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Today we’re going to talk about all things LinkedIn marketing. It still fascinates me that more recruiters do not leverage LinkedIn as a fantastic marketing platform.
If you would like some more ideas around social media, then we have a great report that you can download. The only cost is your email address. If you go along to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/smm, we’ve put together a report on using social media post-COVID and what you need to be thinking about.
I do a deep dive into why social media has become so important in the last 12 months. I also share eight pieces of content styles that you can use now to help position you in the market. I talk about brand voice and also about automation, what to automate and what not to automate.
Let’s get into LinkedIn and how you can use it.
LinkedIn’s Pandemic Growth
Now, initially during the pandemic, LinkedIn shot off the scale when it comes to usage and people jumping online. I think there was one particular month where it had a 2700% increase in daily visitors. That’s pretty significant. Once something moves so much in a certain direction, yes, there’s going to be a shakedown, but it never goes back to what it was before. Consider this when thinking about using social channels as a marketing medium for your staffing company.
Today, I’m going to share with you seven marketing monsters that I do probably every day, maybe one of them I don’t do all the time, but I’ll explain that when I come to share it. I guarantee that if you do this, it will elevate your brand presence, it will build over time, you will get more people wanting to connect with you, and also your visibility will start to increase. There’ll be more people looking at your profile. Nothing but positive things can happen if you follow what I’m going to suggest to you today. If you feel a little bit cynical about it, let me share some data with you that you might not be aware of.
Why Post on LinkedIn?
We want to capture our audience; we want to demonstrate our authority within the market, increase our brand awareness, of course, we can do that if we are in front of people who are likely to use our products and service. The latest data reveals that there are over 722 million people on LinkedIn. That’s actual members. They’re not all within the US either. The majority of people are outside of the US. Now, you could think, “Oh, well, is that relevant when you’ve got a billion people on Instagram and you’ve got two-point-whatever billion on YouTube and Facebook’s even approaching three million.”
All of these platforms are important, and I always suggest that you have a presence on the big platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. However, what you have to remember is, it’s all about quality. LinkedIn is the main business-to-business social network in the Western world. Therefore, you will get more bang for your buck if you have a presence on LinkedIn, and you are leveraging it in the way that I’m going to suggest to you.
There are 55 million companies registered on LinkedIn as well. They’ve all got multiple employees, and they are there. You can get your message out in front of them. A couple of other things just to demonstrate how important this is, is that of that 722 million, 40% use LinkedIn daily. Now, I know that means 60% don’t. However, think about your marketing messages, that if somebody is not there every day, they’re probably going to be there at some point that week, and they’ve got an opportunity to see you and what you are sharing.
That figure around the 40% means that you’ve got literally, I think, clocking up like a billion interactions and views that are going on because they’ve got that daily usage. Finally, let’s just get really mercenary about this, that the average take-home salary of people on LinkedIn, I think more than 40% have a salary of over 75,000 a year.
Seven Strategies for LinkedIn
Just think about your market and who is there. Let me share with you seven things I do every day. I jump onto LinkedIn, and I have a process that I go through. It takes me anywhere between 15 and 20 minutes. I plan this into my diary, and no matter what happens, no matter what hits the fan, I can always find 15 minutes a day to do this. I tend to do it first thing in the morning.
1. Send invites
Let me share the seven things that I do. First, I go to the LinkedIn company page, and you may have noticed that on that particular page, you can actually, I think it’s every month, you get 100 invites that you can use. My target market is business owners, and my experience is that they tend to be on LinkedIn very early in the morning, so I stand a greater chance of my content coming up in front of them.
It’s great to have people on your company page visiting your profile because if you share content on your company page, and you share content on your personal profile, which I’ll come on to, then people are more likely to have an opportunity to interact with you. If people like your company page and share what you’ve got on your company page, your content will appear in the feeds of people who like and share, which is also important.
If people accept your invite, and they go and like your company page, you get that credit back; so that’s a top tip going to your page. It will default to whoever is on that page and the connections that you have. Even though you may already have a connection in your personal profile, it’s great to have them looking at your company page too, who you are and what you do. The more opportunities you get, the more fishing lines you can have out there, the better. That’s number one.
