Welcome to LinkedIn
Love it or hate it, Linkedin is the best social media platform to use if your business wants to connect with other businesses. Some people may think it is not as exciting or entertaining as Facebook or Instagram but it’s an extremely important business development tool in the B2B marketplace and it is vital to engage in it regularly. In this blog, we will share with you our LinkedIn top tips so that you can make better use of this platform.
LinkedIn is a social media platform so you need to be sociable.
Just like all the social media platforms, your posts should not be all about “me, me, me”. Yes I get it that you want to use social media to drum up new business contacts but you also need to engage in conversations with other people on Linkedin ie to be sociable. Like other people’s posts, comment on them and even share another person’s post too. When someone asks you for a recommendation, take a few minutes to write it – War and Peace is not required but even a few lines can make all the difference to someone.
Try applying the Pareto Rule to your Linkedin posts – 80% about others and 20% about yourself or your business.
14 content ideas for LinkedIn posts
- Products/services – pick one product/service per post and explain why people would want it. Link to the equivalent product page on your website too.
- Blog posts from your website – some content is “evergreen” so it can be shared now even if you wrote it last year. For example, our blog post “What are backlinks?” could be shared on LinkedIn whenever it is updated with new online directories.
- Top Tips – you are an expert in your industry so what advice can you give to others.
- Case studies – perhaps these are already on your website but you could also write a short case study about a recent customer.
- Your staff – on a Company Page, you could include a mini biography about a member of staff. Add some interesting details too eg about their dog, sporting interests or anything unique.
- Why is your business called what it is? Is there an interesting back story that people would be interested in?
- Testimonials – have any of your happy customers written a glowing testimonial about your business? Then share this will your LinkedIn followers too with a link to the customer’s Linkedin page too.
- National news – have you got an opinion or an angle on a national news story? For example, Portadown’s Bann Mobility shared a story about Captain Tom Moore’s use of a rollator to walk 100 laps of his garden to raise millions for the NHS during the COVID-19 lockdown in Spring 2020.
- Special offers – perhaps you could have a special offer just for your Linkedin followers.
- Industry news – an article from your professional body eg from the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
- Attending events – state that you are planning to attend, at the event and after the event. Tag the event organiser and speakers too.
- Business news from your area – especially success stories. Congratulate the business on their good news.
- Celebrate achievements – a member of staff with long service, a significant birthday or the anniversary of the business opening up.
- A thank you – if another organisation has helped you recently to overcome a problem very quickly, it is good to publicly thank them for their support.
LinkedIn Top Tips
All posts should have a visual – this could be a link from your website, a photograph, an infographic or a video.
Check that your basic profile is complete and update it regularly – both for the company and your own personal page. Also make sure that you have a custom url for your personal profile eg https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyndawillis/
Use relevant hashtags with your posts. LinkedIn even gives you suggestions for hashtags to use.
When you have posted on the company page, advise your colleagues so they can share it on their own personal pages too.
Write articles on your personal page – these are really mini blogs but they have a longer lifetime than a post as they are easier to locate.
Give recommendations to other people that you have worked with or received a service from that impressed you.
Request recommendations too from people that you have done work for. They may not always write a recommendation for you but many people do so it is worthwhile asking.
Hopefully you will find our LinkedIn top tips useful and you can start to try them out for yourself on LinkedIn.
