Finding Success on LinkedIn as a Business

Are you using LinkedIn in your business? After working with quite a few businesses in the last couple of years I will take an educated guess and say probably not, right? Somewhere along the way, LinkedIn gained itself a reputation for only being for people on a job search and people high up in corporate roles. But, the reality is quite different, small and medium-sized businesses can find success on LinkedIn if they know what they are doing. 

First of all, there are two types of profiles on LinkedIn- the first is the private profile which is a great tool for building a personal brand, and then there is the business profile, which is the one I am going to be talking about today. 

LinkedIn has over 830 million members world wide with 40% of monthly active users checking the platform every day. There are over 55 million companies listed on the platform, while there are over 14 million open jobs. In terms of marketing LinkedIn is the number one channel for B2B marketers to distribute content, with the lead conversion rate being three times higher than other major ad platforms. 

Have those statistics successfully convinced you that it is time to start taking LinkedIn seriously? Especially if you are a B2B business!

I am not going to run you through the technical instructions of setting up and optimising your business LinkedIn profile, you can Google that if you need too. I want to talk to you about the ways businesses are using the platform to find success in their business. 

Thought Leadership

When I say thought leadership I am referring to the position of a business or a business leader as an expert in their specific field. It involved being able to generate new, innovative ideas, having interesting insights and opinions, and sharing all this with others in order to influence, inspire and be a LEADER. Thought leadership is demonstrating that you are the expert. 

One great way to do this on LinkedIn is to utilise the long-form content you are able to post. Business leaders use this to build on their influence through sharing knowledge, advice or insights. This type of article content can also be favoured by the algorithm meaning it is more likely to be presented to people. 

If you do decide that thought leadership is going to be your main goal on LinkedIn, you’ll need to really be consistent and continually work on this type of content. One great article won’t instantly make you a business leader. You need to be consistent and be original. If you’re finding an article on the internet and basically regurgitating that back up, or your typing a prompt into Chat GPT and copy and pasting that, you’re not doing yourself any favours. People don’t want that, they want original ideas and strong opinions. 

Engaging with your Target Audience

Like all other social media platforms, you’re there to be social, and that means engaging with people is important. 

Successful businesses engage with their target audience, they join in on relevant conversations, usually through commenting on posts to add value, or offer an answer to an important question. Connections will see your comments, and that might intrigue them, it might encourage them to seek out more information on your business, who is this business who is willing to join the conversation? 

Being able to have a two way conversation also encourages people to comment on your content. Would you bother replying to a post if you knew that the original poster was not going to bother replying? Probably not. But, if you knew you were going to have an insightful conversation back and fourth, you’d be more likely to engage. 

Visual Content 

The statistics say that LinkedIn posts with images get a 2x higher comment rate than those without. Include images, infographics, videos, anything visual that can catch the attention of people as they scroll. Would you rather stop for a post that is block text or a post that has a visual attention grabber? It’s as easy as whipping up a graphic in Canva that goes with what you are talking about. 

Post Frequency 

If you read all the LinkedIn Best Practices articles you’re likely to find that people are telling you to post every single day on LinkedIn. Honestly - who has the time for posting every single day on any social media platform. I will never tell you that you need to post every day in order to see results - that’s bullshit. You need to work out what consistent looks like for you, and stick to it. If you can manage two posts per week - amazing, do that. If you’re up there with four posts per week, go you. Just find your definition of consistent posting and go with that. 

Above all, I just want you to utilise LinkedIn for your business, you deserve to have your place on the platform. Leave that “LinkedIn is for job seekers” mentality behind and you’ll see some great results. 

If you have any questions on using LinkedIn for your business please feel free to DM me on whatever platform you like or you can always send me an email.