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How to use LinkedIn to quickly improve brand awareness and grow your business by sharing marketing content.
One of our long-term clients approached us about improving his marketing and brand awareness. We decided to try a very low budget LinkedIn marketing campaign. LinkedIn was the social media platforms chosen because LinkedIn has over 660 million users across the globe and it is a business and employment-oriented online service. As one of the top social networks, LinkedIn can be extremely powerful.
After a year and a half campaign we analyzed the Google Analytics data. We and our client are very happy with the results, a 73% growth in website traffic.
Our 4 Step Process
- Import contact info to gain more connections.
Our client already has a LinkedIn business page. (If you don’t have one, do it now using a LinkedIn profile guide.) The problem was there were only handful of followers of the company page. We wanted to increase the followers, and then each time we post company news or updates, it was automatically placed on the feeds of the followers.
We asked our client for a mailing list. Our client has been to many industry-related trade shows, and each time he has collected business cards. This is a great source which we put it into a spreadsheet along with his existing clients list, resulting in a nice email list.
LinkedIn has very convenient tools and allow you to upload the list, and then LinkedIn will send these people email notifications requesting that they follow your company page. Because these people already know your business, they will often be happy to click the button to follow your company page.
This is step one adding followers to the company page.
- Post on LinkedIn on a fixed schedule.
We know every time we post on LinkedIn all followers can see the posts in their feeds. If we post and stick to a schedule, this will give all the followers the impression that your business is healthy and growing. This is the best way to maintain brand awareness and build readership.
- What to Post on LinkedIn
This is a challenge for most people, especially if your industry is manufacturing or tech. You can feel your posts will be technical and dry.
Our client manufactures components of the electrical transmission grid. Details about this will not appeal to everybody. THIS IS GREAT. This is the exact reason we like LinkedIn: highly targeted audiences. LinkedIn is not Facebook, the place to hang out with friends. Again, it is a business employment oriented social platform. Your followers are in the same or a related industry and they use the same jargon as you do.
If you hate writing as much as most do, the good news is LinkedIn posts don’t need to be long. All it takes is a picture, a paragraph, and a link back to the website, and don’t omit the all important hash tag.
Just think of LinkedIn marketing as an internet elevator pitch – one focused idea that maintains brand awareness and is reinforced with a complementary picture or graphic and hash tags. Topics might include:
- Notice of an informative blog post you just published (or re-published)
- Product or service improvements or changes
- Sales, discounts or promotions
- Events or personnel changes
- Trade shows
- New clients
- Application notes or troubleshooting help
- Company highlights and milestones
- Financials
- Upcoming or completed projects
Keep the content professional; also balance it with some light funny content. It will give your business more personality and life.
The reason to use hash tags is to gain new followers. They can become potential clients or customers. Just like any other social media platform, people search hash tags to get the content they are looking for; it is more like broad keywords. So don’t be shy, use relevant hash tags.
In our client’s case, there are about 80 pages of deep content on the website. We separated them with keywords, and cut content into smaller pieces. We posted twice per week, Tuesday and Thursday morning around 10am. This is the golden time for LinkedIn posting. In that way followers can quickly glance at the post and learn about your business.
- Be Patient and Keep Posting
If you think it is tough time for your business, you are not alone. Being patient, keep doing it as part of your marketing efforts and eventually the hard work will pay off.
Now let’s review our client LinkedIn marketing results. We looked at the data and compared the last 6 months with the same period last year.
- Website traffic had 78% growth
- New users 78% growth.
- Organic search 42% increase. Organic traffic is what we are aiming for.
- Traffic from different sources is increasing too.
- LinkedIn traffic increased by 40%.
- Last 30 days: 30 unique visitors and 9 new followers; 1000 impressions, 3 clicks.
The result is great for the effort we put in. We didn’t do any paid advertising; all we have done is LinkedIn posting twice per week. The result is more leads and more traffic.
Our client is encouraged by the results. He said, “Being in a small segment of a slow industry, a growing and positive word of mouth is what we are looking for. The organic growth seems to confirm the long term approach. Thank you for the good work with LinkedIn too. I didn’t have clear expectations, but it looks like it is a good complement.”
