How to Use LinkedIn for Marketing Success
Linkedin is a powerful B2B social media channel. Most people spend time on LinkedIn to develop relationships, learn from industry pros, and provide value to their network. If you want to use Linkedin for marketing success, you need a plan.
A successful LinkedIn marketing plan is one that helps you attract the right audience, build a connection, and create new sales conversations with your company. Organizing your thoughts, creating content, and constantly delivering value to your audience needs to be scheduled and tracked.
We will discuss how to use LInkedIn for marketing success including how to set up your marketing, how to ensure execution of your plan, and how to measure your success.
PLANNING & SETUP - Preparing for LinkedIn Marketing Success
Determine Your Goals
The first step in using Linkedin for marketing success is to determine your goals. The best campaigns have very clear objectives. Are you looking to generate leads, gain more brand recognition, or attract more employees. Before you can build your LinkedIn marketing plan, you need to understand what success looks like.
Determine Your Audience
Knowing who you are targeting, the best method of reaching them, and how to get their attention is critical. You need to know what industry your audience works in (to understand their pain points), where they hang out online (so you can be there too), and gain a better understanding of what gets them excited about work (if you want to attract them).
Once you know where your audience spends their time online, you can create content that will help them. You need to know what questions your prospects want answered (so you can answer them) and what keeps them up at night (so you can solve their problems).
Create Your Execution Plan
Execution is the difference between a successful campaign and one that falls flat. Your LinkedIn marketing plan needs to include who is delivering your content, what content they are delivering, when it is being delivered, and how to know if the content was successful.
Setup Your LinkedIn Profile for Success
Your company LinkedIn profile is your hub for marketing success. You need to invest in making your LinkedIn profile provide value to visitors, industry experts, and job seekers. You need to add content so your profile is not just a resume.
Tracking is important as well. You can use tools like Hootsuite to track your engagement and reach with your posting on LinkedIn.
EXECUTION - Acting on Your LinkedIn Marketing Plan
Create a Content Calendar
Now that you have determined your goals, who you are targeting, and what content is going to resonate with them, it is time to make a content calendar. Your content calendar needs to include the following:
● Topics for posting
● Target audience
● Titles for future posts
Content calendars will help you keep your ideas for posting separated and keep track of what you posted previously.
Commit to 90 Days of Action
After you have determined your goals and mapped out a content calendar, it is time to commit. Connect with people on LinkedIn and start engaging daily.
Commit to 90 days of regular action on LinkedIn before you decide that it's not working out. LinkedIn requires consistent action daily in order to be successful.
IMPROVEMENT - Review Results and Improve
Establish a process to measure if your content is performing This should be done before you start executing your plan. Track the metrics that are relevant to your marketing plan, the following are examples:
● Links generated
● Pageviews
● Mentions in third party blogs
● Reach of your content by industry, job function, and company size
● Engagement on your content by industry, job function and company size
Make note of your topics that perform well and those that do not. Review your calendar to see when your content is performing well and when it is not. Be prepared to make adjustments in future posts when needed.