For small businesses looking to expand their professional network, LinkedIn remains one of the best platforms to make connections.
With over 740 million users, the business centric platform offers a wealth of networking opportunities for professionals.
However, LinkedIn is not a social network where you can just stick up some generic posts and expect leads to come your way.
As part of your business growth strategy, you need to actively find your audience and most importantly, engage with them.
Through the power of LinkedIn, small businesses are able to easily find the right people to grow their brand and use their services. But, not many businesses are actually using the platform to its full capability and may be missing out on a number of leads.
In this post, we take a look at different strategies to incorporate into your LinkedIn business page, in order to increase your engagement rate:
1. Write text-only posts
Unlike most other social media channels, text only content seems to generate more engagement on LinkedIn. This is because LinkedIn prefers content that keeps users on their platform, rather than directing them away.
Your content must be compelling for readers to stop scrolling and engage with it, though.
Always try to use some facts or statistics and keep your posts informative. You need to be offering your followers value, if you want something in return.
Catch the reader’s attention and keep posts easily readable with strong headings, bullet points and simple sentences.
The top performing posts tend to be quite long, so don’t shy away from the 1300-character limit.
2. Join relevant groups
There are many different types of LinkedIn groups, which vary in effectiveness depending on your business. However, all groups are a great place to share your content, increase your brand recognition and build authority within your niche. They can also be a good place to offer advice to other professionals and expand your networking circle.
If you consistently share valuable content and remain active in these groups, then other professionals will start to engage with your page. By joining industry related groups, you can see what your potential customers are looking for and tailor your content to their needs.
It’s a little similar to email marketing, as you can send out one post to a huge number of industry related readers.
3. Use video content
Video plays a huge part in the LinkedIn marketing space.
With video content playing automatically on LinkedIn, it is believed to capture the reader’s attention more easily and therefore increases the chances of higher engagement.
LinkedIn Video is a very useful media format that you can post directly from your phone, desktop or laptop.
Video should definitely be incorporated into your business growth strategy as you are much more likely to rank at the top of people’s news feeds. Furthermore, video is a great way to help your followers put a face to the name and builds trust with potential clients.
4. Follow relevant hashtags
If you’re a small business looking to expand your network and get in front of potential customers or clients, you need to show LinkedIn that you have shared interests. A good way to do this is by using the same hashtags as your target audience.
Take a look through some of your customers posts and note what hashtags they use. The best hashtags are those that have a strong following but are niche enough for you to be noticed.
Share your valuable, industry-related content using these hashtags, in order to build up your brand awareness and increase your reach.
If you’re struggling to find many related hashtags that are proving to receive good traction, try using established sites like Kicksta to generate your first set.
5. Engage with others
Another way to improve your LinkedIn marketing strategy is to interact and engage with other users.
By leaving a personalised comment on other people’s posts, it increases the chances that they will return the favour for you. Find other LinkedIn users following a similar hashtag and leave a tailored comment on their posts about their work – you will find that most people will do the same back.
Similarly, if people comment or engage with your LinkedIn posts, don’t just leave it there. You will see an increase in your engagement if you come back and reply to all of your comments after a couple of hours.
Why? Because users will then be notified that they have a response and will be more likely to return and continue with the conversation.
A good way to do so is to ask a question related to your post as this prompts another response from the user and helps to keep your initial post active.
Need help growing your LinkedIn presence? Get in touch with our London-based digital marketing agency today. We have 7 years of expereince managing Social Media for UK businesses across a number of industries, including LinkedIn marketing for businesses. Email us on contact@socialchameleon.com or visit our Contact us page to fill out an enquiry form.