Why Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Should Focus on LinkedIn
Do you have a LinkedIn social media marketing strategy?
While your social media strategy will likely look similar on specific platforms, your LinkedIn page should have its own strategy.
LinkedIn is the best social media platform to connect with professionals in your industry. It is one of the best tools companies can use to build their brand, connect with other professionals, generate leads, and build their reputation.
LinkedIn is a professional networking tool, while other social media platforms are more personal. Because of this, your LinkedIn social media marketing strategy needs to differ from what you do on other platforms.
Here’s why you need a powerful LinkedIn social media strategy.
Why You Should Create a LinkedIn Social Media Marketing Strategy
How you use LinkedIn should differ from how you use your other social media platforms.
Most social media platforms focus primarily on social networking. They do not focus on connecting businesses but rather on connecting people with one another. LinkedIn, on the other hand, focuses solely on professional networking.
With over 800 million users, LinkedIn is essential to growing your professional network and brand.
So, while your social media strategy for Facebook or Instagram may work on some levels, your LinkedIn social media strategy must focus on B2B marketing, connecting with professionals, and reaching out to potential new clients.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Use LinkedIn to Promote Company Content
Unlike most social media platforms, people use LinkedIn solely to promote their brand, business, or professional skills.
Most social media platforms are not meant for professionals to promote their own companies or careers – they are meant for people to share their personal lives and daily experiences.
LinkedIn encourages users to use their personal profiles to engage with their company, engage with other professionals, and create/comment on content specific to their industry. This can go a long way in demonstrating thought leadership, improving credibility, and expanding your network.
Long-Form Content
On LinkedIn, long-form content is all the rage.
Remember: LinkedIn is where people get information about businesses, brands, and other professionals. Content like videos or other educational long-form content educates people and performs best on LinkedIn.
Don’t be afraid to publish articles on LinkedIn. The more you can provide value and educate others, the better. People on LinkedIn are looking for information related to their specific industries – whether they are professionals looking to connect with other professionals or consumers interested in specific businesses or products.
Take advantage of posting long-form content not only on your page but also on groups. Engage with others and make your business visible.
Other platforms like Facebook and Instagram rely on shorter-form, to-the-point, and concise content, but LinkedIn users look for content that shows thought leadership.
Lead Generation
LinkedIn is one of the best tools businesses can use to generate leads. If your social media marketing strategy does not include a LinkedIn strategy, you could be missing out on potential leads and business growth.
LinkedIn offers many opportunities to connect with other professionals, build your brand and reputation, communicate with thought-leaders in your industry, and connect with potential customers.
By building strong connections, joining groups, and using tools like LinkedIn automated messaging, you can grow your brand, connect with leads, and improve your online visibility.
HyperSocial Can Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Lead Generation Machine
HyperSocial’s goal is to change the game on how businesses do B2B marketing and sales. We can optimize your LinkedIn profile to help you connect with prospective customers and reach your target audience. In addition, we have lead generation tools, including a LinkedIn messaging service that can help you reach hundreds of leads every month.
Learn more about how our amazing team can help you here.
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A Walkthrough of LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index
As you navigate the LinkedIn platform, you may be wondering if you’re utilizing it to its fullest ability. As B2B professionals, we know how nice it is to see data so we can use facts to aid our actions. Well, LinkedIn knows this, too, and has created the Social Selling Index.
What is the Social Selling Index?
LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index tells you how capable you are of selling on the platform. This performance indicator helps you track your sales efforts’ effectiveness on the platform. You’ll want to check your score if you have a LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription.
How LinkedIn Scores You
LinkedIn breaks its SSI score into four different categories:
- Establish your personal brand
- Find the right people
- Engage with insights
- Build relationships
Each is scored on a scale of 1-25. Your score is measured on a daily basis and shows you how it differs from the week prior.
So if you go on vacation to the Bahamas, you may notice your score drop a bit! But there’s no need to worry – you can bring it back once you’re active again.
To get your score, click this link in a browser that is logged into your LinkedIn!
A Breakdown of the SSI dashboard
Your dashboard is pretty straightforward. There are three important things to check:
- Your overall SSI score and its breakdown
- Your industry’s average overall SSI score
- Your network’s average overall SSI score
These data points give you great insight into your competitors and peers. Now let’s take a look at the components that make up your Social Selling Index score, and how you can prioritize boosting your score in each.
Establishing your personal brand
This section of your score measures how complete your personal profile is. It also takes the quality of the content you post into account. Quality can be tracked by engagement from your network.
How to boost this aspect of your score:
The easiest way to raise your score in this section is to have a complete profile. Make sure you have a banner photo, profile picture, about section, and experience section, If applicable, fill out as many sections as you can. Recommendations, publications, skills, certifications, education, etc.
You should also be posting meaningful posts from your page. This gets you on people’s timelines, so people are aware that you are active on LinkedIn. The more consistent comments and likes on your posts, the better.
Finding the Right People
This section of your score measures how well you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator and other LinkedIn search tools. It also tracks your connection rate and how actively you send connection requests.
