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How to Use LinkedIn for B2B Digital Marketing

June 17, 2019

LinkedIn is arguably the most influential social media platform available today for B2B marketing.

Although this platform can be challenging to navigate, it’s an invaluable tool if you market to other businesses – and one that should be incorporated into your overall digital marketing plan.

LinkedIn’s user base is heavily skewed toward the successful, the educated, the accomplished, the affluent. Consequently, it provides a unique opportunity to reach business owners and decision-makers.

B2B marketing on LinkedIn

Why Leverage the LinkedIn Platform for B2B Marketing?

If you think that LinkedIn is little more than a way for job seekers and employers to connect, you probably haven’t explored the platform thoroughly.

The platform has enjoyed robust and steady growth over the past 15 years, with almost 600 million users. LinkedIn reports that two more professional users sign up every second today. The Pew Research Center reports that fully half of U.S. residents with college degrees are LinkedIn members.

If you’re still wondering whether this platform would be a worthwhile addition to your internet marketing plan, consider this: 94 percent of professional B2B marketers are using LinkedIn.

Optimize Your LinkedIn Personal & Business Profile Pages

When you use LinkedIn, it’s important to remember that you must set up and maintain both a personal profile and a business profile page. It’s critical that you keep a clear distinction between the two as you establish and optimize each one.

Start by adding as much information as possible on both pages. Google will include the first 156 characters of your company or personal overview text field in the search engine results. Consequently, it is critical that you optimize this portion of your profile with targeted keywords and use it to communicate directly to your prospects.

Choose your profile images carefully, to ensure that they communicate the right message to your audience and optimize them appropriately.

As you work to build your personal presence on LinkedIn, focus on demonstrating your expertise in your field. When you market to other businesses, you are as influential as your brand – often more so – when working to convert B2B prospects.

expertise

You have a wealth of opportunities to optimize both your business and personal profile pages, depending on your industry and business model. A digital B2B marketing professional can help you take the best advantage of these tools.

Use LinkedIn to Build Your Business & Product/Service Brands

If you have multiple products or entities under your brand umbrella, you can leverage LinkedIn’s showcase pages.

Essentially, LinkedIn showcase pages function like sub-pages under the umbrella of your company page. Leverage these helpful tools by setting one up for each of your products or services. Share as much information as you can on each showcase page, targeting your content to your target prospects for that product.

Showcase pages allow you to exponentially expand your reach on LinkedIn and customize your approach to marketing each of your niches. These pages also provide you with the opportunity to expand your targeted keywords and key phrases and appeal to multiple audiences.

audience

Interact with Others to Build Influence

More than most other social media platforms, LinkedIn wants to see engagement surrounding your posts and videos.

You can accomplish this in a variety of ways, but it may help to start by joining and following groups that are relevant to your industry, your products and services and, most important, your prospects and customers.

Next, establish connections (LinkedIn’s equivalent of friend requests) with others in your industry and related fields that make sense for your business model and marketing plan. Engage with others in your groups and use those interactions to establish more connections.

If you interact and engage with others – read their content, watch videos, comment, share – and add value to the conversation, they will show you the same consideration.

conversation

Marketing with Video on LinkedIn

On LinkedIn – as with most other social platforms – video is a powerful and highly cost-effective way to market. It is especially powerful in the B2B space, as business owners and decision-makers do not always have the time to peruse extensive articles, at least not without having a persuasive introduction.

The platform allows you to post video content directly to the site. Take advantage of this functionality because LinkedIn does not favor links that take users away from the site. The longer you can keep your audience engaged within the LinkedIn platform, the more the algorithms may reward you with exposure.

Content Marketing on LinkedIn

Posting valuable, engaging content regularly on your personal and business pages is another outstanding way to market on the LinkedIn platform.

On your personal page, you can post up to 1,300 words of content at a time. Take full advantage of this generous word limit because more is better – as long as your content is well-written, engaging, fresh, meaningful and keyword-optimized.

You can get your content found by taking advantage of LinkedIn’s suggested hashtags, although you’ll get more traction if you do a little research first, to see what hashtags others are using for similar subjects.

hashtag

Unlike what you may be used to, do not include any links within the post content itself. Again, LinkedIn does not like it when users direct others away from the site. If you want to provide a link, refer your audience to the comment section and post the links there.

Should You Advertise with LinkedIn?

For some businesses, paid LinkedIn advertising and promotion can be beneficial. For others, you might be better investing those dollars in other platforms, such as Google PPC campaigns, etc.

Talk to a digital marketing expert to determine the most effective strategies for your company to achieve its sales and revenue goals.

Be Locally SEO helps businesses in Utah and across the U.S. with content marketing, search engine optimization, social media, PPC and local SEO. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you leverage LinkedIn for your B2B digital marketing.

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