LinkedIn keeps growing. What’s your channel strategy for it?
In early 2020, LinkedIn hit 690 million users and saw a 26% increase in user sessions quarter-over-quarter.
Did you know prospective B2B buyers on the professional’s social media platform typically engage with seven to 10 pieces of content before making a purchase decision? That’s a lot of opportunity for your brand on LinkedIn.
Organic content should be a key part of your channel strategy. It can help you tap into the platform’s potential by helping you build an audience, test and learn what that audience wants and identify the best content to support with paid.
Your content should include a blend of original thought leadership, relevant industry news, and conversion content at all stages of the funnel to keep those potential buyers engaged.
Remember, with organic content you can publish multiple posts about the same article or white paper without worrying about annoying your audience because not every person will see every single post. We’re not suggesting flooding your audience with the same post, but instead posting a few times about key assets to ensure you reach your followers and their networks. Be sure to try different post messaging to see which angle captures the most attention.
When building out your organic content calendar for LinkedIn, consider these data points and best practices:
- Weekly posts from company pages see a 2x lift in engagement.
- Posts with images typically see 2x greater comment rate.
- Video on LinkedIn get 5x more engagement than video on other platforms.
- Live streams get 24x more comments than standard native videos.
- Posts with links can have up to a 45% higher follower engagement than those without links.
- When sharing a link to an owned-asset, add a tracking suffix to your links (UTM codes if you want the analyst parlance) to measure performance such as site visits, time on site, conversions, and more.
While you’re investing in quality content, don’t neglect your LinkedIn company profile. According to Sprout Social, an up-to-date, robust profile page with complete information can get up to 30% more weekly views, so include the following on your page:
- Your website URL
- Your logo
- An engaging and relevant banner image
- Your industry, company size and location
- In your company overview, include relevant terms and phrases about your mission and purpose. This will help your brand turn up in results when users search for those keywords.
You’ve probably noticed that LinkedIn has stories now. And, in some circles, it’s getting a lukewarm reaction.
Before you’ve even had a chance to figure out how to populate that channel, another platform has launched a story feature: Pinterest.
Admittedly to us, stories on Pinterest — called Story Pins — seems like a better feature fit than on LinkedIn. Story Pins are different than Snapchat and Instagram stories in a few ways, says Pinterest’s head of content, creator and homefeed product David Temple:
- They don’t disappear after a set period of time
- They can be surfaced via search
- The main engagement action with a Story Pin is to save it for later
- Story pins include ingredient lists or instructions to help users create
So far we’re seeing creators use Story Pins to walk through recipes, complete workouts or share step-by-step instructions for DIY projects. It’s a channel worth exploring if your brand would benefit from using its expertise to teach others. Offering this kind of value is a surefire way to build trust with your target audience.
This content originally appeared in our weekly newsletter called TARGET:AUDIENCE where we explore ways to find, understand, grow, engage and inspire digital audiences — so you don’t have to. Want this in your inbox? Signup below
