By Natalie Ghidotti CEO, Ghidotti
Regardless of your industry, social media can be a powerful tool for a company of any size to market its products and services to other businesses. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter might be the most common platforms mentioned in day-to-day interactions, but LinkedIn is the most relevant for B2B communication. A recent survey conducted by HubSpot found that LinkedIn is 277 percent more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter. This is because it allows for deeper targeting and better connections with businesses providing an ideal setting for B2B marketing success when leveraged properly. Perhaps your business is already on LinkedIn, but you’re not quite sure how to integrate this within your thought leadership strategy. Particularly in a way that will capture attention. Here are 10 ways to leverage LinkedIn in your own B2B communications.
1. Optimize Personal LinkedIn Pages
Before you dive into your company’s LinkedIn page, it’s important to ensure that your owner and key members of your team optimize their personal LinkedIn profiles, particularly those in business development, sales or other client-facing roles. There are a number of ways to enhance your LinkedIn profile, but it all starts with the headline, summary, current employer and work experience. These sections are searchable, so be sure to provide clear and consistent language for team members, making them easier for prospective clients to find. As you begin to publish content on your company page, encourage team members to share and engage with posts to support their personal branding and boost organic page views for your business.
2. Clearly Establish Your Brand
As a key component of your online presence, your company’s LinkedIn page should be considered an extension of your website. For many prospective clients, your LinkedIn page will provide the introduction and first impression of your business. This is why it’s essential to clearly inform your target audience about what you do and how you can fulfil the needs of their company. Including well-researched keywords will go a long way toward supporting your digital reputation and improving discoverability.
3. Publish Valuable Content
If your company is serious about B2B marketing, creating and publishing quality content on LinkedIn is essential. With the right approach, you can create an inbound strategy to draw in prospective clients by building and highlighting thought leadership. This can be effectively done by members of your team on their personal pages and also on your company LinkedIn page. The key is to promote your brand by sharing thoughtful and relevant posts, articles and videos that resonate with those in your target audience and their specific pain points. Effectively grow and showcase your thought leadership on LinkedIn by becoming a resource rather than pushing a hard sale for your business.
4. Share Professional Brand Videos
Good copy, professional photos and graphics lay the foundation for engaging LinkedIn content. And using video takes it to the next level. According to a study by Wyzowl, 87 percent of video marketers say video gives them a positive ROI. Creating and sharing videos on your LinkedIn page provides an opportunity for your business to educate your audience about your product or service while reaching them with a new medium. Videos are a powerful tool for B2B communication because video posts stay visible longer on social feeds and provide a personable way to engage your audience while standing out and ranking higher in search.
5. Focus on Lead Generation
As any business owner can confirm, leads rarely appear on their own. You have to be intentional and work for them, and it’s no different when using LinkedIn for B2B communication. It starts with developing a clear understanding of the needs and interests of your target audience. This will allow you to publish, share and engage with content relevant to those needs and other industry-related trends and news. While also establishing your status as a thought leader, a strategic approach to leveraging LinkedIn can directly improve lead generation by showcasing your ability to provide solutions.
6. Create a Showcase Page
Created for companies to highlight individual brands that are extensions of the business, a LinkedIn Showcase Page provides another way to gain valuable leads with B2B communication. By focusing on a specific business unit or initiative from your organization, a Showcase Page allows you to engage with targeted audiences and share unique content tailored to their needs. These pages feature the same posting options and analytics as a company page, making it easy to establish and track goals for growth. After identifying a business area that needs a Showcase Page, keep the page name short and relatable to your target audience while building it with a continued focus on lead generation.
7. Practice Advanced Search with LinkedIn Navigator
While it’s important to utilize inbound techniques for gaining leads on LinkedIn, sometimes your business needs to go out and find your own prospects. Much like a recruiting database for college football coaches, advanced search on LinkedIn provides an effective way to identify and reach members of your target audience. With filters to narrow results by location, current company, industry, past company, school, profile language and nonprofit interests, advanced people search is one of the most powerful LinkedIn tools for identifying and reaching targeted prospects.
8. Join LinkedIn Groups
Even when it proves successful, searching for individual people on LinkedIn can be a tedious practice for B2B brands. On the other hand, LinkedIn groups provide an avenue for connecting with blocks of leads to develop. With more than 2 million groups on the platform, it’s safe to assume there’s at least one in your business segment but it’s important to focus on those that are highly relevant and, most importantly, active to ensure your efforts are worth the time. Keep in mind that LinkedIn caps participation at 50 groups, so choose carefully before you start joining groups at will.
9. Start Your Own LinkedIn Group
After you familiarize yourself with the group setting on LinkedIn, take it a step further and create one of your own. With control over background information and details, a LinkedIn group gives your business an opportunity to fill a potential need in the market while also gaining thought leadership and authority among your peers. However, you don’t want to make a LinkedIn group that is all about your company. Focus instead on your target audience and how the group can provide a setting for interesting and engaging conversations related to their professional interests.
10. Reinforce With LinkedIn Ads
After optimizing your page and establishing a steady flow of relevant content, your company can reinforce its B2B communication with targeted ads on LinkedIn. This practice can prove extremely effective in reaching and connecting with your target audience by allowing your business to target users by job title, function, industry, interests and more. With sponsored content, text ads and sponsored InMail, LinkedIn offers a number of simple and cost-effective ways to build brand awareness and generate leads for your business.