2. Accept Connection Requests
The second thing I do is accept connection requests if they are relevant to me and my brand. I remember once working with somebody in one of our programs, and it astounded me that he hadn’t quite got into LinkedIn and used it as a sourcing tool. He’d got hundreds and hundreds of people connection requests; some of them may have been a bit spammy. But let’s be honest, there’ll be a lot of people that weren’t, and he just hadn’t accepted them.
Make sure that you accept connection requests.
3. Reach Out
The third thing is, I reach out to people. I know some people don’t like that terminology, reach out, but I make a connection request to people in my market. I do it in a certain way. At Superfast, we have a whole training module on LinkedIn. We’ve even got messaging campaign templates that you can use, but I connect with my target market. I stick within the LinkedIn boundaries, and I do this every single day. The next thing that I do is share content.
4. Share content
Now, I share content in different ways. First of all, I share automated content, for example, blog posts, an image, or a meme. It would be different categories, for example, a client testimonial or a relevant blog post. I will share a piece of content in an automated way every single day.
5. Write a post
The other thing that I do is share a piece of content that I have written that day. It might only be a hundred words. It will be a tip about marketing, or sales, about being a business owner. It’s a way of adding value. Now, I do this, and I don’t overthink it; I don’t spend too long doing it, but my objective is to show people that I’m on LinkedIn all the time and not all automated.
I do it to elevate my brand. I also do it to give people a peek into my thinking process, experience, and what I’m doing. I use story, so if you do not use story, then use story, e.g. when I placed a candidate in X; when I worked with this particular client and built their talent pipeline, etc. Stories work incredibly well on LinkedIn. I will post something on my profile and share the same thing on the company page.
I think you can get something like 1,300 characters in your LinkedIn profile. I think that equates to roundabout 200 and a bit words. I will post something like that. I will put some hashtags. And maybe drop a link in the comments, and that helps to brand me. I am a writer, so that’s what I do. I’d recommend it, and we’ve had a lot of our clients doing this successfully too. We had one client that had something like 20,000 views on something that they’d done.
6. Poll
Now, within the realms of what you share on LinkedIn, you could always do a poll, which works well. They get more engagement, and you get some data – I wouldn’t say it’s always statistically significant, but it gets you eyeballs on your posts.
7. Send messages
That’s what I would suggest that you do in your daily process on LinkedIn. The final two things I do, which have a more active element to get in front of people, are two things. One is I send messages to people on the LinkedIn platform. Of course, you can do this in an automated fashion. You can use certain tools when it comes to this, or you can do it manually.
I have a messaging campaign that I’m using. I connect with people, add massive value, and start to get into a conversation, and then I take people through this messaging campaign. Some are automated; some are just in time. I have a set group of people that I’m doing this with as I’m building relationships.
There are plenty of tools out there that you can find that will still keep you within the LinkedIn boundaries if you use them properly because I know LinkedIn often changes its automation. One that I particularly use is Octopus CRM. I found that useful, and it works. I send messages in a campaign.
8. Like, Share and Comment
Then the final thing that I do is like, share, and comment, and it doesn’t take long to do that because people will see in their feed and LinkedIn profile if someone has shared, liked, or commented on something.
You will get on people’s radar by doing this. Depending on our clients on LinkedIn, I always like, share, and comment on their content. Also, I am reaching out to people that I want to have as clients; my targets, prospects; I do the same with those guys too. Again, you’ll get comments, and you’ll get people to comment and like.
I wrote a long post during LGBT month. I got a lot of traction from that post. I commented on a couple of other people that had written LGBT posts as well. They looked at my profile, and I think I made a huge number of connections there because of that. Think about like, share, and comment.
We’re living in a connected world; people want more and more connection. Don’t be a faceless name on LinkedIn that is very flat that doesn’t interact. Make sure that you interact more, that you comment, that you get involved in the conversation. It doesn’t take hours and hours.
That’s my daily regime. Yes, there are other things that I do, of course, on LinkedIn. I don’t always do them daily. I may do them weekly. We share a lot of this in our LinkedIn training module as part of the Superfast Circle.
I haven’t mentioned video here because I don’t do a video every single day. If you get into that habit, I’m sure that would be amazing, it’s all about time. What I wanted to do here is give you a level of must-do activities that will help to elevate your brand that are easy to deliver and that you can do relatively quickly too.
How We Can Help
We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see if what we do can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.
Thanks,
Denise
