Positioning yourself as an expert with LinkedIn’s massive network of users can help you drive relevant traffic to your website.
Many people view LinkedIn as a career-building site, and there’s no doubt it is a massive hub for employers, employees and recruiters.
However, LinkedIn serves an important purpose beyond job searching and hiring. It has become the leading B2B marketing platform in recent years, with over 830 million members logging in to the network to catch up on expert insights and share relevant content with their connections.
These users aren’t just hungry job seekers, either. According to LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, four out of five members drive business decisions within their organizations.
Let’s look at how to best create a presence, grow your network and drive more traffic to your website from LinkedIn.
How do I establish myself as a leader on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn works best for those ready to show up and engage with others, so take the time to create a solid presence that shows off your experience and expertise.
● Optimize a personal profile
With a little extra effort, you can optimize your profile to help people find you and offer them important information about your business. LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to summarize your expertise, add digital media assets to your profile and fill out bonus sections that showcase your experience.
Tip: You can also add keywords and hashtags to your profile to help ensure you show up when others are searching for industry terms.
● Create a company page
A personal profile is what you’ll use for most of your posts and interactions on LinkedIn, as the network is designed to connect users with one another. However, no matter the size of your business, creating a company page for it can lend instant credibility to both your personal profile and the company itself. From this page, you can share company updates, launches and notes about your team, then amplify them by sharing them from your personal profile.
Tip: Use your page to tell people what types of problems you solve, what solutions you offer and what kind of clients you help.
● Share relevant content
Even before you have content to share, you can begin showing up in conversations by sharing interesting articles, industry trends and posts from your connections. This can be a great way to begin interacting on LinkedIn as you plan out your own content creation and distribution strategies.
Tip: Share other content with your own take on a topic, or ask your network to weigh in with opinions to help add a fresh perspective.
● Interact with posts from others
Simply interacting with posts that others have written can help lift you above other users on LinkedIn. Every time you interact with a post by clicking “like” or “celebrate” or another reaction, your interaction is shared in the main feed of people who are in your network. Commenting on a post does the same.
Tip: Remember how visible you are and leave thoughtful commentary when writing comments and responding to posts.
How can I grow my network on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is full of features that help people connect with others who are like-minded based on their industry, interests, location and other points of connection. Here are a few ideas you can try that should help you grow your network:
● Personalize your outreach
Humans like to connect with other humans, so look for ways to connect with people you’d like to add to your network. As you interact, pay attention to those who might be willing to connect with you based on the discussions you’re having or what you see posted. How you encounter someone on LinkedIn can be a good opener when inviting someone to connect with you. These extra steps to personalize your connection outreach can improve your success in having your requests accepted.
Tip: A widespread campaign to simply invite huge numbers without any effort to introduce yourself or demonstrate relevance is likely to fail.
● Join groups
Joining relevant groups can help you meet people who are more likely to connect with you. You can join discussions, leave comments and interact with others to raise your visibility, then add connections as appropriate.
Tip: Every relevant connection you add to your network becomes part of a potential audience for your content.
● Create a new group
Joining existing groups can be a great strategy to grow your network, but you may find the group you want to join doesn’t exist yet. For example, your business might target a certain industry and you’d love to connect with other locals instead of a national group. You could start a group specifically for people in your city or trading area in the hopes of making more local and personal connections.
Tip: As a bonus, launching a new group can help boost your visibility as a leader in the discussion and in your industry.
How do I advertise my website on LinkedIn?
Once you’ve gotten into a good rhythm of using the platform consistently, you can begin to distribute your own content on LinkedIn.
● Share content from your website
Do you have articles or a blog on your website? Sharing a teaser or bit of text to introduce an idea on LinkedIn, then providing a link to your own content can be a great way to direct your connections to your website. To begin, you can share blog posts, articles and how-to guides that are posted on your site. This will help grow your network and drive more traffic to your website. Just be sure to alternate sharing other content to avoid coming across as too pushy.
Tip: You can also share a landing page that invites people to download a white paper in exchange for their email address.
● Provide content that positions you as an authority
Strategically written content can help you stand out from others in your industry by lending your voice to important conversations. The goal of thought leadership is to become a trusted resource on certain topics so people begin to look to you for input in any discussion. The more you show up with insightful commentary and thoughtful written content on industry topics, the more people will think of you as an authority on these topics.
Tip: You can share insights in written posts, videos, media clips or guest posts written for industry publications to raise your visibility.
● Explore paid promotion of your content
You can go beyond organic sharing of content and pay to extend the reach of your posts on LinkedIn. Like other platforms, LinkedIn allows you to pay to get your content in front of wider audiences, which in turn will help drive more traffic to your website. Doing so can impact how many people you reach, but you’ll need to have a budget. Learn more about LinkedIn advertising in our blog.
Tip: Paid promotion can be valuable as you work to grow your audience on LinkedIn, but monitor your campaigns carefully to ensure you stay within budget.
If you want to connect with a B2B audience and attract people to your website, using LinkedIn can be a great tactic. The platform has a huge audience of engaged users who are looking for information that can help them grow their own businesses.
Take the time to set up your profile and company page properly and use the platform thoughtfully and consistently for the best results.
Want more insight into making this strategy work for you? Book a free consultation with a Postmedia expert.
