Tip of the Day: Treat LinkedIn as a massive NETWORKING EVENT.

In 2021 there are 740 million members on LinkedIn and over 55 million registered businesses. The platform may not be as saturated as Facebook, Instagram, or other multi-billion user networks. However, on LinkedIn, you’re dealing with a niche audience. The majority of LinkedIn users are career-driven individuals between the ages of 25 – 54. The largest age group on LinkedIn is people between 30 and 49. Therefore, it opens the door into the world of professionals of all industries – some you can learn from, some you can make meaningful business connections with, and some – yes – offer your services to.

Utilizing this platform as a part of your social media strategy of 2021 is extremely beneficial and is an absolute must, especially for the B2B companies.

To succeed on LinkedIn, you must first understand how the platform works. LinkedIn is a business place – it’s more formal and respectful than any other social network. What do people normally do on LinkedIn:

• Search for employment opportunities
• Look for industry news
• Network
• Build relationships with potential clients

In 2021 marketers get a lot more reach on LinkedIn than ever before. This has to do with the LinkedIn algorithm. What differentiates LinkedIn from Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms is that your posts can go viral even if you don’t have a large audience. Content on LinkedIn is slower-paced – the same post that has been published 7-14 days can still show up on top of people’s feeds if it keeps getting good engagement. Posts are shown to the people in your network, and once someone’s engaged with it, their connections and followers will be able to see it too.

With that said, your LinkedIn growth strategy in 2021 is to figure out how to get people to engage with your posts. We suggest jumping on that trend now because it will not last forever.

In 2021 LinkedIn prioritizes accounts that post content consistently (Surprise!), and content that keeps people on the platform. Therefore, instead of trying to encourage people to leave the platform with blog posts and YouTube video links, repurpose all content, and publish it natively.

Several tactics can help you grow your business on LinkedIn. If you’re wondering how you can leverage both the company page and your personal account, here are some tips.

LinkedIn content strategy 2021: what to post, how and when

via GIPHY

There are two primary ways to post on LinkedIn: LinkedIn Update and LinkedIn Publisher. Think of those as Twitter posts vs Facebook Posts – one’s short and informative, the other is lengthy and in-depth. Both allow you to communicate directly with your audience.

Typically, LinkedIn users share photos, videos, and/or plain text posts. If you publish video content, make sure to add captions, as most users watch videos with sound off.

You want to post on LinkedIn at least once daily, but not more than twice. As far as what time you should post – try to keep your posting schedule within business hours. Content published on weekends may not be as effective due to a specific niche of the platform.

Articles posted on LinkedIn are indexed by Google, which means, adding good keywords is a must to ensure wider exposure and searchability. Take advantage of hashtags to increase your reach. Pin your favorite hashtags to stay up to date with industry news and find relevant content quickly. Create custom hashtags to allow easy search for your content.

WARNING: Be careful with Curated Content – basically, reposts. If you’re seeing suggestions from LinkedIn to share trending posts that fall into a category of your interests, keep in mind, that may not be the best practice if you’re trying to keep users’ attention on your page. As we’ve established earlier, like any other social media platform, LinkedIn wants to keep users on the platform as long as possible, and sharing content that is already going viral and is interesting to multiple people is a great way to make people want to stay and interact longer. However, your goal is to keep people on YOUR page, get to know YOU or YOUR BUSINESS. By sharing other people’s content you will take the attention away from your brand.

LinkedIn stories. Stories on LinkedIn are similar to other platforms, but each story is up to 20 seconds long. Promote full-length content to take advantage of the feature. Compose your stories in a way that encourages viewers to engage and reply. Show behind the scenes, share business tips, provide value. Remember, stories work better than inbound messages.

Company page.

The simplest way to generate leads via the company page is to optimize it as you would a landing page on your website. It must have a clear message of what services your business provides, contain a conversation opener, effective CTA’s, and attractive appearance that is designed strategically. Figure out why you want to use LinkedIn, which will help you optimize your profile.

If you’re hiring, make sure to post the open positions on LinkedIn as it would provide exposure to potential employees.

Use the content you post on your personal page, and repost it to your company page. Encourage your employees to post on behalf of the company, and share their posts. This will promote credibility and genuine content.

Personal page.

When people look at your LinkedIn profile, they subconsciously try to answer these three questions: Is this individual useful? Are they credible? Is interacting with them can help me right now? Optimize your personal page in a way that answers these three questions.

LinkedIn Groups are very similar to Facebook Groups. You can join groups to network, get new followers, connect with people, open conversations, lead new followers to your page. Be active, give value – this will attract people and help you build personal relationships. Let people see that you’re knowledgeable about your industry and that you could be a useful connection.

How to be efficient on LinkedIn in 2021:

Whether you’re interacting from your personal page or on behalf of your business, there are a few common practices that can help you get exposure on LinkedIn.

• Have a LinkedIn outreach strategy. Put some thought into growing your network. Connect with competitors (watch what they do, figure out what you can learn from them); reach out to potential clients.
• Get to know your audience – understand them as people. What do they do as a job, what are their emotional triggers, what interests them? Get personal, open a conversation to your niche. Know who you are creating content for.
• Encourage people to engage with your content.
• Track reactions, engagement, and conversions. Figure out a message that works.
• Be active on the platform. Follow industry leaders, and create meaningful responses to their posts. Leaving valuable comments that are relevant to your industry can spark a conversation with like-minded individuals, introduce you to potential clients, as well as drive traffic to your personal or business page.
• Encourage your current clients to refer new prospects to you. Have an incentive structure in place to generate new leads.

Reach out to potential clients, but try to not sound as if you’re copy/pasting the same message to 50 different people. Get creative with your approach and treat your leads as human beings. As the article title suggests, LinkedIn is a massive networking event with all kinds of opportunities for your business. If you wish to talk to us about your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy, fill out the form below, and we’ll happily hop on a call and talk about your goals for 2021.