LinkedIn is a powerful tool for connecting professionally, looking for employment opportunities and sharing content. In addition, LinkedIn is considered the number-one platform for lead generation. The platform has 560 million professionals with LinkedIn profiles and an estimated two new profiles are created every minute. The outreach possibilities are endless.
Tips for LinkedIn Lead Generation Success
Simply creating a profile based on your personal resume is not enough. Here are 15 tips to leverage your LinkedIn presence as a corporate lead generation and marketing tool.
Complete and consistently update your personal profile. The first step to LinkedIn is to create your profile. Don’t oversaturate your page with previous job descriptions. Unless you’re job hunting, focus on becoming a brand advocate of your current company. Keep your profile clean and fresh with a short description of the value you offer and links to your company profile and website. Freshen up your page with updates or changes regularly.
Maintain a company profile people will want to follow. For B2B marketers, your company’s profile is even more important than your personal page. Describe your firm’s goals, functions and services without being self-serving. Focus on benefits, not features. A corporate profile doesn’t function as a corporate brochure and it shouldn’t mimic your website. Instead, develop content that encourages prospects to click through, reach out or follow. Maintain a current and relevant profile that represents your brand, reflects organizational thought leadership and creates a networking tool.
Create a LinkedIn plan. As with any marketing initiative, consider the goals you hope to achieve with LinkedIn. Do you want to increase your brand’s visibility and name recognition in the marketplace? Is your goal to connect with fellow thought leaders and industry influencers? Are you seeking to generate leads for your business development team? All of the above? Create a plan that defines these goals and establishes the strategies and tactics required to achieve them.
Define your audience. Another essential component of any marketing strategy is a carefully defined image of your target audiences. Understand who you hope to reach to ensure you’re utilizing the best channels. LinkedIn comprehensively organizes profiles according to job title, industry, location, size, and so forth. Take advantage of these tools to reach out to prospects who are best-suited to your products or services.
Encourage employees to serve as brand advocates. Employees who maintain LinkedIn profiles can be some of your most effective business development representatives. Encourage employees to narrow their profiles to reflect your company brand. Provide them with examples of successful profiles and content. Ask them to boost outreach by following and sharing your organization’s content in their own newsfeed.
Connect with people you know (and people you don’t). Create a strong network of followers through personal and company profiles. These followers can be valuable brand advocates. However, LinkedIn is not only for maintaining established connections. Don’t be afraid to reach out to new prospects or influencers and create new connections.
Publish engaging content. Content is king when it comes to inbound marketing. Your company’s marketing strategy should already include engaging content, and LinkedIn is an excellent publishing platform. Share and repurpose blogs, press releases, white papers or other content to be published as LinkedIn articles.
Include varied media. You can increase your LinkedIn views by 11 times by including a photo, video, infographics and other types of multimedia.
Link, link, link. Create call-to-action or content links that route back to your own website. Be sure employee profiles link to the company website and social media channels including Twitter, Slideshare and Facebook.
Always consider SEO. LinkedIn is consistently one of the top-three search engine results for any company or individual. Optimize profiles and content to leverage that ranking. Include keywords, links, relevant and newsworthy content to maximize SEO.
Follow leaders. As of 2017, 18 million company pages existed on LinkedIn and the numbers continue to climb. Explore current industry news, trends and thought-leadership by following company pages and newsfeeds of leaders in your marketplace. Share and promote those you support to encourage networking.
Maintain a relevant newsfeed. It is certainly important to share your own firm’s thought-leadership, but equally important to promote and share content from fellow creators. This establishes a network, but also informs your audience of key topics that matter to you. A relevant and newsworthy newsfeed will result in followers and new connections that can turn into valuable leads.
Join and participate in relevant groups.LinkedIn Groups is a fantastic tool to create communities of like-minded professionals. Join groups that include your target markets, create new connections and share relevant expertise to establish yourself as a go-to expert.
Leverage mobile.57% of LinkedIn users browse via mobile devices. If you’re not already optimizing your own website for mobile users, it’s time to start. However, any content published on LinkedIn is automatically optimized for mobile. This is a useful tool to ensure your content is consumable on all devices.
Take advantage of free analytics. If you’re a company page administrator, LinkedIn provides analytics tools to assist your outreach. Just like with any other marketing initiative, it’s important to track and leverage data. Use this information to hone in on successful content, outreach initiatives and potential customers.
Leveraging LinkedIn
Whether you choose to take advantage of all 15 tips or pick and choose the ones that work for you, it’s important to start thinking of LinkedIn as a tool for marketing and lead generation rather than one of brand management. 560 million professionals and over 18 million company pages is a big sea to swim in. Consider those numbers as a chance for endless possible connections. Even if only a fraction generates leads, you’re headed in the right direction.