How to boost this aspect of your score:
The easiest way to “find the right people” is to actively use Sales Navigator. You should be sending connection requests on a consistent basis. The higher your connection rate, the higher this aspect of your SSI is bound to be. So the more relevant connections you send, the better.
To boost your connection rate, send requests to people within your ideal target audience. Be sure to make efficient use of Sales Navigator’s filters to ensure efficient use of your connection requests.
Engaging with Insights
This section is scored based on the content that you repost and share. In LinkedIn’s words, they are looking for you to discover and share conversation-worthy updates.
How to boost this aspect of your score:
When you scroll through your timeline and see a post that resonates with you, engage with it! Repost it, like it, and comment on it. Reposting content will help you establish your brand while engaging with others’ content. Two birds with one stone!
The more you interact with others’ posts, the more likely it is that they will interact with yours. This will raise your score and get you interacting with your network, which brings us to our next category.
Building Relationships
This section measures how often you are engaging with your network overall. It considers how often you direct message people and how high your response rate is.
How to boost this aspect of your score:
HyperSocial knows how important it is to build relationships. And this SSI factor endorses that. You can get your score up in this category by sending more direct messages that get responses.
Your response rate plays a part in this aspect of the scoring, not just how many messages you send. So it’s important to send people thoughtful messages and not spam their inboxes with a sales pitch.
So as you can see, all four factors are connected.
To establish your personal brand, you need to be engaging with insights.
To build relationships, you need to be finding the right people.
The more you engage with content, the more relationships you build.
The more you build your personal brand, the more “right” people will engage with your content. It’s all connected!
Does your SSI score really matter?
Yes, it does. Your score is not public, so no one will be able to see how you rank. But seeing the breakdown of your score shows you where you can improve on LinkedIn. Then you can focus your efforts on that and promote your business more efficiently.
To be clear, your SSI does not determine your success at social selling. But it does promote best practices that aid in creating sales opportunities for your business. The higher your score, the better position you are in to be selling on the platform.
HyperSocial can Help you with All This and More
HyperSocial’s goal is to help B2B businesses to humanize their outreach while keeping a positive presence on LinkedIn. We prioritize building relationships above all else.
Check out more about it here!
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Why Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Should Focus on LinkedIn
Do you have a LinkedIn social media marketing strategy?
While your social media strategy will likely look similar on specific platforms, your LinkedIn page should have its own strategy.
LinkedIn is the best social media platform to connect with professionals in your industry. It is one of the best tools companies can use to build their brand, connect with other professionals, generate leads, and build their reputation.
LinkedIn is a professional networking tool, while other social media platforms are more personal. Because of this, your LinkedIn social media marketing strategy needs to differ from what you do on other platforms.
Here’s why you need a powerful LinkedIn social media strategy.
Why You Should Create a LinkedIn Social Media Marketing Strategy
How you use LinkedIn should differ from how you use your other social media platforms.
Most social media platforms focus primarily on social networking. They do not focus on connecting businesses but rather on connecting people with one another. LinkedIn, on the other hand, focuses solely on professional networking.
With over 800 million users, LinkedIn is essential to growing your professional network and brand.
So, while your social media strategy for Facebook or Instagram may work on some levels, your LinkedIn social media strategy must focus on B2B marketing, connecting with professionals, and reaching out to potential new clients.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Use LinkedIn To Promote Company Content
Unlike most social media platforms, people use LinkedIn solely to promote their brand, business, or professional skills.
Most social media platforms are not meant for professionals to promote their own companies or careers – they are meant for people to share their personal lives and daily experiences.
LinkedIn encourages users to use their personal profiles to engage with their company, engage with other professionals, and create/comment on content specific to their industry. This can go a long way in demonstrating thought leadership, improving credibility, and expanding your network.
Long-Form Content
On LinkedIn, long-form content is all the rage.
Remember: LinkedIn is where people get information about businesses, brands, and other professionals. Content like videos or other educational long-form content educates people and performs best on LinkedIn.
Don’t be afraid to publish articles on LinkedIn. The more you can provide value and educate others, the better. People on LinkedIn are looking for information related to their specific industries – whether they are professionals looking to connect with other professionals or consumers interested in specific businesses or products.
Take advantage of posting long-form content not only on your page but also on groups. Engage with others and make your business visible.
Other platforms like Facebook and Instagram rely on shorter-form, to-the-point, and concise content, but LinkedIn users look for content that shows thought leadership.
Lead Generation
LinkedIn is one of the best tools businesses can use to generate leads. If your social media marketing strategy does not include a LinkedIn strategy, you could be missing out on potential leads and business growth.
LinkedIn offers many opportunities to connect with other professionals, build your brand and reputation, communicate with thought-leaders in your industry, and connect with potential customers.
By building strong connections, joining groups, and using tools like LinkedIn automated messaging, you can grow your brand, connect with leads, and improve your online visibility.
HyperSocial Can Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Lead Generation Machine
HyperSocial’s goal is to change the game on how businesses do B2B marketing and sales. We can optimize your LinkedIn profile to help you connect with prospective customers and reach your target audience. In addition, we have lead generation tools, including a LinkedIn messaging service that can help you reach hundreds of leads every month.
