LinkedIn has more than 930 millions members worldwide. It is the most popular social media platform for B2B networking and marketing. LinkedIn is often overlooked in favor of more dazzling social media platforms. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for both creators and businesses.
Are you ready to learn why LinkedIn is a great place to market your business and build your professional profile?
This is your complete LinkedIn 101 guide.
Members Profiles on LinkedIn
Your LinkedIn profile will help you establish your professional presence.
You can do the following with a LinkedIn profile:
Create a digital resume that includes your work experience, certifications, and recommendationsMarket your social media management services by connecting with colleagues and using marketplace toolsEstablish yourself as a thought leader by sharing expert advice, participating in groups, and hosting events
LinkedIn profiles are not meant to be used for business purposes, but you will need one if your goal is to promote clients or companies.
You must first have a LinkedIn account to create or manage your company page.
Choose a photo for your LinkedIn profile that shows you in a professional setting. The best headshots are those with minimally distracting background.
Emeric Ernoult, co-founder of Agorapulse, sets an excellent example.
LinkedIn profile pictures should be 400 x 400 pixels. Use the LinkedIn mobile application to edit your photo if it needs to be cropped or touched up before uploading. You can adjust, crop, and filter your profile picture to perfection.
Choose a banner (1584 x 396) that represents your professional career. It’s great to include a picture of your business or company in this area.
LinkedIn headline
It is crucial to have a headline that grabs attention, as this text will appear under your name and photo on LinkedIn. Your headline will appear every time you post a blog, comment on an online video of a client, or add to a LinkedIn group.
LinkedIn headlines are limited to 220 characters. They must be concise and catchy. This space can be used to highlight your expertise or list your title.
Darryl Praill, CMO of Agorapulse, sets an excellent example.
You have more to say? There is also a section called About that allows up to 2,600 character. You can also detail your education, certificates, and professional experience in specific sections.
Create a LinkedIn account
LinkedIn releases new tools regularly to help you get more out of your profile. In most cases, these tools are only available if you activate LinkedIn’s Creator mode.
Open your profile, and then look at the Resources section. Switch it on if it does not show a green button.
Take some time to learn about the tools available. You can use the creator mode to allow LinkedIn users to follow you instead of requesting personal connections. This can help you quickly build an audience.
In the Creator mode, you can also add up to 5 topics that will appear on your profile. This allows you to tell your members more about your expertise. Creator mode also gives you access LinkedIn tools such as audio events and newsletters.
LinkedIn 101: Company Pages
You can use LinkedIn’s advertising features to promote your company, gain new customers and attract them.
You can access:
Lead forms to help you find new clients and prospects. Employee advocacy tools to spread messages.
Logo and header image of the company
The logo on your company page should be a way for customers to easily identify you or your clients. Use a 400 x 400-pixel image that is displayed well as a square. (Not in the circle format most platforms use).
There are a few choices for the header image of your organization (1,128 by 191 pixels). You can select a timeless image that captures the essence of your company and doesn’t require frequent (or any) updates.
You can also choose a banner that represents your current initiatives, such as your latest product, a upcoming event or important company news. Agorapulse, as you can see uses the second option to highlight updates such as the tool’s TikTok Integration.
Like LinkedIn profiles, the company page has a space to include a headline telling customers about what they do. This is a great place to include your company’s tagline or other concise statements that summarize the business.
Add an external link next to your header. You can, for example, add a link that leads to the homepage of your company, a contact form or a lead generation offer. Turn on the option to create custom buttons for your company’s page to add an action to the header.
Your company page could have access to more tools depending on your offerings and industry. Software as a Service (SaaS), for example, can feature products and highlight featured customers on the company page.
LinkedIn Business Manager
LinkedIn Business Manager allows you to access all company pages, whether you are managing contractors or multiple clients.
You can invite your team to manage your LinkedIn profile and control their access level using Business Manager. You can request access to the company page of a client through Business Manager.
Are your clients or members of the team still not using Business Manager? You can add LinkedIn Company Pages to your Agorapulse Account and set permissions directly on the dashboard.
Showcase Page
A company page can be all that you need to do organic marketing for your business on LinkedIn. If your business or client has multiple brands or units, then you might want to consider using LinkedIn’s showcase option.
They are similar to company pages in terms of structure and have the same publishing, analytics and reporting capabilities. Showcase pages are linked directly to your company page. This allows you to highlight unique initiatives.
You will need to create a company profile before you can create a showcase. Open the admin menu of your company page, and then select Create a showcase.
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LinkedIn 101: Content Plan
You’re now ready to create your content strategy. You’re not sure what to share on LinkedIn?
Take a look at some of the tools and formats that LinkedIn offers.
You can post from your company page, member profile or Agorapulse.
Text messages
Text-only posts are some of the most popular and successful ones on LinkedIn. They don’t include any links or other creatives. Text posts can be used for thought leadership and to share step-by-step solutions for your target audience’s most pressing problems.
Text posts are limited to 3,000 characters. If you choose to create long-form content, add emojis or line breaks to make it easier to read. Addition of hashtags will also provide context. LinkedIn recommends that you add no more than 3 hashtags to each post.
Image Posts
Do you want to illustrate your argument? Up to nine images or graphics can be added to a LinkedIn posting. Images are great for sharing behind the scenes content, covering events and adding a human touch to your profile or page.
You can also use them to create mini photo albums like the one in the Agorapulse article above. LinkedIn will automatically display some photos as grids, while others may be displayed as carousels.
