By Serhat Pala
Most of us begin our days by checking for messages on Twitter, Facebook or Snapchat.
Then we end our days posting updates and catching up with friends and family on Facebook and the other social media networks.
Over 54 percent of Americans use social media on a daily basis. Some users check their accounts more than 10 times per day, according to data from Deloitte.
But social media is not just Facebook.
While Facebook still rules the roost, social media comes in all shapes and sizes: From photo and video sharing sites to social bookmarking to instant messaging to social discovery to sharing posts and updates.
Facebook leads the pack with nearly 1.3 billion users worldwide, with China's QZone taking second place. What is eye opening is that LinkedIn – long considered the dark horse in the social media race – actually comes up at number four, with over 300 million active users. LinkedIn in fact, was one of the fastest growing social networks in 2013.
More than just being fast growing, LinkedIn is fast turning into a great referral source for corporate websites. As per data from Econsultancy, “…64 percent of all user visits to corporate websites from social media came from LinkedIn.” Facebook, despite its mega user base, is nowhere close – with only a 17 percent share of all user visits to corporate sites.
As a marketer, your job is to take your brand to where your audience is. So when you see LinkedIn growing in importance and popularity, don't let it slip through your fingers as an effective social media marketing platform.
Here are some tips on how to grow your brand equity with the people who matter – your audience on LinkedIn.
The Right Kind of Content
Relevant content = engaged audience = better ROI.
LinkedIn is a professional platform that people access to advance their careers or businesses. Cute kitten videos are not the smartest way to go here. According to The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn, “Industry Insights are the most sought after form of data by 60 percent of all LinkedIn users.”
To attract more and more eyeballs, make sure your posts include industry insights, not just updates about your own brand or products.
Including URLs in your posts will gain you 200 percent more engagement than posts without URLs. Images are another engagement factor with posts containing images attracting 98 percent more comments than those with no commenting system.
Timing is Everything
Time your posts to coincide with high traffic hours on your page. LinkedIn's data shows that posting in the morning hours during the working week is the most effective way of reaching users. Weekend, late afternoon and evenings find much lower user engagement.
However, don't blindly follow these numbers. Use LinkedIn analytics to find the perfect post timings for your own brand before you proceed with your posts on LinkedIn.
The Right Type of Fans
We've seen in the data above that though the total number of LinkedIn users may be lower than other social networks, the number of referrals from LinkedIn are far higher than any other social network today.
The key to building your brand on LinkedIn is to get the right kind of users to become followers and subsequently visit your website from LinkedIn.
Use Advanced Search to build your LinkedIn network by reaching out to and inviting people to join you. Don't focus on quantity in the beginning, reach out to relevant people that will improve your business and the number of followers will grow organically.
Send out a personalized message with each outreach to create a real bond at the very outset. Eventually as you find your feet on LinkedIn, you can also use paid ads to gain followers `a la Facebook or Twitter.
Promote Specific Products / Services with a Showcase Page
Every brand on LinkedIn has their own company page.
However the company page does not allow you to highlight individual products and services directly. Instead, LinkedIn allows you to create dedicated 'child pages' for the various products and services that you offer called Showcase Pages.
Forty-three percent of LinkedIn users seek out information about products and services on LinkedIn. Give them this information with detailed Showcase Pages – add a video, give contact details of individuals responsible, link back to your own website, provide updates related to that specific product, and so on.
You can create up to 10 free Showcase Pages and each of these will be displayed on your main company page for your potential followers or customers to browse through.
LinkedIn Publishing
LinkedIn's much touted entry into publishing allows individuals and brands to publish long form posts with rich media content – something that was restricted to handpicked 'LinkedIn Influencers' to date.
This is a great way of sharing your content. The posts you choose to publish are by default public and show up on Google searches, giving you that SEO edge.
A post like this one offers useful information to the brand's followers while establishing the poster as an expert in their domain. Talk about combining content marketing with social media in one swift stroke!
Don't judge LinkedIn based on its past. This is a network that today attracts the most successful and ambitious professionals with the highest levels of education and disposable income – exactly the sort of audience every brand would love to capture for themselves.
Make sure you get on it. Make doubly sure that your brand resonates with these high value users instead of having just a token presence on the platform.
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