LinkedIn is a Social Networking platform that is extremely unique. It shuns the conventional social sharing aspects of popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to focus on creating a more professional atmosphere. LinkedIn’s original utility was to highlight their user’s professional achievements, but it has expanded to include a tremendous amount of functionality that enables it to be used as a marketing tool and over the course of this article, we’ll be going over how LinkedIn can form an essential part of your overall Social Media strategy.
First, let’s go over some of the salient features of LinkedIn’s platform and what makes it such an effective B2B marketing tool. Well, LinkedIn today encourages users to form connections rather than gain “followers” or “friends”. These connections are formed on the basis of commonalities like shared interests, past and present employment records and other connections that you have formed. Growing your network on LinkedIn is supposed to boost your search for opportunities, but a larger network on LinkedIn also gives you influence amongst other users. This professional set up is perfect to avoid tactics like spam and hard selling, both of which are frowned upon. There is a certain standard expected for every interaction on this platform, and this standard can be restrictive, but also advantageous in equal measures.
Here are some effective B2B tactics to market your brand using LinkedIn.
- Use your company page as a means to gain leads
On LinkedIn, your company page has to be your chief attraction. You can use your company page to tell people what you do, your achievements, your history as a company, share pictures, post vacancies, etc. And while these are all very convenient utilities, you need to combine all of these to create a LinkedIn Page that works for you.
Use your space on the page effectively, your profile image and header image should combine well to ensure you maintain a consistent visual theme throughout the page. The first 2 lines of your company description are very important because they are the two lines of text first visible to the viewers (User needs to click on “Read More” to see your entire description) A great example of these 2 lines in action are on the “Teleperformance India” LinkedIn Page. “Teleperformance is the global leader in Outsourced Omnichannel Customer Experience Management.” This is a concise description that gives you a great idea of what the company does while implying they are an established name.
- Start a group
LinkedIn’s prime function is that of a powerful networking tool and one of the best ways you can harness this advantage is by creating groups of your own. However, this shouldn’t be done immediately. Join groups and interact within them to get a lay of the land, then identify opportunities to create a group of your own. As a group moderator, your tone and behaviour is extremely important. Deal with matters authoritatively and never hard sell to your fellow group members. Your growing influence within a group will drive your performance. LinkedIn groups are also a great way to gather your target audience and interact with them.
- Publish content that promotes you and your brand
LinkedIn has a powerful content publishing tool, but it isn’t available to all users yet. If you have the access, use the tool widely as a means to gain exposure and use that to grow your influence. The better the content that you post, the more people will be attracted to it and the more influence you will accrue.
The strategy to be applied for B2B marketing on LinkedIn is broad, but not particularly labour intensive so a company can spend just a few hours a week bolstering their LinkedIn account to capture leads. At The Socialist, we believe that LinkedIn is a powerful platform that has not yet achieved its full potential and could change the way B2B marketing has been done traditionally.
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