5 ways to boost your digital presence with LinkedIn
- Create a business page to help improve your LinkedIn rankings
- Develop content for your niche to position yourself as an expert
- Be strategic when identifying potential contacts to achieve LinkedIn success.
The world’s largest online resumé showcase, LinkedIn is also the top business social media platform and a valuable avenue for presenting your personal and business brand. There are many ways to use LinkedIn. The right choice for you and your business will depend on what your business does and its audience.
1. Get the basics right
First, get the hygiene factors right. Make sure you have an up-to-date photo, position statement and company profile. It’s also important to ensure your business page and personal profile reinforce each other.
“You can’t develop a business page without making a personal one first, says certified LinkedIn expert Jillian Bullock. “You don’t have to do a business page if you don’t want to, but there’s advantages to having one,” Bullock says. Bullock trains individuals and businesses on how to generate leads and ROI on the platform.
One of the advantages of having a business page includes better searchability on the platform. “LinkedIn likes to know you’re employed. Your ranking will go down in a search when you don’t attach yourself to a company page,” she says.
Bullock says it only takes 20 minutes to put together your business page. You don’t need to start out with a lot of content, just your business name, a description of what you do and your point of difference in the market. What’s important is to connect your personal page to your company page to achieve a boost to your LinkedIn ranking.
2. Build your brand
It’s important to understand what your brand is and what it isn’t before you can take action to develop it.
Start by identifying the audience for your business. Then, isolate how what you do is different from your competitors and your positioning in the market. Are you a premium or value-for-money brand? If your business had a personality what would it be? Dependable and safe? Dynamic and cutting edge? The right choice will depend on who you are and what you want your business to be.
Once you have established your brand, you can more easily build it in a consistent way through your LinkedIn profile and the content you create and share.
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3. Own your space
Once you have developed a robust brand position and personality, it’s time to develop your LinkedIn content strategy. Pick three subject areas to own and develop a profile as an expert in these spaces. Research the topics others in your industry own to make sure you carve out your distinct territory in differentiated areas.
So, if your specialisation is professional indemnity or commercial vehicles, develop a bank of content aligned to your specialisation to further cement your expertise and good reputation in this area.
Bullock warns against spamming your audience. “A big LinkedIn faux pas is mass spam messages. Instead, identify people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say. It’s a divide and conquer strategy, rather than spray and pray. You get so much better engagement and traction if you take that approach.”
4. Play to your audience
Connecting with followers who are interested in your business and its content is a key part of your LinkedIn strategy. Recently, LinkedIn lifted the number of contacts you can invite to like your page from 100 to 250 a month. This is a rolling system, so if you invite 250 people to like your page and 100 take up your invitation, you can send out an extra 100 invites in the time period.
“If you’re in a two-person partnership and each partner’s individual profile is attached to the business page, the partnership can invite 500 people a month to like the page. But if you invite someone to like your page and they don’t accept, you can never invite them again,” says Bullock, who recommends strategising who to contact and when to contact them.
Focus on re-connecting with warm connections and acquaintances over distant contacts to give yourself the best chance of increasing your follower numbers.
5. Plan your content
Mix up your content to include top tip posts, events wrap-ups and case studies to keep your audience engaged. Then, assess which posts deliver the best results.
While metrics have a role to play in measuring performance, Bullock suggests a more nuanced approach. Start by making an assessment of how engaged your target list is with LinkedIn. Focus on profiles of people who are regularly on LinkedIn, rather than those who have not been on the platform for 90 days or more. Then, isolate and eliminate profiles from your content list that post content but don’t engage with others.
“There are many factors to consider before you make a connection request. If you are trying to connect with 100 people, try not to annoy 70 people to get to the 30 you really want. In Australia, you can’t risk irritating people with spam. It’s too small a place.”
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Above all, remember LinkedIn is about human connection. So, avoid a hard product sell and instead develop trust by showing your personality in your posts. That’s the best way to build an engaged audience that will support your business over time.
This advice is general in nature and has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs and may not be right for you. You must decide whether or not it is appropriate, in light of your own circumstances, to act on this advice. To decide if QBE's products are right for you, please ensure you obtain and consider the Policy Wording or Product Disclosure Statements and Target Market Determinations, available online at QBE.com/au. Insurance issued and underwritten by QBE Insurance (Australia) Limited (ABN 78 003 191 035, AFSL 239545).