By TE Cunningham & Shea Eckert
Are you a small business owner toying with the idea of using LinkedIn? What are you waiting for? Go for it. The following outline will get you started.
Create your LinkedIn account and fill out every possible field. Like and connect with all businesses related to yours to stay updated with your industry and have the most robust page possible.
Be consistent in your branding and make sure all graphics follow it, especially your LinkedIn cover and profile picture. We recommend a logo bug for the profile pic; make sure your entire logo shows in the box if you choose to do that instead.
Audience at a Glance:
LinkedIn: 675 Million Users
24% of people between 18 and 24 use LinkedIn, and 87 million millennials use LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the #1 channel B2B marketers use to distribute content, at approximately 94%. 92% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn in their digital marketing mix (source: socialmediadata.com).
Number of Posts Per Week: Three Times per Week
No surprise, LinkedIn recommends daily posts on weekdays, but most leading authorities advise posting three times or more a week. After publishing more than once a day, engagement significantly decreases.
Best Posting Times:
The best time to post on LinkedIn is 9:00 AM on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Mornings and within business hours, in general, are good guidelines for posting here.
Best Posting Days:
Weekdays- it’s a professional network. You should highly consider posting on LinkedIn on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays. Wednesdays on LinkedIn are considered to get the highest level of engagement. Mondays and Fridays are the weekdays with minor usage and the least engagement.
Types of Content:
This is the one network where longer posts such as blogs, discussions, reports and such perform the best and gain the most significant number of post views, likes, comments and shares.
Some things to keep in mind with your copy:
- Add images of individuals—whether that’s you, your employees, partners or clients; do not use stock photography on this network
- Personalize your content vs. just sharing a link to an article with no narrative from you
- Content on this network should be relevant and helpful, and covering industry topics and trends is highly desirable
- Always comment back—the more you comment, the more visibility you get from LinkedIn
- Headlines should grab the reader
- Stats, Charts and Graphs – infographics are excellent here. Share videos, white papers, case studies, articles, etc.
- Share attention-grabbing videos with subtitles for those who may not be able to hear them
Special Features:
LinkedIn has a wide variety of marketing platforms.
You can look into creating your own LinkedIn ad campaign. You can post ads on LinkedIn in various forms- message ads, sponsored content or text ads. Your ad campaign will be run by LinkedIn’s advertising platform, Campaign Manager.
LinkedIn is also a great recruitment tool.
You can also use the location feature on LinkedIn to better serve your geographical area.
LinkedIn offers a free learning course for beginners called Growing Your Small Business on LinkedIn. This course can help you learn more about the platform and how you can use it to your business’s advantage. If you feel overwhelmed by content creations, posting schedules and most of all, time commitments, we can help! Contact us at tlcmarketingconsultants.com today!