LinkedIn 101: Business Goes Social

The following is part of a series about understanding social media

Now that we have a solid grasp on using Facebook and Twitter, it’s time that we tackle the lesser known platform of LinkedIn. While LinkedIn has become an important tool in terms of individual professional development, it is often underutilized when it comes to brands. What sets LinkedIn apart from giant social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is its emphasis on business. This makes LinkedIn a prime tool for B2B brands. Let’s jump right in.



Employees as Brand Advocates - One of the best benefits of LinkedIn for a company is that you already have a built in audience: your employees. When employees update their profile and list your company as their place of employment, they are automatically connected. This improves the quality of your page immediately by listing the number of active employees on LinkedIn and making your page appear more complete.

In addition to simply appearing on your page, employees can be useful in advocating for your brand. Sharing content that your employees believe in and support increases the likelihood of them engaging with the company page. When employees share updates or information from their company, it demonstrates value in what your brand is saying as well as provides you with further reach.

Thought Leadership – As LinkedIn is typically seen as a more professional social media platform, it provides an opportunity to truly engage with peers in your field. This is where it is most important to refrain from too much self-promotional material and follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of content should be value driven while 20% ties back to your company. This is an easy rule of thumb that helps demonstrate thought leadership in your industry instead of self-serving promotion.

Multimedia – As we learned in Facebook 101, including multimedia-rich content increases chances of engagement. This is just as true with LinkedIn. Including links, images and videos in your page updates significantly drive engagement. In fact, according to LinkedIn, including a link can drive twice the engagement than a post without one, images result in a 98% comment rate than posts without, and links to videos typically see a 75% higher share rate. You can’t argue with those numbers.

 

Cross-promotion – While Facebook and Twitter may be more consumer-facing than LinkedIn, if you’re creating content of value, it will be applicable to various audiences on different platforms. If you have a following on one or more existing platforms, leverage that to introduce audiences to your LinkedIn page so they can engage with your company in a holistic and all-inclusive way. In the same vein, use your LinkedIn page to promote and drive traffic to existing company pages such as a branded blog.

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