So you’re curious about all the hype surrounding LinkedIn’s latest addition? LinkedIn Pages is definitely a game changer and here’s why…
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram and other Social Networking sites offer the modern day business a variety of very useful marketing tools. Unfortunately, the average newsfeed has, regrettably, become oversaturated with cringe-worthy adverts and boring, unreliable “news”. I know that I am almost immune to FB ads now. There are just so many of them.
Let’s be honest, pretty much everyone is using Instagram paid ads to promote their latest side gig/ hobby blog/ company.
Facebook is saturated with pages that were built for companies created a whole 2 seconds ago. Social media has become almost painful to navigate and quite frankly a lot like one big spam invasion of our digital senses.
But is there something we can do better?….yup!
Enter LinkedIn Pages. This sophisticated approach to Digital Marketing is beautifully simplistic, radically effective and extremely user friendly. It will go a long way to helping your clients get the exposure that the want and need. In the past, LinkedIn was known as just a place to post your CV but over the years it has advanced into a professional social network that is home to over 500 million users!
I know, you’re probably sitting at your desk thinking “Well that’s all very well, but is it actually any good or at all useful? ” Read on dear reader, and explore the world of LinkedIn Pages, and how you can use them for the benefit of your clients.
“Taking Online Marketing to the next level”
Not your average Social Media Page
The Site itself was created as a digital community for Job seekers and Industry Professionals to network and market themselves to other Industry professionals. Users create a profile that acts as their online business card as well as offering an overview of their resume. Added to this, LinkedIn offers its users tools to “boost potential and maximize success” within the job seekers specific Industry.
The most obvious being the easily accessible quality content users are provided with. This you can manipulate to bring people to your client’s proverbial front door.
There is everything from information on productivity to how to’s for job interviews and even information on self-confidence and self-care. Users are met with mountains of opportunities to grow themselves and their business.
“Profile Completion Meter”
That provides users with personalized suggestions for improving their profile.
There is also a tool that helps users find out who has searched and viewed their profile and how they came across the user’s profile. This can be particularly useful in seeing who is interested in your client’s page. I personally love using this as a form of market research, to see where my strongest performance lies.
LinkedIn Pages have been created to offer the equivalent of this, but for organizations. Where LinkedIn profiles promote individual professionals and their resumes, LinkedIn Pages offer various platforms for these organizations to market themselves to those individuals.
The base of this is a page that has your basics, such profile and cover picture with Bio. This is where companies get to share their story and what they’re about. Features like “Showcase Pages” give your business the option to create different campaigns to promote to different buyer personas. This is where you as a Digital Marketer comes in. You create, and manage this for your clients.
For example
Your client could be a sporting goods company that has different pages allocated for football accessories, ice hockey gear, swimming essentials and baseball related products for example. Instead of having to aim all of its campaigns at all buyer personas, you create separate campaigns to target specified personas.
The result is effective and direct marketing which of course equals sales for your client.
LinkedIn Ads
give you the option to pay to reach a specified market or persona outside of your current followers. This would create more followers and again equals sales for your client.
LinkedIn Analytics
give you access to information about your client’s current followers and their interaction with their page and content. This info can be used to formulate new and better ideas for marketing campaigns, ultimately resulting in… sales, of course!
In reality, using this to promote your client’s product is pretty simple. You create the page following the prompts on LinkedIn. Once you have done that you can then choose to market to a certain audience. This is all done via built in marketing tools such a page views tool, and visitor metrics. I find it almost easier than creating a FB page.
How to do this
Your first task should be getting your client’s LinkedIn Page set up and running. As a Social Media Manager your job is to create a captivating online presence. Work with your client to select a professional logo image, cover image and compile a bio that pulls the viewer in.
From there you can develop the products and services sections of the page.
Once the page is running smoothly you can work together with your client to use the helpful analytics to choose marketing strategies.
“Companies get to share their story and connect with a professional community of over 500 million users”
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It’s all about Community
The general demographic on LinkedIn is business orientated. With today’s emphasis being on productivity and time management, users are hungry for relative, informative and ultimately real content.
Gone are the days where they sat back and just put up with rubbish adverts being forced upon them like Aunty Carols special meatloaf pie! They are selective and cut-throat, and that means there is no room for nonsense. This is where LinkedIn really differs from other social networks, and you can use this to your professional advantage.
Users are met with content that is only professional, relevant and useful. This is where LinkedIn Pages join the community by offering valuable, no nonsense content. The more relevant and helpful content a Page provides, the more reach it will have.
When you use LinkedIn Pages for your clients, you gain access to a wide variety of tools to help you to understand their market and what content should be created and shared. This is a very key factor in starting an ongoing conversation, engaging your audience and growing reach.
A really great feature worthy of mention is the Suggested Content feature.
