Last updated on May 22nd, 2021 at 06:34 am
LinkedIn marketing has grown multiple folds in the last few years. Many students, teachers, business professionals, etc have recently started using the platform recently.
Either hiring professional candidates or getting leads, everything is possible through LinkedIn marketing. The following graph shows the number of visitors in the last six months:
But the beginners face many problems in how to prepare a LinkedIn marketing strategy! They face difficulty in the initial phase of learning how stuff works on LinkedIn. Several pain points include:
- How to plan out a strategy?
- How to collect related data for that plan?
- How to showcase the posts in the best possible manner?
- How to analyze the outcome? etc
I am sure you will find a lot of “Ready to Use LinkedIn Strategies” after reading this blog. There are three important phases of marketing activity on LinkedIn i.e.
- Beginning Phase
- Intermediate Phase
- Final Phase
On Youtube, there is a bundle of LinkedIn Growth Hacks or LinkedIn marketing solutions, etc. When you watch them, you will find that you have already known those tips.
This blog has step by step guide which can help you slowly but surely. I have also cited some good examples which you have watched earlier.
So let’s begin with the beginning phase
A. Beginning phase/Starting phase
People say, “First Impression is the last impression“. What should you do to get the best first impression? How to achieve that? If you are new to this platform, you need to know how to become a good creator.
You have to simply follow a few steps to begin your marketing path on LinkedIn.
1. Set goals to achieve
LinkedIn is used in many ways due to its diverse nature. So you have to fix your unique goal, what do you want to gain as the outcome?
Either you want to build your brand’s reputation or you want to spread awareness about your new product, service, idea or research, etc.
Through this, we can focus on one single goal.
2. Competitor study
The current market is running towards providing the best solution to the clients. If it’s not unique then nobody is interested in you!
So, competitor study provides you a lot of areas where you can serve better than your competitors.
This also helps in finding the strategies they have adopted to promote their content/service on the platform. You can use them in a more enhanced manner by applying creative changes.
Now you can build more unique and effective social media planning which we will discuss further.
3. Check your current engagement
Making vague digital marketing strategies for LinkedIn is also a waste of time if they don’t fit in your current engagement circle.
That’s why it is important to know about your current engagement with your audience. If they get content according to the way they like, they will engage and increase the possibilities of spreading word of mouth by themselves.
4. Set a time limit.
When you know your bounds, you can perform better than anyone else.
By setting a time limit, it becomes easy to focus on your LinkedIn growth mindset.
This also helps in better analytics and comparisons of the outcome and improving more rapidly.
It’s time to move on to the next phase of our prime goal.
B. Implementation phase
Learning theory is waste until we don’t know how to use it for our own good.
Let’s learn how you can start applying your accumulated research.
1. Social media planning
This is the key thing to accomplish your goals. Social Media planning helps us in the proper execution of posting the content in a continuous manner.
2. Decide the kind of content
LinkedIn allows different types of posts like short posts, articles, external link sharing, infographics, etc.
It’s up to you what kind of efforts can you put as per your current content generation capacity.
If you can write long articles, prefer the Article. If you want to share just some bits of information, use short posts.
3. Make draft/blueprint of the content
Once you have done that, start the expansion of the idea into more visible forms. If you decide to post an article as the first post and so on, then start to collect content/resources for your article.
This will reduce the delays due to content shortage and decrease the number of mistakes.
4. Start making relevant and engaging content
Start making your first copy of the article. Start building your infographics etc.
One thing which you should keep in mind is the creativity and the attractiveness of the content.
You can gain followers by making some user-centric posts but not constant engagement. So you should make more engaging posts to automatically increase followers.
Remember the “First Impression” from the beginning phase?
5. Refining / Proofreading the content
Cross verifying your content is very useful while delivering any content to your audience.
This not only reduces the errors but also streamline the flow of the content.
6. Post it with proper hashtags
The last step to reveal your content is posting it. Use proper hashtags as it increases the reach of your post and by chance if it trends for a particular, you will automatically attract a new audience.
The following example shows how positively can hashtag impact on your LinkedIn post.
The post was about a Medium Blog by Kumar Yashoratna. Visit the post and find how you can boost your post using hashtags.
7. Sharing the content
The above example also fits in the sharing part of your content. If you closely observe, you will find that the more the attention it gets on LinkedIn, the more the visitors will visit the main blog on Medium.
Cross-platform sharing is useful in spreading the word about your work and achieving your target more easily e.g. Twitter posts, Facebook groups, or any Instagram page to drive the audience from those channels to your content.
If you have not heard about LinkedIn groups, they are also of great use to share your content.
If you want the LinkedIn algorithm to increase the reach of your content you also have to the dwell time of your posts.
C. Outcome phase
Now after everything you did, you should know how to properly analyze the data to get the proper information about your efforts.
If you are dealing with bulk data you can use different tools but for beginners, checking the views, comments, and shares is sufficient.
The following graph contains the engagement of the audience on a very popular post by Naman Mehrotra. Just go through it once and try to find the possible factors why it attracted the viewers for almost a week and continues. Do share your opinion in the comment box.
This activity will certainly give you the key ideas which I have talked about. You will get a better understanding of how to generate more engagement.
To do so, you can try the following steps:
1. Leads Analysis
What is a Lead?
A lead is a prospective customer who got interested in your product or service and has directly asked you to serve them.
If you get any such customer, then it’s a great deal but never lose hope if it was not your current target.
2. Engagement Analysis
It is the ratio of the number of followers to the number of reactions a post gets in the form of like share and comments.
Good engagement means more audience is liking your content. There are chances that people will come to your post again and again.
The following example shows a detailed analysis that shows 4369 total views, 330 reactions, and 60 comments. Linked also displays the niche which is watching your content.
3. Place of Improvement
After everything you’ve done, planning, executing and getting results, you have a clear display of the less effective strategies. Now is the time to improve those strategies.
You can do it by changing the current plan with a new one or add something to it.
4. Remarks/Learning
If you find anything unique or interesting that you never expected, note it down and check if it was helpful or not or how did it happen?
These are some basic tips for the beginning. Now I am sharing some quick LinkedIn hacks or tips you don’t know earlier, curated on an Edvicer blog. Have a look
I have shared only the things which I’ve done in one form or the other and continuously practicing. There can be a variation of the outcomes in your path but I can firmly say that it will help you in changing your perspective about your current LinkedIn usage and LinkedIn social media planning.
It is devoted to the beginners who have very little information about it. I will soon share another blog in which I will share more advanced strategies specifically for the serious marketers covering topics like how to build connections, how to utilize the features of LinkedIn, how LinkedIn communication can help you build your community etc. Till then keep yourself connected.
I also thank to the persons who shared their stats for public use.
I am curious about the areas where you’ve got stuck. Please leave your queries in the comment section. I will love to answer them.
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