How to use LinkedIn effectively? Here are 5 different ways for bloggers to leverage LinkedIn to get the results you want.
You might be ticking all the checkboxes on your way to becoming an all-star blogger, but unless you learn how to leverage LinkedIn, you’ll be missing out on something quite substantial.
Studies show that LinkedIn attracts 303 million active users each month. Professionals and job-seekers alike have taken to the platform to reap its countless benefits.
If you are a blogger looking to broaden your horizons and getting more organic traffic to your blog, LinkedIn is the way to move forward. 90% of the social traffic driven to B2B blogs and sites was through social media, 50% of which was driven by LinkedIn alone.
Further, bloggers can use LinkedIn to build their brand, connect with recruiters to find jobs, connect brands they want to collaborate with and field content to inspire their writing.
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Here are 5 tips for bloggers to help them leverage LinkedIn:
1. Optimize your profile
All other strategies for funneling traffic come after setting up a great LinkedIn profile.
The most basic thing you can do for your profile is to display a great headshot. For the professional snapshot, take your resume summary as the base and extrapolate upon the same to make an impact. Since most users are on mobile, and you can only see the first line of the summary (by default) on the phone, it helps if the first line itself is enough to engage and capture the reader into digging further.
To give the world a taste of your work, link your profile to your blogs. To link your blog posts in your profile, go to the summary section in your profile where you will have an option to add media like blog posts.
Here provide a link to the best blog you have ever composed. Share targeted content that your target demographic would be interested in. Add an interesting Title and Description and most importantly add an appropriate image.
The image will be displayed in your profile’s summary, which might as well be the first thing people will lay eyes on when visiting your profile.
Why do we advise adding media in the summary section rather than the Publications or Projects option provided by LinkedIn? It’s because these external links will be pushed to the bottom of your profile, while in the summary section your blog post will get maximum exposure.
2. Join relevant groups on LinkedIn
Now that you have optimized your profile, you need traffic on your LinkedIn profile. Joining and actively participating in groups relevant to your blog can be a great place to start.
People will not be driven to your profile and vis a vis your blog if you have nothing substantial to give them. Do not get started on LinkedIn with just the intent of marketing yourself.
If you provide useful remarks on other people’s posts and promote their content by sharing and liking them, they will be inclined to do the same for you. This in return will also build your network, and get you on the radar of all the right people.
So start joining the groups that your peers and potential customers are a part of. Additionally, get off the self-promotion bandwagon and start having genuine discussions. You might not see immediate spikes in your traffic but this is the strategy that will be more beneficial in the long run.
Start by browsing for groups. You can just type in blogging and get hundreds of returns. Join a few targeted groups first and get yourself acquainted with how to handle a large number of emails and notifications you will be receiving from each group.
Once you get a hang of things, scale up this strategy.
Do not forget to read the rules of each group from their ‘About’ page. This will show you how not to get banned for self-promotion.
Go to the pinned thread for introductions to say hello and tell the fellow group members what you do and provide a link to your blog.
After you have done the preliminary, start liking, commenting. Get people interested enough to visit your profile. The more people you are successful in getting to your profile, the more people will head to your blog.
3. Create a company page
A centralized company page is great to keep your connections updated. Ask your employees to link the company profile to each of their profiles to drive traffic towards the company page. You can use this page to promote your services.
Keep the page optimized and provide all the necessary information such as the company description, work culture, number of employees, information about the products and services, public posts, etc.
Use the Social Selling Index of LinkedIn to find out where you are lacking and take further steps to optimize your profile. A better business profile on LinkedIn increases your brand’s visibility and helps you find better leads.
So if you don’t have a business profile yet, make one.
4. Share content actively
LinkedIn at the end is a social media site and just like any other social media platform, staying active is very important. Actively share original content from both your profile and company page.
You will start losing momentum if you slow down even for a while so schedule posts in advance if you anticipate being busy in the near future.
Stay a mile away from creating and sharing click-bait content.
Use a lot of rich media like images and videos. LinkedIn itself found that such inclusions increase the comment rate by 98%.
20 posts per month should be your target as oversharing can come with problems of its own.
Read this guide shared by Buffer to decide the frequency you should go for.
5. Use InMail to connect with people outside of your network
If you find an interesting prospect that you want to follow but they are not in your immediate network and are also not accepting your request, what do you do? Do you give up?
You can simply start using InMail to follow these prospects. This is an amazing tool available for the premium users of LinkedIn, which lets you connect with people outside of your network.
And, what’s more? Statistics show that the InMail response rate is three times higher than a regular email.
Remember that each account is allotted a limited number of InMails each month so save them for really interesting opportunities.
Conclusion: 5 Tips to Leverage LinkedIn
Move ahead in the blogging game by leveraging LinkedIn in 2023. Follow the below-mentioned tips laid out in this article to get the best out of LinkedIn:
- Work on your profile and make it perfect before you start looking into other strategies.
- Join relevant groups and start liking, commenting, and sharing. Refrain from obvious self-promotion at all costs or you might end up getting banned.
- Create a company page to promote your brand effectively.
- Be active! Schedule posts if you have to but do not lose momentum.
- Start using InMail to contact people outside your immediate network.
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