Be a Pro, Post to LinkedIn
Many local businesses focus their time and money on Facebook and Twitter to build awareness, encourage engagement and increase conversions. But what about LinkedIn? Well, you’d be surprised to find that only 57% of companies are using company pages (Forbes). That means 43% of companies are not present on LinkedIn, the largest professional social network with over 380 million members (LinkedIn). Yeah, I don’t get it: how can a company reach their full potential without LinkedIn?
Before I go on about how badly companies need LinkedIn, it’s important to say that not all do need it. It depends on the business as well as the target audience. In this case, let’s assume the audience is professionals from one of the following industries: education, IT, financial services, retail, computer software, marketing or healthcare. These industries combined account for more than 80% of the LinkedIn user base (Business Insider). We all know it’s important to be where your customers are.
Here are three solid reasons why LinkedIn is a tool that should be top of mind for companies.
1. Expand your reach.
Awareness is the beginning of every buying cycle, so let’s start with that.
Since 59% of LinkedIn users do not visit Twitter, companies with only a Twitter account can significantly improve their reach by simply establishing a presence on LinkedIn (Marketing Pilgrim). At the very minimum, companies need to create and maintain an accurate company page. These pages allow businesses to list their location information, create targeted status updates, show slides of content and more.
The next step of expanding brand reach using LinkedIn: post thought leadership content and share interesting and relevant articles almost every single day. Compelling content attracts new followers and gives them an opportunity to engage with the business. LinkedIn suggests to post about 20 times a month to reach 60 percent of your LinkedIn audience (LinkedIn). This regular posting doesn’t just build awareness, it also builds relationships.
The business should ask followers to like, comment and share their company posts, because just like any other social site, those actions will improve their reach.
2. Build stronger customer relationships.
By posting to LinkedIn, a business is already winning. LinkedIn members are more than two times more likely to trust info provided on LinkedIn than other social network (LinkedIn).
Part of the battle is continually publishing content that followers actually want to see. Here’s the trick: LinkedIn has found that 63% of members prefer to see posts about industry insights, followed by 53% about company news and 43% about new products and services (LinkedIn). There’s no magic formula, but mixing your posts to align with these categories is a good start. Similar to other social media sites, these numbers suggest you should offer a hearty mix of content. LinkedIn followers want to be more productive and successful, which is why informative posts such as industry insights see the highest engagement rates.
3. Boost your chances of a sale
Of course, ROI is the end goal, but it’s really tough to track. Take comfort knowing that if you have a solid strategy, LinkedIn members are almost 50% more likely to buy from a company they engage with on LinkedIn (LinkedIn). In order to accomplish a number like this, businesses must strategically engage followers. That means monitoring comments, continuing the conversation and further demonstrating expertise.
On a side note, LinkedIn helps businesses drive traffic to their website—64% of all visits from social media sites to corporate websites come from LinkedIn (Econsultancy). so make sure your site is easy to navigate, mobile friendly and a provides a positive user experience, because that traffic can contribute to your leads.
Bottom line: if you don’t have a company page, go get one, post to it, and strategically engage customers. Every day.
With the Vendasta platform, you can:
✓ Post ready-to-publish articles and images to LinkedIn company pages.
✓ Effortlessly discover compelling content using the RSS Feed library and Twitter content searches.
✓ Schedule an unlimited number of posts.
✓ Offer a Do It Yourself (DIY), Do It For Me (DIFM) or Do It With Me (DIWM™) service model.