So you set up your company page on LinkedIn and you maybe post and share here and there but, where’s the new business opportunities, employee engagement and recruitment benefits you’ve heard so much about? In short, what’s the big deal?
Here are 11 easy (and mostly free) ideas for getting you more out of your company page.
- Get to know your LinkedIn community. What are your competitors doing? What are your industry groups posting and sharing? In short, what is going on? Trends. Issues. Campaigns, etc.
- Share your expertise. Everybody’s talking (posting/comment/sharing) about <topic X> in your industry. What can your company say about it? Do you have thought leaders that can weigh in?
- Be part of the conversation. Make sure your LinkedIn content is something that your followers want to hear about (i.e. related to content they are already posting/sharing/commenting on).
- Sponsor your best content. Spend some of your marketing budget on getting your best posts the best possible audience, i.e. hitting the news feeds of your community beyond your followers. (Most companies sponsor job ads but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What about leadership pieces, catchy headlines/angles that promote your services/products, people stories, etc)
- Keep your content balanced. You’ve got to talk about yourself – new products, services, events etc. Just remember LinkedIn users are more interested in industry insights over company news. Make sure you have a solid mix of both to ensure you keep your followers engaged and engage new followers.
- Keep the conversation going. Like everything social, LinkedIn is just as much about posting content as it is about monitoring and responding to comments from your community.
- Use analytics to evaluate your strategy. Who are your followers? What content is the most engaging? What posts are drawing the most traffic to your page? And do more of what’s working.
- Post/Comment/Share at the right time. This changes all the time, but generally speaking, the peak time to post on LinkedIn is between 2 and 4pm early in the week (Mondays and Tuesdays).
- Use the (free!) LinkedIn Follow button. If you haven’t already, do this immediately. Make it easy for people to follow you from many locations – website pages, blogs, ads, email signatures, etc.
- Use (more) visual content – infographics, photos, graphics, videos and Slideshare presentations. We all skim our news feeds so it’s critical you keep your posts visually appealing to keep followers engaged with your content. If you’re only posting words and links, your content will easily get lost in the ‘skim’.
- Make the most of your company profile (obvious, but first impressions are important). Fill out all the fields about your company – industry, company size, products, etc so you’re easily searchable…AND write a killer company description that gets straight to your value proposition.
Don’t fall into the trap of doing a cut/paste from the About Us section of your website…AND update your banner image (monthly or at least quarterly). Just like the homepage of your website, your LinkedIn banner is prime real estate for promoting your latest company news – campaign, launch or other update. Your logo rarely changes, but the banner should and often.