment’ or ‘like’. Further, content should be niche and make use of strong keywords that will encourage engagement.

This also means that businesses need to choose the right time to post, with SocialChamp claiming that the best times to post are 7am – 8am, and 5pm – 6pm; with the most clicks and shares coming in on a Tuesday between 11am and 12pm. 

 

Looking for a communications partner that fully understands the potential of LinkedIn to drive your business’s prosperity? Send an email to info@eclipsecomms.com and one of our expertswill be in touch

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