For the longest time, LinkedIn did not seem as appealing as Instagram or Facebook. Sure, many of us often assume that we probably will not generate as much traffic from LinkedIn as we could from other social sites.
But I believe that we often overlook the fact that LinkedIn’s audience is essentially businesses and consumers across the world looking to achieve similar needs and goals rightly aligned with growing and sustaining our organisations.
FACT: According Hubspot’s recent study, LinkedIn has almost three times higher visitor-to-lead conversion rate as compared to both Twitter and Facebook.
Now since each LinkedIn visitor with a business-focused mindset has so much potential to offer to you and your business, how exactly can you increase engagement and drive traffic – CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT!
Common mistakes we make while creating content on LinkedIn
Are you guilty of any of the following?
– Digressing and not sticking to a single point: Many users who share content often begin with a single point but suddenly switch to a promotional angle all in the same post. For instance, if you start off with a cool update about hosting a meet and greet for students at a college campus, your followers would love to know how you planned it, what was the turnout like, the eventflow and so on. Don’t just stop at the “what”.
– Promoting yourself way too much: You might be a thought leader, a renowned speaker or a recognised entrepreneur, but if all you focus on is promoting yourself and your work in every single picture and text – people might start to question it and maybe even unfollow you.
– Not having a solid LinkedIn content strategy: If you seek to gain opportunities and achieve bigger marketing goals, aimlessly posting irrelevant content will get you nowhere on LinkedIn. Don’t you want your audience to come back to you for more? Let’s keep the creative juices flowing!
– Being too informal:Remember, LinkedIn is a professional networking site. It is acceptable and even the norm to post selfies and use slang on Facebook or Instagram. But the best thing you can do is be more professional and formal on LinkedIn.
While these are some of the more common mistakes we are all prone to making, you can reap the benefits of LinkedIn marketing by just paying attention to what you are doing, studying statistics and insights, making a few changes in your approach and exploring what has not been done before.
How often do you interact on LinkedIn?
Very few marketers spend substantial time networking on LinkedIn, a premier B2B social media platform. Do you treat Linked in as a résumé posting service or spend more time on Twitter or Facebook?
Maybe it is time for a change.
LinkedIn’s news feed uses an algorithm to show updates that will most interest viewers based on their contacts, past behavior and other factors – a lot like Facebook.
Did you know that the LinkedIn algorithm sends content through to its users after undergoing several filters?
It weeds out spam, low-quality content, holds posts on the feed temporarily to measure engagement, reviews the quality of the poster, the poster’s network and the post’s relevance and usefulness to the poster’s network. Finally, after all this, humans behind-the-scenes review the post’s quality.
Now, let’s get creative and learn how to excel. I have put down a few important things you could start right away!
5 changes you must make to get noticed on LinkedIn
A bit of time, energy and perspective can make a huge difference between growing your business and tackle a static page.
If you have been making the effort to stay active and stand out on LinkedIn, you probably already know the simple things to do, like posting regularly, adding a personal touch to the content and schedule it to go on weekday mornings.
But there are more areas one should focus on:
- Ask the right questions and get your connections to respond:
Seeking opinions or starting a healthy debate with the help of your post is a great way to slowly make conversations, connect on a more personal level with your connections and build professional relations.TIP: Do you take the time to respond to the posts you chance upon on your feed? Remember, it’s a two way street. If you don’t already do this, begin now! - Hashtags, whether you find them cool or boring, can do wonders to your visibility:
Even if you are not a hashtag person, you just have to use them sooner or later. While some never do and most users exploit it, when used in the correct manner hashtags can help. Strategically ensure that they are relevant and linked to your post, company and industry.TIP:Three relevant hashtags should suffice! - Gauge your audience’s attention span and implement the 8-second rule:
Even if you have a good attention span, the norm is your audience probably do not. Viewers of social media have the worst attention span – only 8 seconds or less – which means you need to get your content game up and interesting like never before. Wait, you don’t believe me? Well, tell me this – do you read past two sentences of a post if the first line doesn’t draw you in? - Switch up your content and try adding videos often:
Believe it or not, video content is dominating LinkedIn. Short, concise and attractive videos are a great way to convey heaps of information in a lot less time. This is something I follow in my content routine as well. To get the best reach, the key is to upload directly to LinkedIn rather than linking it to a third party site. - The worst thing to do is being “salesy” with every post you share:
Every single marketer has the same strategy today – Spam, promote and repeat. Do you agree? Fair enough, we all seek to reach the masses but often forget to engage and make a real effort. Try this starting today and observe the changes – comment on posts, initiate discussions on your blog post, ask for feedback and start treating your audience like the smart and opinionative human beings that they really are!
Divert from the norm and experience higher levels of sustained engagement that you truly deserve!
P.S. Here are 5 ways we can help you accelerate your Lead Generation results:
1. Grab our free 4-Week LinkedIn Profile Optimisation Course
It’s the road map to positioning your profile in the top 5% of the 700 million LinkedIn users
currently active – Click Here
2. Join our FREE LinkedIn Group and connect with entrepreneurs who are scaling too
It’s our Facebook community where smart entrepreneurs learn to get more leads and smart
ways to scale using LinkedIn — Click Here
3. Register for our FREE LinkedIn update webinar
Every 12-Weeks you can join us for a free update on all the latest news, ninja tips and
outline of new features released by LinkedIn – Click Here
4. Join our LinkedIn Inner Circle Solo Program on our Free Trial
Click Here for more details
5. Work with our team privately
If you’d like to work directly with us to create new marketing opportunities send us a quick message Click here … tell us a little about your business and we’ll organise a time for a deeper chat