LinkedIn: Leveraging a Powerful Business Platform
LinkedIn is sometimes an afterthought in social media strategy, second in priority to networks like Facebook and Twitter. But the fact is LinkedIn is much more than a place for job hunters; it has evolved into a platform for content marketing. With this content component, LinkedIn has become an effective tool for generating new business leads, developing referral relationships, connecting existing employees and more.
With more than 225 million members worldwide and the ability to connect with target audiences, your business is losing out on valuable word-of-mouth opportunities and impressions if you’re not making the most of your LinkedIn presence.
Rethinking LinkedIn
Here are a few reasons why you should be regularly posting updates to LinkedIn and why your US Builders Review feature article and LinkedIn are a match made in marketing heaven.
Your US Builders Review feature is a high-quality content tool that can be used on LinkedIn to:
- Attract business partners, vendors and subcontractors looking to do business with your company.
- Grab the attention of prospective talent eyeing your company page.
- Differentiate yourself from competitors.
- Position your business as a thought leader.
- Engage existing employees and update them on recent happenings and exciting news.
2 ways to post your US Builders Review feature
Now it’s time to post! As a LinkedIn page admin you can share your feature article two ways:
1.) Share as an update on your company page
Posting regular company updates is an effective way to start a conversation with LinkedIn users who are following your company — it’s also a way to gain new followers and drum up more word of mouth for your business.
Step 1: Copy and paste your case study URL into the “Share an update” box on your LinkedIn company page.
Step 2: Write a headline that summarizes the update. Example: “Check out the US Builders Review Feature article on McCormick Paint’s >> (URL goes here)”
This slideshow offers some helpful tips for writing compelling company update headlines.
Step 3: Edit the update preview. An image from your case study will populate when you paste the URL; you can change the image if you want by clicking in the right corner of the thumbnail and uploading a new one.
You can also edit the short description. Make sure the short description has key information relevant to the post. If you don’t edit the preview the URL will just grab the first couple sentences from your feature article.
Step 4: Choose your audience. You can send the update out to your followers or select a target audience, narrowing it down to industry, company size, geography and more.
Step 5: Share! Once you have published your company update followers can like, comment or share the update. These interactions can be seen by their networks, exposing you to a greater audience. By using the “Analytics” tab you can see how many impressions, clicks, interactions and followers acquired by your updates.
If something is performing well, you can opt to sponsor an update using LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, but that’s a whole other blog topic…
Need more of a visual? This video by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions also outlines company update steps.
2.) Publish a post on your personal LinkedIn and link to your company
OK, maybe your business’ social marketing strategy is not there yet and you haven’t created a company LinkedIn page — while you should, option two is sharing an update on your personal LinkedIn page.
Step 1: Go to your personal LinkedIn profile and click “Write a New Post.”
Step 2: Write a headline. Example: “US Builders Review Features Coastland”
Step 3: Write a description that announces the news as seen in this example. Be sure to link to your company’s website and the case study URL.
Step 4: Add a header image. LinkedIn suggests an image size of 700×400 pixels.
Step 5: At the bottom of the new post page click the small tag icon to add keyword tags so it’s easier for people to find your post when searching a certain topic on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn also provides insights for your personal posts, including where traffic is coming from and what types of professionals are looking at your posts.
Follow these steps and get your company conversation started today while boosting your business with LinkedIn’s free content marketing tools.