When it comes to social media marketing, every platform has a critical advantage. Facebook has the sheer access power, with more users than any other, Twitter has the bite-sized, (almost) universally public messages of its users, and LinkedIn has a niche demographic makeup with almost exclusively professional adults. Unfortunately, this advantage is also a disadvantage—at least when it comes to corporations and organizations.
A Double-Edged Sword
The makeup of individuals, almost all of whom are industry-specific professionals, makes it easy to be relevant as a marketer; you’ve instantly filtered out the very young or very old and honed in on an audience who is almost certainly making enough money to consume your products and services. Here’s the unfortunate flip side; LinkedIn makes it hard for businesses and organizations to communicate to these individuals using the tools of the platform.
Some features, such as important ones like Groups, are exclusively reserved for individuals, meaning “Company” pages can’t access them or take advantage of them. This is done to protect the interests and needs of individual users, but it makes it hard for a Company page to gain any visibility through the platform.
How to Get Around It
Fortunately, you don’t have to abandon your Company page altogether—there are a handful of loopholes and alternative strategies you can use to get more visibility for your corporate page:
1. Use your Company page as a billboard
Instead of using your Company page like a megaphone, the way you would on Facebook or Twitter, use it like a billboard. Because you’ll have a harder time reaching new people and messaging effectively (that is, without paid advertising), a more conservative course of action is to simply do what you can to make your page more appealing to those who happen across it. Fill out your profile as completely and accurately as possible, post new content regularly, and make sure new users will get a positive first impression of your brand.
2. Make high-profile content updates
Even though the organic visibility of your Company page is lower and harder to build than it is on competing platforms, that doesn’t mean your content can’t have an effect. Whereas Twitter tends to be fast-paced and in-the-moment, LinkedIn tends to be slower-paced and more thoughtful. When posting content to LinkedIn, do so at a lower frequency, and only post your absolute best, most detailed content. Your individual followers will be more likely to share this material, and in turn, generate more publicity. Hubspot is a great example of this.
3. Recruit promising candidates
LinkedIn is ripe with professional talent, so why not take some of that talent for yourself? Instead of trying to convince the world’s best and brightest to buy from you, convince them to join you. There are a handful of paid ways to do this, but you can also just advertise new job openings on your newsfeed. Major corporations and small organizations alike can take advantage of this—just take a look at Apple and Park West Gallery as respective examples.
4. Publicize the mission and vision of your company
Most marketing campaigns focus on the products or services you offer, but in the professional LinkedIn environment, it’s often a better strategy to focus on the mission and vision of your company. Not only is this going to make your organization more appealing to potential candidates, it’s also going to remove the modern stigma of over-advertising your products and services in search of profit. Take a look at Coca-Cola’s recent strategy. Rather than focusing on what makes their soft drinks “good,” they focus on what makes their company “good.
5. Get your employees involved
Finally, consider getting your employees involved in the promotion of your brand on LinkedIn. Because they’ll have individual accounts, they’ll have more access than you will, and other users will likely trust what they have to say more. Start by getting your employees to tag your business as where they work, which will instantly increase the visibility of your page, and then ask them to share pieces of your content that they feel are the best or most noteworthy.
Not all of these strategies may work for your business—for example, if you aren’t hiring, the recruiting benefit won’t appeal to you, and if you’re reluctant to pursue a personal branding campaign, you won’t want to incentivize your employees to promote your business on their own profiles. Still, at least some of these strategies should work to raise your visibility as a Company page on LinkedIn—otherwise, your best course of action will be to stick with an individual page or start working on another social platform.
from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1UMSKV7 via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1W4685D
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