This post, part of our series of ‘top tips’ posts, looks at LinkedIn and our five top tips for using it for the benefit of your business. Have a read and let us know if you have tried any of our tips and how they worked out.
Industry-related content
LinkedIn revolves around professionals and their work. People use LinkedIn to talk, read and connect with people in industry. Therefore, the type of content you post should be industry-related. This is not to say that everything you post should be related to industry, but most things. These types of posts will be interesting for your followers to read and shows you to be in touch with/knowledgeable about things that are happening in your field.
Analytics
LinkedIn has only recently improved their analytics for company pages, and while they are not as good as some other social media sites’ analytics, they are better than nothing. Some areas to pay attention to are clicks, interactions and engagement with your posts. You can see this for each individual post at the top of the analytics page and gives you some idea of which posts are more interesting to your followers than others. Follower demographics is an interesting section as well, as it tells you a bit more about your followers and who is interested in your page – are you attracting the right audience? Here you can read a more detailed blog post I wrote about LinkedIn analytics when they improved.
Groups
Follow a variety of groups – ones about your industry, about subjects you are interested in and where potential customers might be. Get involved with discussions in the groups and show off your knowledge. Help people out when they ask questions and they will help you in return. Groups are not the sort of place to advertise your business and some of them don’t even like you posting links which are not discussions e.g. blog posts, so be sure to read the rules of the group before you start posting, or your posts may not be well received. Connecting with people in groups, broadens your network and your company becomes better known online.
Engage with followers
If someone comments, likes or shares a status update from your company, be sure to engage with them and encourage interaction. Ask them questions about their response to your post and what they thought of it. Post a question from your page/ask people what they think about something and this will foster communication with your followers.
Follow industry experts
Go to ‘Interests’ at the top of your LinkedIn page and click on ‘Influencers’. Here you can go to ‘All influencers’ and find experts to follow. By following people from your industry, you will find out information quickly when they post about it. Their updates will appear on your home page and you can share these through your company page while they are new. It saves you searching for industry news and provides you with articles to share which you can comment on and ask for responses on.