You may think LinkedIn advertising has to cost money but the platform also offers a wealth of ways to promote your business or services which are entirely free and can help you connect with potential customers or clients. So if you’re looking for ways to utilise the platform to best effect without running paid-for LinkedIn ads, here are seven ways to do so.
About LinkedIn
LinkedIn was launched in 2003 and its purpose was to connect the professionals of the world. Fast forward to today and it has fulfilled that vision and more. If you’re promoting a business today, it can quite literally pay to be on the platform – but only if you’re utilising it to its full potential.
With millions of members and companies on LinkedIn, there is already a lot of eyes on you without necessarily having to spend money on LinkedIn ads to promote or boost specific posts.
LinkedIn offers a wealth of different features allowing you to post content, advertise jobs or connect with your target audience at no cost, harnessing the power of social media for businesses to great effect.
If you want to get the full experience out of the platform, here are seven free ways to boost your reach.
Whilst LinkedIn favours personal profiles over company pages, that’s not to say it is ineffective as a digital marketing tool, even without paying for promoted posts. You can share content, updates, and news with your followers to keep them updated as to what’s happening within the company. This content can then function as a way to attract new followers or customers who are checking you out. You can check out your competitors too and monitor how they are using their company pages.
1. The look
You wouldn’t promote your business with an unfinished website, so why try with an incomplete LinkedIn profile? Establishing your public image gives you sticking power. If eyes are seeing you pop-up all-over LinkedIn, you’ll become recognisable. But you don’t want to become recognisable for the wrong reasons…
Set your profile picture to one that clearly shows your logo and establishes your brand’s colour palette. This should then be mirrored by a high-quality banner which best represents your business. Make sure the text is easy to read but also minimal, as you can go into more detail in your About section.
The About section is exactly what it sounds like. It gives you space to briefly establish what your business is, detail your products or services and let people know why they should choose you. Keep this short and sweet as the content you post should be doing most of the talking.
Optimise this section for SEO by including keywords and phrases associated with your business. LinkedIn company pages rank on search engines, just like your website will.
In this section you can also list your website URL, your industry sector, company size, location, and specialities. These are all good criteria to fill out correctly as it will boost you in LinkedIn searches for these categories.
Ensure you have a good banner and profile image
Complete your About section with brief details of your product or service
Fill in vital information such as industry, company size and location
2. The content
They say that Content is King, and there’s good reason for that. Ultimately, good content is what keeps people on the platform. It keeps people scrolling through feeds and fuels engagement.
Whether it be assets, updates, or news, ensure that you’re posting content on your company page regularly. Many people aim for 3-4 posts a day if they really want to be seen. However, without a dedicated person assigned to posting on your company page this can be tricky. If you can post 3-4 times a week as an absolute minimum, you will begin to see tangible improvements in your analytics.
LinkedIn allows for all types of media to be posted: links, videos, images, PDFs, or articles. Whatever the algorithm likes and responds to is changing all the time so it’s worth staying on top of trends and developments. Whether it’s the posts with the highest engagement levels in the quickest time or the amount of time people are spending on a post, there is no definitive answer to what content performs better than anything else.
Variety is always good and allows you to experiment with what’s working, and perhaps what isn’t working so well. It’s crucial to keep an eye on performance stats and review as and where you can to really optimise your content and jump on the latest trends.
If you’re an admin on the social media accounts for your business, then you may have noticed a ‘recommend to employees’ section on your LinkedIn company page. This section allows you to add pre-prepared content which can function as inspiration for your team members when it comes to posting on their own accounts.
Post frequently at least 3-4 times a week.
Post a variety of content.
Create recommended content for employees to share.
3. Job adverts
As well as creating a post about an upcoming vacancy you may have, you can also post a job advert into the Jobs section of LinkedIn. Add in all the details that you would on any other job search website and promote this freely across the platform. Of course, there is always the option to pay some money towards the advert to promote it that little bit further.
LinkedIn will pick out members who have opted in for job recommendations and notify them that they fit the specifications of your vacancy without them even needing to see your job advert. This will help you to attract passive candidates as well as active ones.