It’s a very easy to use option that gives users a list of trending topics and simply suggests articles relevant to followers and then gives projected analytics. Use this to engage people to your client’s page
If the topic “workplace productivity” has been trending with your client’s followers in the last 7 days, the feature will give you a list of related articles to share. Simply select the audience you would like to reach, explore what is trending in their neck of the woods, and share it! This way their page is constantly updating its content as well as being relevant. I love to share articles on current Digital Marketing trends.
For example
An article on “Sports equipment innovations” would be perfect to share for your sporting client.. And don’t forget the good old hashtag!
Although useful on many social media sites, on LinkedIn the hashtag is GOLD. Users rely heavily on selecting hashtags to follow that will fill their newsfeed with the type of content they are searching for.
To give you an idea
The tag #Business is one of the leading hashtags on LinkedIn but it wouldn’t relate to our sporting goods client. I would use something more along the lines of #Fit #IceHockey #Fun #Train #FitGoals #ItsGoTime to be more aligned to the kind of content followers in the Sporting Goods Field are after.
How to do this
You could agree on a list of hashtags relative to the target markets current trends. You could then re-use these tags consistently when you are managing your client’s LinkedIn profiles as a Social Media Manager.
“LinkedIn Pages empower your organization to engage the world’s professional community”
Your people
The other aspect of community that is blowing up around LinkedIn Pages is the online engagement of an organization’s inner network. This is a really important factor when it comes to growing Brand Awareness.
Now more than ever before, organizations are being measured by employee job satisfaction levels. If employees are happy, it will show and they will be promoting brand awareness without trying in the slightest.
✓ One of your client’s people may have been given the opportunity to attend a beneficial seminar. She posts about it and includes your client’s hashtag.
✓ Or a successful team effort leads to achieving that almost impossible month end target – Post an update that mentions the team and starts a conversation.
As a possible customer or lead, nothing pulls you in more than seeing real life accounts of how great a company is.
Through employee engagement around a company page you can really enhance the sense of community within the company. This boosts morale and productivity, at the same time growing outside brand awareness and reach.
A potential follower is easily directed to a Company Page when visiting an employee’s profile by simply clicking the company icon in the employee’s bio. This is great for your client’s web presence.
By sharing a simple PDF to the inner network or creating hype around a new product or development with employees and followers, the options to enhance functionality and engage your client’s people and their network are endless.
How to do this:
The obvious first step here would be to make sure your client is encouraging employees to follow the company page on LinkedIn. A simple and effective way to do this would be by creating a precise but captivating infographic that outlines the benefits of employees following the company’s LinkedIn page. This can be sent out in a mail, or reviewed in weekly meet-up.
From there you can work with your client on some ideas to get the company page’s internal conversation flowing. My clients have constant reviews with their staff to gauge, and reward interaction.
“Employees typically have 10 times the social reach of their company”
Putting it into practice
So now you have an idea of how LinkedIn pages work, and what they can do for you as a Digital Marketer. Now you need to put all this into practice, and use this as a tool to further your Digital Marketing career. Remember that as a successful Digital Marketer you need to have a number of tools in your “tool belt” ready to go in order to offer the best service to your clients, and attract more.
The best way to start would be to assess your clients business. Do they have particular niches? Let’s go back to our sporting goods example.
✓ Set up an overarching page that introduces them as a whole.
✓ From there, set up niche pages for each section e.g. swimming, baseball and hockey.
✓ Make sure that each page is linked back to the main page.
✓ Check the suggested content section for your client’s audience every day and update each pages content accordingly.
✓ Ensure that your client’s employees are following the page and interact with it on a regular basis.
✓ Keep attracting new prospects and interest to your client’s pages with constant content updates, which are relevant and interesting, and resharing positive mentions of your clients business from their own employees and clients.
All of this is great for attracting new clients too. If your client has an e-commerce site and you link it back to their LinkedIn Page, they stand a much greater chance of it being seen by many more people. Use successful LinkedIn pages that you run as advertising for yourself as a Digital Marketer. Nothing sings your praises more than successful campaigns and happy clients!
And the best part of it all?
LinkedIn Pages is extremely easy to use!
LinkedIn has made the task of setting up a page and running the account an absolute dream. Simply add some professional images, company logos and designs along with a strategic company Bio and you have yourself the perfect platform to work from.
Make use of the helpful features I mentioned earlier and you’re good to go!
If you are running more than one page for client’s and are worried about having enough time dedicated to each one, never fear! You can set aside as little as 5-10 minutes a day per page using the straight forward tools to post and share. I spend a whole ten minutes a day on a page, and see results.
If you’re a bigger business with a Marketing Team of specialists, there are an interminable amount of practical and effective resources available to tap into and stay up to date with. Make use of consumer Insights to generate concrete leads.
I could go on singing LinkedIn Pages’ praises all day. I’m definitely a fan and, to be quite honest, if you’re not already making use of this spectacular reserve of online business tools and opportunities, I strongly suggest you do.
Remind yourself you are in it for the long run and it’s all part of how to become a digital marketer.
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