Are you looking for a way to increase your visibility and reach more potential customers? Look no further than LinkedIn! As the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn provides an incredible opportunity for businesses to connect with their target audience.
At Sarah Platt Online, we understand how important it is to make the most out of this powerful platform. That’s why we’re here to share our top tips on how you can leverage your LinkedIn network for maximum exposure! In this blog post, you will learn strategies that will help get your business in front of new people and expand its reach. Keep reading to find out more about what you need to do in order to take advantage of all that LinkedIn has to offer!
Creating a Professional Profile on LinkedIn
Creating a professional profile on LinkedIn is essential for any business owner looking to leverage the platform for maximum exposure. Start by filling out your profile with all relevant information about yourself and your business, such as job titles, work experience, education, certifications, and skills. Also, be sure to include a photo of yourself that looks professional and inviting. This will help you build connections with other professionals on the platform.
The key thing to remember here is to complete your profile headline in a way that describes who your clients are, how you help/serve them, and (if you have enough characters left) how you deliver that for them. This ensures that when you request to connect with people, they will see the first ~100 characters of your headline, so they can make an immediate judgement about whether you can help them & how.
When you request to connect with people or they send you a request, there’s a little icon with your/their picture and a description (which is actually the headline from your/their bio). You need to make sure that the first little bit they see when you ask to connect with them is explaining exactly the types of people that you work with and what you bring to the table so that they know how you can help them. Those two things are really important, it shows people that you’re talking to them specifically and that you can help them with whatever it is that you want to do for them. You need to be really clear about explaining what it is that you do and who you will do it for.
Building Your Network and Connecting with Other Professionals
Building your network and connecting with other professionals on LinkedIn is an essential part of leveraging the platform for maximum exposure. To start off, develop a strategy for who you want to connect with – this could include industry experts, potential customers, or even media personalities. Once you’ve identified the type of contacts you want to reach out to, start reaching out and making connections.
Use the search feature to find people who have the job title, demographics or other characteristics of your ideal customer, then simply click to connect with them. You can do around 10 a day, but I wouldn’t do much more than that or LinkedIn will start limiting your options around this search feature.
It can be useful to vet them slightly, to ensure they are fairly active on LinkedIn – I do this by only connecting with people who have a profile photo, and sometimes I also check when they last posted or interacted on the platform.
Make sure to remove any connection requests you’ve sent, if they’ve not been answered within a month, so that you keep in LinkedIn’s good books – they don’t like to see a lot of outstanding / unanswered requests, as it suggests you’re a scammer.
You can use LinkedIn’s messaging feature to introduce yourself (but I personally don’t recommend this, as it takes too much time, and almost always feels spammy), or join groups related to your industry in order to reach more people.
Using Hashtags to Reach a Wider Audience
Using hashtags on LinkedIn is a great way to reach a wider audience and increase your visibility. Hashtags are used to categorise and tag posts, allowing them to be found by more people. When using hashtags on LinkedIn, it’s important to keep in mind that the hashtag should be relevant to the content you’re posting and should be used sparingly (i.e. no more than three per post). Additionally, it’s a good idea to research relevant hashtags and trends before creating your own hashtag. You can do this with a simple browser search for “hashtag research”.
Engaging with Your Followers Through Posts, Polls, and Discussions
Engaging with your followers on LinkedIn is a great way to further increase your visibility and reach more potential customers. Posts, polls and discussions are all effective ways to engage with your followers in a meaningful way.
Posts are an excellent way to share helpful content such as blog posts, videos or photos that could be of interest to your followers. Polls can be used to get feedback from your followers and gain valuable insights into their needs and interests. Lastly, discussions are a great way to open up conversations with your followers and start meaningful dialogues.
The other key way to engage with your connections, and hence keep yourself top of their mind, is by simply Liking or reacting to any of their posts or comments. I recommend that you go down your Notifications feed and Home feed at least a couple of times a week, reacting (and commenting if you so wish) on anything that catches your eye. If there’s a particular person who’s radar you want to get on, then you can search for them and interact (positively!) with them.
By leveraging the tips we’ve outlined here, you can make the most out of your LinkedIn network. With a little effort and time, you can reap the rewards of being more visible on this powerful platform!
