The Complete Guide to Ace Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

With 930 million members worldwide, LinkedIn has become a marketing goldmine. But how do you master this professional playground without losing your humor and sanity?

Fear not, fellow marketer! 

This comprehensive guide is here to help you create a killer LinkedIn marketing strategy.

Who Should Use LinkedIn for Marketing?

LinkedIn marketing isn't just for the stiff corporate types. Anyone with a serious responsibility, be it academic, corporate, or business, can start building their presence on LinkedIn and create a professional brand.

Here are a few examples of industries and individuals that can benefit from LinkedIn marketing:

B2B Businesses Using LinkedIn for Marketing

LinkedIn is a networking haven for businesses looking to connect with other businesses.

For example, Salesforce is a CRM solution designed to help sales teams organize and streamline their customer data. Their company page has around 5M followers, and they’re quite active on the platform.

Their strategy: posting content around the behind-the-scenes activities of their organization—an event they’re conducting, team lunches, new launches, etc. This helps their followers connect with their company and potential employees understand their work culture. 

And most important, their LinkedIn page helps the Trailblazers community stay updated on upcoming events and summits. 

Recruiters

Calling all headhunters and HR professionals! LinkedIn is your playground for finding and connecting with top talent. Besides sourcing relevant profiles from the platform, you can signal trustworthiness to your potential candidates. And you can do this by creating a profile that reflects your professionalism and experience in the recruiting space. 

This profile is an excellent example of an approachable recruiter who has put together an impressive profile.

Other than maintaining a complete profile on LinkedIn, you’ll find him sharing interview tips for his target audience, i.e., job seekers, which makes the profile more attractive and valuable. 

Freelancers and consultants

Show off your expertise, build your network, and find potential clients on LinkedIn.

How? Let’s take an example of how Kat leverages LinkedIn as a client acquisition platform:

• She has a complete profile on LinkedIn, and her summary section is a 10/10!
• Her profile displays the recommendations she got from her clients, which is a great way to establish credibility.
• She regularly publishes content around freelancing and her processes which allows her to share her expertise with her audience.

Job seekers

Stand out from the crowd by showcasing your skills, experience, and personality on LinkedIn. You can follow a similar approach to Kat in the above example. The key is to maintain an active LinkedIn profile that displays your achievements, experiences, and your process clearly, which is all recruiters want to know!

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Real-Life Examples of LinkedIn Marketing Strategies

To get your creative juices flowing, let's take a look at some real-life examples of brands rocking the LinkedIn marketing game:

• IBM: IBM’s LinkedIn page is a treasure trove of engaging content, from thought leadership articles to live events and webinars. Plus, they humanize their brand by highlighting employee stories and achievements. This helps them present IBM as an amazing place to work and showcase their work culture and values to potential employees and customers.

• HubSpot: Marketing software giant HubSpot excels at sharing valuable content that resonates with their target audience, including blog posts, e-books, and case studies. Their LinkedIn presence showcases their expertise while also providing a touch of humor.

• Dunder Mifflin: Okay, this one might be fictional, but who can forget Michael Scott's hilarious marketing antics on The Office? Making up personas and getting into the characters to help your colleagues understand the persona well—pure genius!

Lesson learned: don't be afraid to show your personality on LinkedIn, and who knows? People might dig it!

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Create a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

Ready to dive into the world of LinkedIn marketing? Follow these steps to create a killer strategy:

Step 1: Understand the LinkedIn Algorithm

LinkedIn's algorithm can be a fickle beast. To get your content seen by the right people, focus on two key factors: relevance and engagement. 

Make sure your content is tailored to your target audience's interests and encourages interaction (likes, comments, and shares).

Follow these best practices to keep up with the evolving algorithm:

• Follow LinkedIn marketers (Yes, those folks exist!) or experts who share every tiny detail they learn about LinkedIn. Whether it’s a new feature or a LinkedIn hack, you’ll find them educating their audience on all things LinkedIn in the form of bite-sized videos and posts. (A profile recommendation: Michelle)
• Keep track of your LinkedIn analytics and analyze your engagement rate on the platform. This involves the engagement of the content you’re creating or the number of visitors your profile attracts over a period. Or, use a tool like Inlytics that shows you which content to post on your personal profile to get the best results. 
• Experiment and pivot—that’s the best way to beat the algorithm! Try out different formats of posts, content strategies, and engagement tactics to see what’s working and what isn’t. The algorithm can’t always work in your favor, but you can use your creativity to stay ahead of the curve!

Step 2: Brush Up on Your Basics

Before you start posting, make sure your LinkedIn profile and company page are up to snuff:

• Cover photo: Use a high-quality, eye-catching cover image that reflects your brand and includes a call to action. You can put an image of your favorite quotes, your services, and products, or your brand’s USPs.
  

