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LinkedIn is a social network primarily attributed to professional networking and career development. It is designed to help people make business connections, share their experiences and resumes, and find jobs.
From senior marketing executives sharing their experiences to graduates looking for work and internship placements, LinkedIn is the social network that mastered the technological aspect of networking events.
On LinkedIn, you network with people by adding them as 'connections,' similar to how you'd make a friend request on Facebook. Still, compared to Facebook (for better understanding), the LinkedIn layout is identical to Facebook. These features are more specialized because they cater to professionals, but in general, if you know how to use Facebook or any other similar social network, LinkedIn is somewhat comparable.
So what are the features of LinkedIn?
LinkedIn offers some basic features to help you on the road to road your marketing career and journey.
Home - This is where you will see posts by other LinkedIn users. You, too, can make posts for your network and connections to see.
Profile - Here, you can go all out with information that describes you: a profile photo, name, location, occupation, relevant fields. LinkedIn provides you the possibility to summarize your CV by submitting a work experience summary, education summary.
Network - Here is where you can see your existing network of connections and search for LinkedIn users to invite to join your network. You can also see current invitations you've received from others.
Jobs - Here, you can search and apply for jobs that fit your resume and fields of employment. In addition, you can set up notifications and get emails when there are new job postings.
Statistics About LinkedIn
The word “professional” does not go well with most “social networks,” but LinkedIn revolutionalized the space. The numbers are excellent.
As of 2020, over 722 million professionals use LinkedIn to cultivate their careers and businesses.
LinkedIn stops showing your actual number of connections once you have 500 because it's about quality, not quantity.
Long-form content is viral and excellent on LinkedIn and gets the most shares out of any content.
LinkedIn SlideShare has 70 million monthly active users.
The platform currently has over 660 million registered users, with 303 million of them being active monthly.
90 million of these users are senior-level influencers, and 63 million are in decision-making positions
45% of marketers have also gained customers through the platform.
65% of B2B companies have used LinkedIn paid ads to acquire customers.
95% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn for organic content marketing, making it the top-rated social media platform.
What is the content on LinkedIn like?
The numbers on LinkedIn are backed by the fact that there is value and content for the millions of users that access the platform. In addition, LinkedIn allows for different kinds of content.
Articles, which can be posted on your profile or LinkedIn Pulse, are a prevalent form of content, followed by slide shows and links redirecting to a website.
A study by OkDork, which analyzed more than 3,000 LinkedIn posts, found that “how-to” and list posts performed best, especially those with titles that had 40-49 characters. Additionally, it found that posts with five headings had the most views. It also revealed that long-form content (1,900-2,000 words) performed the best and content with eight images.
Video for LinkedIn Marketing is a masterstroke.
Visual content is a master strategy for all social media, and this applies to LinkedIn. For example, on top of the video, photos are precious on LinkedIn.
"I see video as a megatrend, same order as mobile,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have fully adopted the video trend and have seen their platforms grow by leaps and bounds. LinkedIn tapped into this too. It was discovered that 59% of executives said they would choose to consume it via video if the content was found in both video and written format.
Video on LinkedIn has come a long way. Videos used to be embedded for viewership, but now, videos can be added normally, even through the mobile app. Video on LinkedIn was only rolled out for users in August 2017 and was quickly named among the most effective platforms for video marketing.
From then on, LinkedIn video usage has just gotten better as the platform made possible the use of filters and native video ads. In addition, with advertising comes the luxury of targeting so your content can be seen by people with a specific job title in a particular location as stipulated by the parameters of your advert.
So, what is LinkedIn Marketing?
A social media strategy marketing strategy is essential. Furthermore, a LinkedIn marketing strategy is necessary. By posting engaging content and participating in industry discussions, businesses using LinkedIn can market to potential customers and partners.
For LinkedIn Marketing, you need to have a LinkedIn Business Page.
With a company name, email, logo, and contact details, you can build yourself a LinkedIn Business page. Below is what we extracted from LinkedIn's help page to show you how to set up a page for your business, step by step.
1. On the LinkedIn homepage, click the Work icon in the top right corner.
2. Select "Create a company page" and choose an option from the list that fits the page type you need for your business.
You have these choices for the business type:
Small business
Medium to large business
3. Fill out your page identity, company, and profile details.
4. After you fill out all your information, check the verification box to confirm that you can operate the account on behalf of your business.
5. Select "Create page." You may receive an error message if your company page doesn't meet the requirements, including having an actual company and business email. You may also be denied because you've exceeded your page creation limit.
6. If you do not get an error message, select "Start building your page" to customize.
Below are some Linkedin marketing tips to use for your business
1. Grow your email marketing list
Have you made connections? Yes? Good. Cultivate a personal relationship with your links. Write to them and invite them to be part of your email marketing list and be up to speed with the services and products you offer.
LinkedIn lets you add 50 connections into a chain - you may want to apologize for some generalization in the emails. Be sure to tell them what they will be receiving if they signed up. Furthermore, if you have offers, make them known too.
2. Make use of high-quality content
Content is king. It could be visual or written. Make sure to optimize it for search engines.
According to Marketing Insider Group, every additional page of quality content is a new landing page, or avenue, for consumers to find you through. In addition, by maintaining high-quality content, you will also position yourself as an expert in the industry.
3. Good content is supposed to go viral
It is not good content if it does not get seen and drive traffic. Posting directly on LinkedIn is the most potent tool available on LinkedIn today. Share the content widely. Use your post updates to post links to relevant content.
If a post begins to gain some momentum, LinkedIn will put a spotlight behind it in one of their categories, and it can get tens of thousands of readers (or more).
4. Join and start LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups provide a place for professionals to share content, find answers, post/view jobs, make business connections, and establish themselves as experts within their industry.
These platforms collect professionals from all circles and walks of life who give you their audience.
5. Your employees give you a vote of thanks
Get all your employees to use LinkedIn constantly and complete the profiles with the company name well defined in employment. Let them include appropriate photos and relevant job history describing how they help your business and professional connections.
6. Check out other company pages and conversations
Keep up with the works of your partners, customers, and prospects’ company pages. Engage with them by commenting, liking, and sharing their updates is a great way to get your company on your prospects’ radar. Keeping in conversations makes them trust you as a source of credible information and service.
7. Hard sells are not the way to go
A hard sell refers to an advertising or sales approach that features especially direct and insistent language. A hard sell is designed to get consumers to purchase a good or service quickly rather than evaluate their options and potentially decide to wait on the purchase.
Forcing a hard sale on employees will make them lose morale as they will be ticking off KPIs rather than use their creativity to get the message across. On the side of the customers and prospects will avoid your products if it is forced down their throats on the side of the customers and prospects.
8. Employ the use of LinkedIn Ads
With sponsored updates, businesses pay to push their post onto an individual's LinkedIn feed. This 'pay-per-click or 'pay-per-1,000' impression feature offers demographics similar to other social platforms (location, gender, and age), but one key differentiation is the ability to customize based on the company name, job title, job function, skills, schools, and groups. As a result, users can target interested industries without competing against the noise of irrelevant companies and messages.
The Ads are targeted towards a specific potion as defined by your parameters. LinkedIn also provides premium display advertising.
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