LinkedIn Should Be the Main Focus of Your Social Media Strategy

While other platforms give your company a voice, LinkedIn lets you speak directly to your target audience.

When quarantine and social distancing restrictions kept people at home, internet usage surged between 40% and 100% compared with pre-pandemic levels. This resulted in increasing online competition as the pandemic forced companies to shift their focus to digital marketing.

Social media became even more popular as individuals and businesses depended on it to connect. Simultaneously, people looked to companies’ communications and actions to help them get through a difficult year. By late 2020, LinkedIn ranked as the most trustworthy social media platform.

If you want to compete online and reach B2B customers, it’s time to revisit your social media strategy. Nearly 740 million professionals use LinkedIn, making it one of the largest channels for business networking. While other platforms give your company a voice, LinkedIn lets you speak directly to your target audience.

LinkedIn Is the Perfect Platform for B2B Selling and Marketing

LinkedIn should be the main marketplace for your B2B prospecting; it’s an important hub for job searches, networking, and research. Many business leaders are active on LinkedIn, which means you can easily contact and connect with key decision makers. Considering that 99% of Fortune 500 companies use the platform, you might be able to land clients that fit your ideal profile.

LinkedIn also boasts a high advertising ROI, getting you more mileage out of your sales and marketing efforts. It maximizes your campaign spend by customizing your messaging for the audience you want to target. That’s why one-third of B2B marketers prefer LinkedIn over Instagram for generating revenue. The platform offers other successful features, including InMail (which garners a 300% higher response rate than cold emails) and Pulse (which 98% of marketers use for content marketing).

LinkedIn offers a range of dynamic features, but they’re often underutilized. Why? Many sales and marketing teams don’t have the bandwidth to sufficiently manage the platform, and others focus on their own strategies without taking advantage of LinkedIn’s offerings. For instance, a marketer might only use the social media platform to share posts, or a salesperson might only search for prospects using Sales Navigator (LinkedIn’s lead generation feature).

While many of LinkedIn’s tools work independently of one another, using all of the features together enables you to get the most out of the website. Instead of neglecting certain portions of the platform, make it work for your business. Pull multiple teams together to synchronize messaging, post sharing, and campaigns. A comprehensive approach to LinkedIn creates a consistent brand experience that stands out in the busy digital space.

4 Ways to Incorporate LinkedIn Into Your Social Strategy

Want to reap the full benefits of LinkedIn? Here are a few pointers to make the platform the center of your social media strategy:

  1. Make it a priority. Get the most out of LinkedIn by synchronizing your marketing and sales strategies and staying up to date. One of the best ways to connect with B2B customers is by updating your company profile frequently to increase networking opportunities. Your brand’s profile speaks volumes about your company’s values, abilities, and successes. LinkedIn’s analytics can help you monitor and optimize your page’s performance.
  2. Get everyone on board. Encourage your entire company to participate in your LinkedIn social media efforts. For example, employees can like and share your company’s LinkedIn content with their personal networks. When your colleagues consistently share company messages, it shows potential clients that your workforce believes in your company’s values and mission. This increases engagement and trust in your brand.
  3. Automate portions of the sales process. Social selling allows salespeople to target prospects within their current network. While LinkedIn is the best platform to connect professionally with prospects, it’s difficult to personally engage with hundreds (or thousands) of potential clients in a meaningful way. Luckily, LinkedIn offers tools to automate profile views, messaging, connection requests, and other interactions. Just make sure you don’t automate late-stage interactions with prospects. Building relationships is the heart of marketing and sales, so impersonal responses and mass messages won’t cut it when a lead is ready to convert.

Find and target your prospects. Intentionally look for and target the audience that will help you meet your goals. LinkedIn Groups are a secret gold mine for engaging potential clients. You can also rely on paid ads to generate awareness. For example, say your company sells a tool that helps companies with social media; you could use your ads to target specific job titles like “social media director” and “head of social interactions.” LinkedIn Campaign Manager can also help you monitor and improve the performance of your paid campaigns.

LinkedIn provides seemingly endless possibilities for B2B marketers and salespeople to connect with the right audiences, but many teams fail to fully utilize the platform. That’s why you should leverage LinkedIn this year and make it the focus of your social media strategy.

Author

Get our newsletter and digital focus reports

Stay current on learning and development trends, best practices, research, new products and technologies, case studies and much more.