Learn more about how our amazing team can help you here.
Liked this article? Here are three more!
B2B Sales and Marketing During the Holiday Season
It’s the holiday season. And you know what that means. The end of the year, a generally slower period at work, and lots of pie and hot chocolate. You’ve heard it before – B2B sales slow down during the holidays, while B2C sales speed up. Logically, it makes sense, but it doesn’t need to be the slow period you expect.
With great ideas and a plan, you can set yourself up for success and a strong start to the new year. You should be doing things like showing your clients and prospects you think of them as more than deals, and showing your employees that you value their hard work, especially during December.
The end of the year marks new beginnings and brings up emotions as families come together and memories are made and remembered. Make sure to humanize your sales and marketing efforts to align with the state of the world.
Why To Ramp up Sales and Marketing
Everyone knows marketing and sales efforts go hand-in-hand. While you should still be selling, scheduling demos, and more, you should also be running marketing campaigns during this time of year.
Marketing during the holidays can be really fun – Instagram and TikTok can be great places to create more holiday-themed relatable content about workplace culture during this time of year.
LinkedIn in December
When you are deciding where it’s best to focus your social selling efforts during the holidays, LinkedIn will be at the top of the list. While Instagram and TikTok are great places to market yourself to gain brand awareness, you’ll want to use LinkedIn to target specific people during the season.
Less Competition
Because so many businesses believe that there will be a slowdown, there will be a slowdown in sales attempts. This means there will be less competition for your team, especially in LinkedIn inboxes. There is less of a chance that your outreach gets lost in a sea of sales outreach.
Use automated outreach to ramp up your number of people contacted during this time to keep your pipeline full while you work on other things. You can even add a Holiday themed meme or gif to your messaging!
Set Yourself up for a Strong New Year
When people say “no” to buying your services or products because it’s the holiday season, you’re simply filling your pipeline for the new year. Salespeople will be able to reach out to those people come the new year, and will already have established rapport, which is one of the key sales tactics you need to close deals.
Make sure to start your year off by contacting the people you talked to in December who didn’t close. That way you can get a head start in ramping up those sales!
When you use HyperSphere, you can tag each conversation you have on LinkedIn so you will have your list of conversations to revisit easily accessible!
More Social Media Activity
More people are checking their socials during this time of year. People often forget that LinkedIn is a Social Media Platform. The rise in social media activity means that you should not put a pause on yours.
Make sure you post at least once a week, have your profile spruced up, and run automated messaging campaigns to get conversations started.
In addition to LinkedIn activity, the holiday season is also a great time to run holiday marketing campaigns on your other platforms. Post on your socials as much as possible to raise brand awareness.
This is a good time of year to post brand-aware content that does not directly attempt to sell. A great goal could be to make people feel positive when they see your content so that when you start selling again and are in their inbox, they associate your company with good feelings.
How to Help Boost Sales and Marketing
There are a ton of ways you can boost your sales and marketing efforts without adding stress and a million extra hours to your employees’ days. Here are two ways to ensure that your clients, prospective clients, and employees will all feel valued during the holiday season.
Send cards to clients and prospects
Whether it’s a card by snail mail or an E-card by email, send some cards to your current clients as well as people in your pipeline. It’s a good look that shows that you think about your clients as more than their business. You think of them as people.
Try to personalize these messages best to your abilities. Get account managers to write a short blurb or send a quick video using Loom, BombBomb, or Vidyard.
Reward your Team
Do all you can to make your marketing and sales team feel valued during this time. That can mean aligning the sales and marketing teams with company-wide bonuses, doubling commissions, giving gifts, extra vacation time, or cash incentives.
The more your employees feel valued, the harder they will work. So make sure to prioritize your employees’ happiness, especially during this time of year.
Ideas for End-of-Year Campaigns
There are tons of ways to market and sell during this time of year, but we’ve compiled some ideas to get your creative juices flowing. Some things to take into consideration when planning for this time of year are:
- Your company’s services/product
- Your company’s culture
- Your buyer’s persona
Make sure you have a clear picture of these three things, and you’ll be ready to plan a great campaign for December.
End-of-Year Analytics
You’ve all seen the Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Replay. Doing something similar to this for your clients can be a great idea. Try sharing analytics with some holiday graphics!
12 Days of Memes
Another great idea is 12 days of memes. Share one meme a day for the 12 days after Christmas to keep a constant flow of content on your pages.
Holiday Season Client Success Stories
Share client success stories around the holidays through a storytelling email campaign. This is a great way to showcase success while also highlighting the holiday season.
Planning Ahead
You should always follow a marketing calendar to make sure you are prepared as projects start up. These three ideas aren’t too time-consuming, so you can add them to your efforts even as the month is coming to its halfway point if your team has the time. End the new year on a high note!
HyperSocial can Help with all This and More!
Trying to ramp up your sales and need a helping hand? Check out our services here to learn more about how we can help.
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