• For example, Jacqueline has presented what the company she works with stands for. This instantly gives her visitors an idea of what her company is all about and the industry they’re in. 
• Profile details: Fill out every section of your profile and company page to build credibility and professionalism.
  - Upload a cover photo that’s relevant to your audience.
  - Use a professional headshot for a profile picture (not a selfie or a groupfie!).
  - Write a headline with appropriate keywords from your industry—this makes your profile searchable.
  - Write a profile summary that portrays a gist of your professional journey, and don’t forget to bring your personality into it!
  - Thoroughly fill up the experience section—mention every job you’ve had.
  - Ask your colleagues, managers, and clients for recommendations.
  
  
• Company description: While writing the description, go over your brand’s values, principles, USP, and brand story. Note down all the worthy milestones you’ve managed to achieve as a founder.
  
  Keeping all these things in mind, craft a compelling story that speaks to your audience and helps them connect with you. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to include relevant keywords for better visibility on the platform.
  
  

Step 3: Visuals Sell

A picture is worth a thousand words, so use custom images and videos to capture your audience's attention. Remember, LinkedIn native videos autoplay in the feed, giving you an extra engagement boost. Consider utilizing tools like VEED for enhancing your content accessibility. VEED offers an add subtitle to videos feature, an auto subtitle generator and a video caption generator. These tools will be especially useful for viewers in a noisy environment or for those with hearing impairments.

For example, Salesforce often leverages videos and images to promote something or share a company update on their page, all the while boosting their marketing and employer branding in tandem. 

Here, they are simply promoting a blog post about third-party cookies while using cookies falling off the sky as a video, which immediately stops the scrolls and engages the audience. 

Another excellent example of creating visuals on LinkedIn- launching a new feature and explaining how it works via a Loom video. Absolute genius!

Oh, and that’s not it! You can also leverage carousels to attract your target audience. Catchy (not click bait-y) headlines, stunning visuals, and powerful content usually do the trick!

Step 4: Content Creation

Ditch the sales pitch and focus on providing value to your audience with informative, entertaining content. Use niche hashtags, post at optimal times, and experiment with different formats like infographics and text-only posts.

You can create high-value visuals (as shown in step 5) or publish the classic old text posts that still work like a charm. 

Just make sure to structure your posts well and be as succinct as possible—do not ramble!

Step 5: Employee Involvement

Get your employees involved in your LinkedIn marketing strategy by encouraging them to follow your company page, share content, and engage with posts. It helps you reach a wider set of audience (yours and your employees’), which is a great way to increase your brand awareness.

• Ask your employees to share or reshare your content. 
• Encourage them to talk about what they’re working on in your company and showcase their progress. 
• Humanize your brand by showcasing employee stories and office happenings.

Step 6: Paid Efforts

Boost your reach with LinkedIn ads, targeting users who have engaged with your website or whose contact details you already have. 

Focus on conversions, as these users are already familiar with your brand.

Step 7: Analyze Your Data

Track your performance using LinkedIn's native analytics dashboard, focusing on engagement, conversions, and web traffic. Adjust your strategy based on the data to maximize your success.

Track metrics including:

• Post impressions
• Clicks
• Follower and connection growth
• Profile views
• Search appearances

Use Inlytics for comprehensive insights into your profile data!

Best Practices for LinkedIn Marketing

Now that you've got the basics down, let's dive into some lesser-known tips and tricks for LinkedIn marketing success:

• Join and engage in LinkedIn Groups: Network with like-minded professionals and potential customers by participating in relevant LinkedIn Groups. Share your expertise and build relationships to boost your brand's visibility.
• Repurpose your top-performing content: Don't let your best content gather dust! Repurpose your most successful posts for LinkedIn to maximize engagement and reach.
• Stay on top of industry news: Share your insights on the latest industry news and trends to position yourself as a thought leader and keep your audience informed.
• Expand your network: Reach out to your target audience on LinkedIn and keep adding new and valuable connections. After all, your network is your net worth!
• Schedule posts: Does showing up daily keep you from creating content on LinkedIn? You can bulk-create your posts and schedule them all at once. But even after scheduling all your posts, engage with your followers and target audience at least once or twice a week to keep the engagement coming. 
• Automate prospecting: The good news is you don’t have to look for prospects all day long just to have them ghost you! Simply automate this task (LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a great tool for this) and get hundreds of prospects to cold message within minutes. 

Rock Your LinkedIn Marketing Game 

There you have it, folks! With this comprehensive guide in hand, you're ready to conquer the world of LinkedIn marketing. 

Now go forth and engage your way to success!

Remember to keep your sense of humor intact and never be afraid to show your personality. After all, LinkedIn is a platform for people, not robots.

Happy networking!

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