What’s happening: LinkedIn, primarily known as a job-search platform, is becoming a powerful tool for B2B marketing opportunities. Companies and thought leaders can utilize its features to generate quality leads, build brand reputation, and foster professional connections.

Why it matters: With over 830 million users in 200+ countries, LinkedIn offers immense reach for B2B campaigns. Leveraging its features can significantly impact brand awareness, lead generation, and industry positioning.

Key points:

1. Thought Leadership: Share research, essays, and studies as thought leadership content. LinkedIn’s audience appreciates insightful opinions and in-depth discussions, which can drive higher engagement.

2. Poll Posts: Create relevant and engaging polls to encourage user participation. Sharing poll results and making business decisions based on them can generate interest and engagement.

3. Generate Leads: Transform your LinkedIn company page into a lead generation tool. Rewrite your company description as a pitch, showcase offerings with compelling images, and optimize posts for conversions.

4. Networking Groups: Create LinkedIn groups to connect with businesses needing your services. Provide valuable insights, offer solutions, and build relationships without hard selling.

5. Videos: Post videos about products, services, vision, and goals to harness high engagement. Videos perform well in LinkedIn’s algorithm, increasing traffic to your website.

The bottom line: LinkedIn is evolving from just a job-search platform to a crucial tool for B2B marketing. Thoughtfully crafted content, engaging posts, and active participation can transform your LinkedIn presence into a powerful marketing and networking resource.

Full Article:

According to Wikipedia, LinkedIn had more than 830 million users from more than 200 countries worldwide as of February of last year. At its core, it exists so that professionals can connect and share with each other. Now that it’s owned by Microsoft, it’s a massive entity with endless B2B and career development opportunities.

Most of us know that LinkedIn can be an outstanding site to search for jobs and connect with recruiters, but it can be leveraged as much more than merely a job search engine. There are now countless ways for brand managers to network, collaborate, and share opinions. Put simply, LinkedIn is not Facebook. Strategizing content for LinkedIn is going to be an entirely different experience (as it should be). 

Here are some things to remember as you start crafting your LinkedIn B2B campaign. 

Thought Leadership is the Star

Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn highly values thought leadership content. This is an arena where people want, and are actively seeking, views and opinions from industry leaders. People visit the site in order to spark conversations and engage in informed dialogue. You can make the most of this by sharing your brand’s thought leadership content, including (but not limited to) opinion pieces, articles, case studies, research, and whitepapers. Remember that not everyone may agree with your ideas and opinions, but that’s human nature – and posts with lots of comments and varying opinions tend to be rewarded with higher engagement. 

Use Polls

Polls are a thing. Poll posts perform highly on Linkedin so they continue to promote them. Consider creating polls related to your brand or industry in which other LinkedIn users can participate. We all (well, at least, most of us) love sharing our opinions, and these polls have the added benefit of building a connection with potential customers and employees. If you’re so inclined, you can even use LinkedIn polls as a lead generation tool.

The polls let you ask your audience a question and have them vote on up to four different options. After users participate in your poll, they can see the results instantly. Share the poll as widely as possible on LinkedIn through your internal channels. Take it a step further by interpreting and applying the information you receive from the polls to make decisions about your business. And if you’re so inclined, talk about the impending changes, shifts, or improvements you’ve chosen to adopt based on the LinkedIn poll results.

Remember to keep your poll posts concise and use hashtags to help LinkedIn categorize your poll in the right place. Stay away from any topics that could be construed as offensive, and don’t have too many polls active simultaneously. LinkedIn polls can’t be edited once they’re posted, so edit and re-edit them before posting. 

Foster Employee Input

LinkedIn IS like other social media platforms in that it prioritizes posts by their level of engagement. Your goal is to create posts that rank high in their algorithm. Your brand’s team members can help boost engagement of your LinkedIn B2B posts by sharing them and commenting on them. It’s as simple as that.

Generate Leads Through Your Company Page

Instead of simply having an informational company page, as so many businesses do, consider developing your LinkedIn company page as a pipeline through which you can funnel leads. The easiest way to do this is to restructure your company page, which encourages users to click on your website. This includes (but is not limited to) rewriting your company description so that it reads like a pitch, using compelling header images that showcase all of your brand’s key offerings, and ensuring that all of your page’s recent posts and updates are optimized for conversion actions.