Video posts
LinkedIn is a great place to experiment with video content, even though it may not be as popular for short-form videos as other social media platforms. LinkedIn offers a variety of video aspect ratios, ranging from 16:9 up to 9:16. This gives brands plenty of room for experimentation.
What types of videos should you upload on LinkedIn? Think about team introductions and customer stories. Add captions, no matter the format you choose to make it more accessible.
Posters and stickers
Short-form videos are a great way to provide mobile-first content. LinkedIn offers a brand new format of content that can only be created and published through its mobile app.
LinkedIn templates let you choose from a variety of backgrounds, including colorful and patterned ones. They display as images within the post. Post templates, with their limited character count, are ideal for bold statements and questions you’d like to highlight.
Add extra information to your post or add a CTA (call-to-action). Add a link to your template. This gives mobile users a simple way to tap more information. It also works on desktops.
LinkedIn’s Link Stickers also work with videos and images, provided you upload them using the mobile app. Images and videos can be used to drive traffic with link stickers.
You want to share a resource? You don’t have to limit yourself to link stickers. You can also add URLs to LinkedIn captions. LinkedIn does not prioritize content that contains links, unlike some other social media platforms. This allows you to easily share external resources.
You can, for example, link to blog posts relevant to your business, upcoming events or exclusive resources. Or you can direct people directly to product and service pages. LinkedIn will automatically create website cards from the link content, so you won’t need to add any creatives.
Documents and Carousels
You want to simplify a complicated topic for your audience and make it relatable? LinkedIn documents and carousels have multiple slides, which members can scroll through. They are great for educational content.
There are some key differences, despite the fact that they look similar. Documents are downloadable and can contain up to 300 pages. Carousels can support up to 20 slides of mixed media, including video and photo.
Newsletters and articles
You can’t say everything in one LinkedIn post. You can write blog posts and publish them directly on LinkedIn. You can even republish – or syndicate – your existing blog posts as LinkedIn articles.
LinkedIn articles allow for over 100,000 characters and include media, hashtags, mentions and external links. You, your team or your clients may share a LinkedIn article from your company page or profile in order to increase its reach.
LinkedIn company pages and members can publish articles through LinkedIn newsletters. You can invite your connections and followers subscribe to your LinkedIn newsletter. This can help you grow your audience and distribute content more widely.
Polls
You may want to conduct informal market research, or discover how your audience feels on a particular topic. You can use LinkedIn polls to ask members questions and provide them with up to four options. In the comments, members can always write their own custom response.
You can use the results of the poll to understand better your audience. You can use the responses of your audience to help you plan your content.
LinkedIn Live
LinkedIn Live allows you to connect with your audience live, whether it’s through webinars, masterclasses, conferences or panel discussions. You can use LinkedIn Live events to nurture leads by downloading a list after the event.
LinkedIn offers audio events if you prefer to focus on your conversation and not the camera. These events are great for hosting talks with your audience, sharing thought leadership, and engaging followers–especially since you can invite them to speak too.
LinkedIn 101: Analytics
LinkedIn provides analytics for both company pages and individual profiles, so that you can determine what is driving the results of your business and clients.
Profile Analytics
You can see your LinkedIn metrics in a broader context. You can view combined analytics for your posts if you have turned on LinkedIn’s creator mode. You can compare the performance of your content over different time periods with previous periods in order to determine if it’s working and if you are reaching more people.
LinkedIn highlights the top performing posts if you are in creator mode. This allows you to quickly see which ones generate results. You can also click on any post in your profile to see deeper insights, including an engagement breakdown.
Who’s reading your posts? LinkedIn shows you the demographics of your audience. This data will help you ensure that your content is reaching the right audience.
LinkedIn Company Page Analytics
LinkedIn analytics for company pages show similar data on the post level. You can also see engagement metrics for each post on the company page.
Click on any engagement metric to get an overview of how LinkedIn members interacted with the content. You can view the top industries, job titles, and locations for each metric.
LinkedIn also provides analytics to visitors and followers. With this data, you can track page growth, page visits, and demographics–including industry, job function, seniority, and more.
Are you looking for LinkedIn analytics which are easy to download, understand and share? Agorapulse provides reporting for LinkedIn Company Pages. These insights allow you to track everything from user demographics and timing of activity, to impressions and engagement. Agorapulse lets you tag content to create more detailed LinkedIn reports.
The LinkedIn 101 Guide to Advertising
LinkedIn offers a variety of organic tools that can help you fill up your sales funnel even if you do not have a marketing budget. LinkedIn ads are a great way to increase awareness, get more leads or close more sales faster.
You can use LinkedIn Campaign Manager to create campaigns that are targeted at each stage of your funnel, including awareness, consideration and conversion. You can choose from a variety of formats, including basic image and video ads, interactive carousel advertisements and event and message ads. LinkedIn offers native lead generation tools to help you connect with the right prospects.
You can use powerful targeting options in Campaign Manager to reach new audiences, or to remarket to existing prospects. You can target LinkedIn users by a variety of professional attributes. You can also upload customer lists or reconnect with prospects who are engaged to achieve your marketing goals.
The Final Steps of Your LinkedIn 101 Guide
LinkedIn offers you the tools to help market your business and yourself. From creating organic content, to developing ad campaign, LinkedIn is a great resource. Use this LinkedIn 101 Guide to get started, and Agorapulse for publishing content, engaging with followers, analyzing your progress, etc.
Agorapulse offers a free demo to see how you can use it on LinkedIn.
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