4. Engage with interactions
Unlike paid-for LinkedIn ads, it’s not advisable to leave your company page ticking over in the background, expecting it to generate enquiries and traction all on its own. When using this style of LinkedIn advertising, you need to put the work in to get the rewards. This does mean being proactive on the platform (as you should be with any social media for business).
Do you engage with the interactions you’re receiving?
If you are getting likes and comments on content you’re posting, new followers or messages —respond. This is a prime way to interact with existing customers and charm new ones. This will also keep your post ‘alive’ as each interaction will push the post out into more and more people’s feeds.
Encouraging clients that you’ve worked with previously to tag your company page and vice versa is a great way to increase the reach and visibility of your page. Also don’t be shy when it comes to using all 250 of your company page’s credits. These credits will allow you to invite people you’re connected with to follow the page. Just remember to select the right criteria so you’re not attracting the wrong types of customers (or even competitors) to the page.
Don’t just engage with strangers. Engage with your team, too. Visit the Employee posts section to see what’s been on their minds and what they have been promoting recently. Share things to the company page or leave a like and a comment in support. This all works towards showing users you’re active on the platform.
Be proactive on your page.
Encourage clients to tag you and reciprocate.
Use your credits to invite followers.
Engage with employee posts.
Getting personal
So we’ve established it’s important to use your company page, even though LinkedIn favours personal profiles. In the same vein, don’t let your personal profile lay dormant whilst focusing your efforts on the business.
Guess what? When you’re using your personal page, you are still being an ambassador for your company. Why would you let that go to waste? It’s a way to let other LinkedIn users get to know you and your role on a deeper level. Someone may have disregarded your company before, but they may become interested thanks to a point you made in one of your own personal posts.
That’s just one example but knowing the people and the stories behind the business can often be a deciding factor in a client choosing who to engage with.
Lots of the same principles apply to getting the most out of your company page and your personal page, but how do they differ?
5. Connect with the right people
One vital piece of advice when it comes to connecting with people on LinkedIn is not to connect with direct competitors. You want to be connecting with like-minded professionals or your target audience. If you have established exactly what these groups look like, make use of LinkedIn’s search functions. Whilst the free version of LinkedIn offers a very limited search criteria it is still incredibly useful.
(You can upgrade to LinkedIn Sales Navigator for a more concise search but this comes at a cost).
– Don’t connect with direct competitors.
– Establish what your target audience looks like from the search criteria LinkedIn offers.
– Consider upgrading to LinkedIn Sales Navigator for a more thorough search.
6. Post regularly
Aim to post at least once a day on LinkedIn if you want people to start noticing you. In asking your team to do the same, you’ll all function as ambassadors for the company.
It’s important to note that the ‘hard sell’ often doesn’t work. So, don’t post about the business, product, or service all day, every day. Mix some engaging content in to keep people interested and remind them that you’re human! Think about it from your own perspective. If someone only posted about the same thing every day, you would scroll right past.
Just as you would with your company page, post a variety of content to keep people coming back and interacting. Make it thoughtful, topical, and engaging.
Post at least once a day.
Don’t post about your business, product, or service every day.
Post a variety of content, making it thoughtful and engaging.
7. Engage with other users
Engaging with other users on the platform is a great way to network and get a feel for who is looking to buy for your product or service or who may want to connect in the future. Remember to be human. Nobody wants to just be sold to or spammed. If you connect with someone and immediately receive a message from them promoting their product or service, do you respond? Do you even open the message? Exactly.
Like other people’s posts, leave your thoughts and opinions in comments, and use the messaging service to communicate with leads and get your company’s name out there to the best effect.
DCA PR
As an award-winning communications and digital marketing agency, DCA has a team with the expertise to help you make the most of the online world and use platforms like LinkedIn to their best effect, ensuring you can get a head start on the competition. If you found these tips helpful or would like to know more about how we can assist you with your digital marketing and social media management, get in touch today.
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