Showcase What You Do
This information is in your bio but is also achieved by sharing content regularly.
Aim to put something out at least once a week. Twice a week would be better and every day is even better again. I recommend that you use the scheduling function within LinkedIn, to create a week or a month’s worth of posts ahead of time – that way you add anything that you want to post “in the moment” but otherwise can set it all up beforehand and then focus on delivering to your customers.
It’s better to be consistent, than to post a whole week’s worth of content and then post nothing for a month. Being consistent and regular keeps you in the forefront of people’s minds.
What should I post?
Put a range of content out there. Tell people what it’s like to work with you and share social proof from people that endorse positive things about working with you. Share information that relates to your industry, that’s useful to people who are going to want to work with you. Have a think about what they would want to know, what are the key things that are really important to them and share your expertise on it. You do have expertise!
If you can use video (either live or pre-recorded) that will be best, but also share a range of case studies and outcomes that customers have received from you, together with a proportion of posts telling people exactly how you can help them, and where they need to go/click in order to access that product or service from you. Tell people how they can buy from you!
Leveraging Your Network for Advertising Opportunities
Advertising on LinkedIn can be a powerful way to reach new customers and expand your business’s reach. However, I would not recommend using an expert (SP Online can help with this!) if this is something you’re interested in exploring. This is because it is possible for LinkedIn to burn through a significant amount of cash with no results, if you’re not sure what you’re doing. In addition, the organic (ie. non-paid) methods outlined above are SO powerful on LinkedIn, you usually don’t need to use a paid method on this platform.
If you do decide to proceed with LinkedIn Ads, it’s important to have a well-thought out strategy in order to maximise the success of your campaigns. Start by researching which type of advertisements would be most effective for your particular industry. There are a variety of different types, such as sponsored messages, display ads and sponsored InMail. Once you’ve identified the type of ad you want to use, create a target audience for your campaign and start testing different versions of your advertisement to see which one performs best.
By following these strategies outlined in this post, you can get the most out of your LinkedIn network. With a little effort and time, you can grow your followers, engage with them in meaningful ways and reach new customers with advertising opportunities.
Utilising Sponsored Content to Target Specific Audiences
Utilising sponsored content on LinkedIn to target specific audiences is an effective way of creating a personalised advertising experience. You can use the platform’s targeting capabilities to reach audience segments based on location, job title, age, industry and more.
Additionally, you can use advanced targeting options such as retargeting and lookalike audiences to further refine your campaign.
By utilising sponsored content, you can create a highly personalised experience for potential customers and ensure that they’re seeing the right message at the right time. This type of targeting will help increase engagement with your ads and ultimately lead to more conversions.
Analysing Results of Organic Activity (or Ads if you’re running them) and Adjusting Strategies Accordingly
Analysing the results of your LinkedIn activities is a crucial step in understanding how successful they have been and adjusting your strategies accordingly. By looking at the performance metrics, you can gain insights into what’s working and what needs to be improved.
One of the key metrics for organic activity is looking at the trend of Profile Viewers (how many people have viewed your profile either in response to your connections requests, or because they want to find out more about you). It’s also useful to look at Search Appearances, which shows you how many times you’ve appeared in someone’s search and the keywords they found you under.
For paid Ads, metrics such as impressions, clicks, likes, and shares can help you understand which content resonates best with your audience. Additionally, you can use analytics tools to measure the effectiveness of your ads and uncover valuable insights into how they’re performing.
By analysing the results of your LinkedIn activity, you can adjust your strategies accordingly and ensure that you’re getting the most out of your organic and advertising investment. With a few tweaks, you could vastly improve the success of your campaigns and increase conversions.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is a powerful platform, and if you use it correctly, it can be an invaluable asset to your business. With the right strategies, such as maximising organic strategies, leveraging sponsored content, utilising targeting options and analysing results, you can take advantage of the potential that this platform offers to reach new customers and grow your business.
Thanks for reading! We hope this article on how to correctly use LinkedIn for your business gives you the insights and strategies you need to get started.
Good luck with your campaigns and happy networking.
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