The time is now to start sharing on LinkedIn.

So, how is your social media activity going?

Great!

Meh, so so….

Non-existent.

If it’s great, then well done. For the rest, the good news is it doesn’t matter. The better news is, that you can start anytime. Like right now.

With social media usage increasing by 50-60%+ during this time, it is highly likely the attention of your audience is on one or more social media platforms, so if you want to increase and improve your marketing activity, you need to be where the attention is. A platform like LinkedIn can often be mistaken for being predominantly a social network for recruiters (which is how it started), but it is now also used for so much more by business professionals.

Here’s why it’s worth taking a look.

From business profiles to personal profiles and over 690 million users, LinkedIn is the most popular platform for professionals and businesses. It is currently the 15th top visited website in the world with 100 million people visiting each month and 2 people signing up every second!

Those stats should make you take notice.

Just to start, it’s a place where you can:

• Meet new business professionals
• Nurture and build relationships
• Develop connections
• Establish partnerships
• Grow yourself and your business
• Build authority in your field
• Advertise and fill job vacancies

On LinkedIn, whether on your personal page, or company page, you are free to share your products, services, thoughts and ideas, though we recommend to drop the ‘salesy’ approach and just be authentic and conversational to create interest.

On an individual front, you have the opportunity to elevate your own profile and build a personal brand to be known as a subject matter expert. It is well known that people contact or buy from those they know, like and trust. On a company page it is generally more business content focused but still personable and connected. You can see what we do on our LinkedIn page here (be sure to give us a follow!)

So why not position yourself as the go-to person in your field?

By sending invitations to different contacts, you will grow your connections, see what they post about, use it as ‘free’ customer research to learn about your prospective buyers or influencers, and use it as a source of inspiration and ideas. With more contacts seeing your posted content comes greater exposure and therefore more opportunities.

Though LinkedIn is not so much about direct selling, but rather indirect selling through marketing, it is more about building brand (personal and business) and staying front of mind for when the time is right for your customer to reach out or buy, not for when you are ready to sell to them.

So what should you post?

Well it depends on what you’re trying to achieve. We suggest always setting some simple and clear goals for your platform of choice, with some measures to monitor if it’s working.

And then getting clear on themes or content pillars specific to your industry and business with posts to support these areas.

Some examples might be:

• Educational content
• Tips and tricks
• New innovations in your business or field
• Current statistics in your field
• Work in progress
• Additions to the team
• Personal and business achievements
• Hiring staff
• And So.Much.More.

Watch the video!

Check out what Rosie has to say about how you can get started on your own, and how the ideapro team can help in different ways with elevating your LinkedIn presence.

…What next?

If you need some help with LinkedIn, here are a few different ways we can help:

• LinkedIn 1:1 or group training (currently undertaken via zoom) this covers auditing your profile, understanding navigating LinkedIn and using it for sales and marketing purposes. We have two levels of training, basic and advanced. Following the training, you should feel confident to use LinkedIn.

• Social Media Strategy – customized and specific to your business for LinkedIn which includes us helping you set goals, measures, developing content pillars and a whole raft of ideas for you to write content about and recommendations. We’ll even develop a brand story to communicate your business succinctly, and photographic mood board to help you with the aesthetic look and feel of your visuals.

• Social Media Content Creation and / or Management – following establishing your strategy, if you don’t have the time or the skill set, we can create bundles of posts for you including copywriting, hashtags, matching and sourcing images, creating graphics and motion and either hand them to you post or we manage the whole process for you.

So if you’d like to chat about getting some help with LinkedIn please reach out to Rosie.

 
Remember, it’s never too late to start your social media activity. There’s no better time than right now.