Are you marketing effectively on LinkedIn? Find Out How to Now!

LinkedIn has trumped other platforms as the playground for virtual business networking. The way that LinkedIn develops online communities based on different fields and professions is a great way to build relationships and promote your business. But are you getting the most from the platform?

There are many features of LinkedIn that you can use for marketing. The great news is that most of them won’t cost you a penny! There is no luck behind LinkedIn’s success. The platform successfully bridges the gap between professionals of any seniority and experience, from apprentices to managing directors and CEOs.

But are many of you making the most of the outlet’s marketing function? Is time spent on LinkedIn well spent? In the blog, we’ll walk you through some of our main pointers for maximising the value of the social network.

Linkedin Groups

There is a LinkedIn group for almost all industries you can think of, and they are a great place to promote your brand to a more appropriate audience. Here are some valuable and relevant groups in the UK plastic industry:

• Injection Moulding in the United Kingdom
• Home of UK Plastics
• Additive Manufacturing, Rapid Prototyping and Direct Manufacturing
• Manufacturing UK

Where to start in a group?

It can be daunting to join a large LinkedIn group- but the best way to reap the benefits is to get involved with discussions on posts. Groups aren’t for constant self-promotion. Continually posting self-promotions will lead group members to overlook your content or prevent your posts from being approved. Joining in with conversations will also help other group members get to know you, which can lead to an excellent networking opportunity for potential customers. Ultimately, when you do come to posting your content, they are more likely to interact.

What do I post?

Anything related to your company or business-related positive, celebratory or thought-provoking activities is always a good starting point. Try and think which topics or questions are relevant for your sector, what are the current news stories or talking points? Can you post something topical related to your business activities? Do you have some positive news to share?

We’d also recommend resharing any news or marketing content you publish on your company website or blog to your LinkedIn page. Not only is this exciting content that you’ve already produced, but all readers on LinkedIn will be steered directly to your website, where they can reach out to learn more if the content is relevant to them.

Do’s and Don’ts

When you come to posting, try to make a discussion out of your post. If you leave a question at the bottom of your post, allowing other members to discuss or debate in the comments, the engagement on your post can skyrocket!

Beware of time-saving tools such as Chat-GPT. We recommend you stay authentic and as much in ‘your own voice’ as possible. Despite the rise of AI-based tools which can increase efficiencies for personal and company social media posts, unless you’re a prompt expert, Chat-GPT and other tools churn out repetitive content, which is evident to those ‘in the know’ that it is AI-generated!

If you use these tools, consider them a starting point, and remember to redraft with your personal or company voice in mind. Nothing puts prospective customers off more than reading the same regurgitated post from every company they follow. Authenticity is king!

The more interactions your post receives, whether likes, comments or reposts, the more your content will be seen by others, leading to further publicity. This explains why some posts can flop and others keep going and doing. Don’t get disheartened, not every post will be a winner!

Do try and add a relevant photo or video to your post, if possible, as a more visual post is more likely to grab attention from the social scrollers and be rewarded by the algorithm.

Finally, consider tagging users or adding hashtags to the bottom of your post to increase engagement.

To Tag, or Not to Tag?

Have you ever seen those posts where more people and companies are tagged at the bottom than there is content? Tagging half of your industry in every post is a big no-no!

Tagging other companies or individuals in your posts is a great way to gather initial engagement, as this notifies these people or companies about your post directly. However, beware! Any users you tag who do not engage with the post may punish your post in the algorithm.

With that in mind, be careful with your tags. We recommend around 4-5 as a maximum, and try to pick people you know will engage with the post to boost (not punish!) your numbers.

Hashtag? What’s a Hashtag?

Hashtags (#s) are used to signify groups or topics that are of interest to LinkedIn users. Adding relevant tags to the bottom of your post allows it to reach a wider audience, as other members of the #plastics or #injectionmoulding community, for example, will have your posts inserted into your feed if they’re interested in these topics.

Again, though, we urge caution. Pick a handful of the most relevant tags, a maximum of 6, and stick to them. Spamming with 100 tags makes your post look terrible on the page, and the algorithm will punish it. As with tags, quality over quantity!

Company Page

Having a Company page is vital in ensuring your business has a presence on LinkedIn, and updating your company page is paramount to maintaining this presence.

Make sure you fill out your company profile with as much detail as possible – you’d be surprised at the number of companies creating a company page without including their website URL!

Ensure you’ve added all the correct and relevant information, and you upload your company logo so your page is instantly recognisable to your customer base. Any staff members active on LinkedIn should also add your official page to their work history so they will be associated with the company officially on the platform and visible when customers browse your employees from the company page.

How do you gain a following?

Building a following on your company page can take time, but a great way of doing this is by posting updates on your personal LinkedIn page and tagging your company page in your update. Keep doing this regularly to ensure that it gets seen by many of your connections, and encourage your colleagues to do the same. You could even message some of your close relationships, asking them to follow your page or help with a reshare.

Posting updates on your company page and encouraging your followers to engage will give your company a more comprehensive network. You can also post updates to your company page and repost them on your page. This way, your connections will know that the original post came from your company page, and if they like what they see, they could give you a follow. From the get-go, even with few followers, keep your company page vibrant with updates on services and offers – an empty page won’t attract followers! Regularly sharing company news and offers, even when you’ve got few followers, can get more eyes on your business. Keep it lively and engaging!

Get Inviting

Another way to boost your company page’s following is to invite your connections to follow the page directly. LinkedIn adjusts the rules here regularly, changing the number and regularity at which you can send invites, but you can invite 250 connections per month now!

To invite connections to follow, visit your company’s LinkedIn page in the admin view and click ‘invite connections’ in the ‘Grow your followers’ box at the top right of the page. A lot of users don’t know this feature exists, make use of it while you can!

Beware, inviting unrelated contacts can reduce these limits, or you might risk a temporary ban from sending invitations, so always try to ensure the connections you’re inviting are relevant to your company, product or industry. Not only will this keep LinkedIn happy, but your resulting following will be more relevant and more likely to engage.

Personal Page or Company Page?

We would always recommend that your company create its page to enable users to find or search for your company on the platform.

But when it comes to posting, what’s the best plan? Well, regular posts on your company pages are essential to building a significant following, and at no cost to you (except time!), they are the basis for most of your LinkedIn strategy.

If you struggle to find time during the working week to create social media content, you could consider using a social media scheduling tool and writing your posts in bulk, all at once. Many products exist here, with the most popular listed below:

• Buffer
• HootSuite
• Sprout Social
• Loomly
• Social Pilot
• and MANY more!

LinkedIn also has its native post scheduler, allowing you to write a post and specify a time and date in the future to post. If you’re a late-night Linked-Inner, consider writing content up in the evening and scheduling to post the following morning or lunch to increase engagement.

However, do not neglect your page! Anecdotally, we’ve found that posts on personal pages can get much higher traction than if a company page published the same post. Is it just that people prefer to engage with people? Or does the algorithm boost personal news over company news? We’re not entirely sure, but post authentic, positive, work-related content from your page, too.

People love an insight into the working lives of others, so something you might think is boring and mundane and part of your daily routine can get others talking! Try it out, and you’ll be a LinkedIn influencer in no time!

LinkedIn published its guide earlier this year: “20 steps to a better LinkedIn profile in 2023.” If you’d like further information about optimising your personal profile and maximising your returns from the platform, click the link above for 20 more tips.

We hope this was a helpful rundown of some LinkedIn basics. As with all social networks, the all-important algorithm is a constantly changing beast, but these tips should give you evergreen success on the world’s most extensive professional networking platform!

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