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LinkedIn is a great place for business- and innovation-focused thought leaders to meet and share ideas. This also makes it a natural option for B2B organizations looking for the right content marketing platform. If you want to take advantage of the growth and outreach opportunities that LinkedIn presents, these tips will help you develop a successful strategy.

The Advantages of Using LinkedIn

Though not the biggest social network, LinkedIn is arguably one of the most focused social platforms with a major user base. Its primary purpose is targeting professionals and businesses for work-, industry- and career-related connections. This makes LinkedIn a particularly useful platform for businesses that provide goods and services to other businesses. It’s also useful for individuals who are focused on a specific aspect of their professional lives.

If you’ve only used LinkedIn casually for professional networking on a personal level, you may not know the different content-sharing opportunities the platform provides. There’s a whole community of individual professionals and businesses that regularly share a variety of different content types. Through the use of articles, status updates, videos, images and other content, you can reach a new audience and grow your social presence on LinkedIn. You can also leverage your new LinkedIn following to direct traffic toward other important marketing activities, like product demo webinars or conferences to attend.

Ways to Grow Your LinkedIn Following

With all that in mind, there are a few ways you can use LinkedIn to grow your business. It’s also possible to apply some of this advice to your personal presence on the platform as well. However, it can be beneficial to approach LinkedIn content marketing as a business-related exercise. Use these tips to strengthen your business presence online and reach new followers:

Set Up a Company Page: If your company doesn’t have an independent presence on LinkedIn, that’s your first step toward growing a following in a way that’s useful for marketing. Company pages are good for SEO because Google indexes them. That’s a great reason to take this first step even if you’re a solo practitioner and have your own personal page.

Make your company page a vibrant, appealing reflection of your business. Treat it like an advertisement rather than a phone book entry. That means you should take advantage of every text and image option available, customizing everything on the page to put your company’s best foot forward.

Put the Right People in Charge: Whether your organization is small, mid-sized or large, it’s essential to hand responsibility for managing your company’s LinkedIn presence to the right person or department. This may seem like something that IT can handle initially. However, marketing departments and professionals are better positioned to make the most of the opportunity to reach further and more impactfully on LinkedIn.

Vary Your Content Focus: LinkedIn content marketing efforts can do a number of things for a business. They can help you showcase your internal values, mission and culture to strengthen your brand voice. You can also post content that showcases the ways your organization excels in a certain area, or to highlight innovations you’ve made. These two things in turn can attract both clients and talented prospective employees, which can be equally important for success and growth.

Get and Stay Active: The more you post, the better. Don’t just launch your LinkedIn company page and post a few pieces of filler content. Keep up the momentum to attract more followers and a wider audience. You don’t need to publish longform written content every time, either. In fact, posting shorter status updates and videos in addition to some occasional longer written pieces can be a great way to extend your reach.

Take Advantage of Internal Advertising on LinkedIn: One great thing about platforms like LinkedIn is that they offer self-contained communities of people that might be interested in engaging with your content. The key is to actually reach these people. While getting organic exposure is always possible when you post good, regular content, it doesn’t hurt to take advantage of LinkedIn’s internal advertising opportunities. Follow Ads suggest company pages to people whose profiles indicate they might be interested in your business. They’re a quick, easy way to get exposure.

Network, Network, Network: LinkedIn is a place where people want to connect with each other. On more-personal social sites, many users may be most interested in sticking with an established network of friends and acquaintances. But LinkedIn is all about making professional connections with new people. Getting involved in Groups that are relevant to your business can help you get both your name and your organization’s name out there. Just make sure that all your interactions are positive, polished and professional, and encourage employees connected with your organization to do the same.

What to Do Next

Feeling ready to tackle LinkedIn as part of your digital marketing strategy? Don’t get ahead of yourself just yet. As with all content marketing activities, getting the job done right requires a nice mix of inspired motivation and clear direction. Make sure you have a clear plan in place, including a list of tasks to be completed and goal dates for completion. This can help you hit all the necessary marks and get your LinkedIn content marketing journey off to a strong start.