In such a tight-knit community like Newcastle, it’s important to leverage your personal and professional connections to promote your brand. LinkedIn is the perfect social media platform to do just that.
Get Started
If you don’t have a LinkedIn Profile… make one!
- Create a LinkedIn login.
- Unless you’re a freelancer, consider creating a LinkedIn company page for your business. Your company page will be automatically linked from the personal profile.
Maximise Your Personal Profile
If you are after more clients or improving how your peers perceive you, you need to make sure your profile is designed to attract them. Here are some tips to make sure your LinkedIn profile is attracting the right kind of attention.
- Professional Headline: This is the only part of your profile that is visible in the LinkedIn search results, so make it count. Don’t be boring like 95% of LinkedIn and just put your title and company name… stand out from the crowd! Use your headline to outline the key benefits or services you can offer to clients. You can also consider making your profile more visually appealing and memorable by separating your keywords with symbols rather than just writing them as a list.
- Professional Photo: Make sure to include a professional headshot of yourself.
- Background Photo: It’s important to make sure you choose an image that reflects what you want your LinkedIn profile to achieve. It’s a great place to show off your branding and give yourself (and your company) a little personality. After you upload, open the LinkedIn app on your phone and make sure the image is optimised for mobile as well.
- LinkedIn Summary: Your summary really needs to start as strong as possible, as only the first 220 words are visible before the person viewing your profile has to click on “See More”. Studies have shown that the more people have to click, the less interested they become in what they’re reading, so you have to ensure that the beginning makes a real impact. Here is a great place to outline your passion behind what you do and the key value proposition of your company. BE AUTHENTIC! Be sure to include your contact details and a link to your website (perhaps even a great blog post you’ve written) in the summary.
- Featured Posts: Want to boast about achievements? Featured posts give a sneak peek of your best works in to first-time visitors on your profile.
- Skills: Your Skills section is all about growth and gaining recognition for the work you do. Be sure to highlight all the skills you utilise to offer your products and services to your customers. With LinkedIn, the more skills you list the merrier, but be sure to reorder your skills to the top 3 accurately reflect your most relevant strengths.
- Posts: LinkedIn posts or updates are a great way to stay front of mind with your network. Share things like company achievements, happy customer stories and new products. Remember that you are dealing with other busy professionals. Be sure to keep your posts informative and helpful, give them short and interesting headlines, and include a good photo to grab attention.
- Stories: Stories have been guaranteeing more views on every platform in 2021. A simple 20-second video or image you share as your story stays active for 24 hours. LinkedIn Stories are perfect for announcing company news, promoting job listings or sharing tips with your clients.
- Polls: LinkedIn polls are a great way to get quick feedback and engage with your clients. Instagram and Twitter had already introduced polls, and now LinkedIn has launched the same!
- Articles: LinkedIn’s article publishing platform is a great way to promote your blog articles to your personal and professional network as well as relevant audiences based on their job title, company, or LinkedIn groups they belong to. This gets your content in front of a wider group of professionals who aren’t in your network. It’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert or thought leader in your industry by sharing tips and advice with your peers and your customers.
Amp Up Your Company Page
Through your company page, you can post news and updates, share new products and promotions and connect with a wider range of customers. It’s important to use your company updates frequently and strategically. Here are some tips:
- Optimise for SEO: Company Pages are SEO-friendly. Google previews up to 156 characters of your page text, so be sure that your description leads with powerful, keyword-rich copy.
- Use Visuals: Be sure to upload your logo as your company profile picture and a great cover photo. Also, upload photos and videos in your company posts to grab attention. Images generally result in a 98% higher comment rate. Links to YouTube videos play directly in the LinkedIn feed and usually result in a 75% higher share rate.
- Post Regularly: Aim to post on LinkedIn at least twice per week. Share company news, industry articles, or thought leadership pieces—or ask followers to weigh in on hot topics. Posts will appear on your Company Page and in the news feed on the homepage of each of your followers across all devices and platforms.
- Events: Want to hold a virtual conference or Q&A session? LinkedIn event ads can be the perfect way to gather your professional circle in one place and organise an engaging event. Extend the engagement of your event by utilising polls, sign-ups, interactive live sessions, video highlights, survey posts, and more!
- Utilise Follow Invitations: Do you want to gain followers on your company page quickly? This latest LinkedIn feature will do the trick. Invite your connections to like your company page, so they don’t miss out on any of your company updates.
- Be Helpful, Not Sales-y: LinkedIn is a networking platform so don’t use it to be overly promotional or pushy. Instead use it to connect and engage with your customers, suppliers and vendors. Be helpful. Post tips and advice. Ask your network for their opinion or feedback.
- Grow your audience: Be sure to share notable company updates on your personal profile. If you want to reach new audiences, consider promoting your LinkedIn Company posts with sponsored content.
And Last, But Certainly Not Least…
Take LinkedIn seriously. LinkedIn will work well for you if you put in the effort to understand how it can best work for you and your business.
- Make time for it: If you want to see real results, you need to incorporate LinkedIn into your daily or weekly routine. Download the app on your phone and engage with others in your downtime.
- Make time to post regularly: Add Company page updates into your social media strategy and be sure to share significant achievements and stories on your personal profile.
- Engage with your network: Comment on their posts and like their updates.
- Share your expertise: Do you have some frequently asked questions from your customers? Answer them and share them on LinkedIn. Odds are, others have the same question/problem and will be coming to you for help.
- Get your team on board: When your employees are engaged and active on LinkedIn, it results in 14x more shares/page activities.
Why You May Ask?
- 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn
- 28% of its 200 million members are director level or above. In the IT sector, for example, 95% of decision-makers use LinkedIn and 73% have used it to engage with a vendor.”
- 50% of B2B buyers use LinkedIn when making purchasing decisions
Businesses, industry leaders and those wanting to engage with clients on a professional level are much more likely to do so on LinkedIn as opposed to sites like Facebook and Twitter. But you have to take the time to start and join in interesting conversations with your network, by doing so you will gain some really valuable insights and hopefully some new customers as well.
Want help with LinkedIn? Contact us about our social media management services.
