You may be wondering if LinkedIn should be one of the platforms to which you devote your valuable time and effort. It seems much like Facebook and Instagram but also quite different. An example may be the fastest way to illustrate this point.
Imagine you are a life insurance company that is currently posting on Facebook and Instagram. Consider that you have portrayed your business as approachable, responsive, even funny at times. You provide a fair amount of inspirational quotes. While this may have worked well, it will look out of place on LinkedIn. This site is about professionals visiting with other professionals. Above all, you want to provide educational or otherwise valuable information about your brand and industry. On this platform, there is much less emphasis on being entertaining or up-lifting. Instead, you might talk about new laws affecting insurance, different types of life insurance, customer satisfaction with your company, etc. Even the images look different as there are a lot more images that look like an infographic. If quotes are shared, it is usually from a business leader.
This tutorial will help you develop a personal LinkedIn page. Many small business owners will start with an account in his/her own name, so that is what we designed our tutorial for. Later, you may wish to add a separate LinkedIn company page for your business, as well.
Here are the steps to take to make LinkedIn work for your business:
Finish your LinkedIn Profile
Though we recommend a complete profile for any social platform, it is especially important for LinkedIn. A professional photo is a must. LinkedIn offers many opportunities to build your profile with information. Try to take advantage of as many as you can with the materials you have on hand right now. You can continue to build your profile as you go along, but don’t delay getting started on the rest of our strategies.
Spend some time learning about LinkedIn
It has a different, more professional flavor than other social platforms. Spend at least ten minutes a day reviewing other pages. Once you feel like you understand how this platform is different, start interacting with other profiles at least a couple of times a week. Interacting involves liking, commenting and sharing other’s updates. Start with the updates of your connections that are already appearing in your feed daily.
Share 3rd party content
By clicking on the share button of a favorite update you found in LinkedIn, you have instantly created an update of your own. This easy strategy will help build your relationship with the original author, as they will benefit from more exposure of their content. It will also satisfy some of your followers who are seeking solutions to their business problems and/or to learn more about what’s going on in your particular industry. As long as you believe in the value of what you are sharing, you are all set.
At this point, you should have a pretty good idea what the LinkedIn culture is and what the norms are for this particular platform.
Start posting by using some of the posts you were already posting on Facebook and/or Instagram
If you already have an active presence on Facebook or Instagram, this can be a good place to start doing more. Be sure to give the current post you are working on for your other platforms a “test” before you submit it to LinkedIn:
Think through your current post description to make sure it is right for this mostly professional audience found on LinkedIn.
-Does the post educate or inform?
-Does it sell in an understated, business-like way?
If you can answer yes to either or both questions, the post is probably a good candidate for LinkedIn.
Next, take a moment to repurpose. You may need to delete a few items from the original post.
-Omit any emojis.
-Omit the “lighter” posts entirely. For example, try not to use quote posts, inspirational posts, weekend posts, lifestyle posts…you get the picture. These posts that looked appropriate on Facebook and Instagram will usually look out of place on LinkedIn.
Finally, even with the above edits, you may occasionally want to replace the photo or edit the post description for a better fit on LinkedIn.
(Hashtags on LinkedIn should remain the same as for Facebook. Usually three. LinkedIn even prompts you with hashtag ideas, making it one of the easiest platforms for which to hashtag.)
Occasionally do the reverse of the posting process we just outlined. Create posts specifically for LinkedIn and then repurpose them for other, less serious platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Try a different image, a change to the words to be more conversational or omit the call to action prompt. Doing this reversal occasionally will allow you to think in a new way about your brand and add even more variety to your feed – always a plus.
Time to create your own content
Now you are ready to create original content about your product or service in a way that is informative and interesting to other professionals. What may have been “too much information” for other social platforms may be perfect for LinkedIn.
When you create original updates, you can share your professional knowledge and demonstrate that you are, in fact, a subject matter expert in certain aspects of your field. This strategy is called becoming a thought leader in your field and LinkedIn is the umber one place to implement this strategy. For many businesses, this is a major reason their target audience may want to choose to do business with them over a competitor.
When it comes to actual writing of this type of update, many people feel comfortable doing their first “original” updates in a blog on their website and then posting directly on LinkedIn. This is an ideal way to start as blogs have generally been well thought out and amply proofed. The actual LinkedIn post itself is almost a formality in this case. Once the blog is written, the update content, promoting the blog, can often be pulled word for word from the blog itself. When you add the link, the image will automatically populate with the image you chose when you published the blog.
We usually recommend setting a goal of posting about two of your blog posts a month. If you are creating more blogs than that, then post about one blog post per week.
Though you don’t want to ever stop doing blogs, over time creating original updates will become much easier. You won’t always need to rely on blogs (or sharing others updates) to have a regular presence on LinkedIn.
Analytics
Comparing and contrasting your results from LinkedIn with Facebook and Instagram should yield valuable information about your target audience and effectiveness of your messaging.
Combined, these steps should give you an excellent start on using LinkedIn for your business.
If you have questions or comments, contact [email protected] or visit our private Facebook group, The Small Biz Builders.
