5 Underutilized LinkedIn Features B2B Marketers May Be Missing Out On
LinkedIn has been found to be the most effective social media lead generator for B2B marketers, with 60-80% of those surveyed (depending on the study) stating that they have gotten real leads from the platform. Thus, it makes sense for those involved in the B2B industry to remain active on LinkedIn, especially because it’s wealth of places to generate content and engagement continues to grow.
Here are some of the areas of LinkedIn where B2B marketers may be lacking, and how to step up your game so utilizing this social platform as a lead gen tool can become an integral part of your campaigns.
Find the Perfect Job Candidates
Of course, most people using LinkedIn know that there is a robust job search and posting section, but I don’t think many marketing departments are using it to its fullest potential. This is especially the case when it comes to hiring freelance or temporary employees.
If you are looking for the best candidates in a specific, niche area (such as WordPress administration or JavaScript), consider widening your geographic requirements to let remote workers apply. The perfect addition to your marketing team may not be in the same city (or even country) as your company.
As of right now, LinkedIn doesn’t really allow you to set your job location to specifically target remote workers, but the right keywords in the job title and description will appear in searches.
To find this job listing, I entered the keywords remote and marketing. To see remote candidates, include other similar commonly used keywords in the job text, such as telecommute and work from home.
Make Yourself a Blogger
LinkedIn is allowing more and more individuals into its long-form content publishing platform on a rolling basis. If you don’t already have a personal blog or website, publishing posts on LinkedIn is an awesome way to strengthen your own personal branding, as well as the opportunity to represent your company on LinkedIn. Most people know about this option, but not enough are taking advantage of it.
The publisher is pretty open when it comes to what can be published, including a featured cover photo for each post, and the ability to link, insert photos, and format the text, just like you would in a normal CMS or blog WYSIWYG editor. In addition, LinkedIn provides performance metrics on article views and social media engagement.
It’s more important than ever to pay some attention to your personal branding, especially if you are a B2B marketer. When you are dealing with clients or outside vendors, they will often review your social media and online presence before (or after) speaking with you. Having a few long pieces of content that showcase your expertise can help you build better relationships within your industry and target market.
Turn Into an Information Resource (page and profiles)
A few years ago, LinkedIn started allowing company pages to post updates, much like Facebook and Google+ pages. However, it’s common for most businesses to not take advantage of this, even though the LinkedIn API allows for scheduled and automated sharing through social media tools like Buffer or HootSuite.
LinkedIn also allows organizational administrators to see metrics of how your posts are doing, along with key statistics about follower demographics and activity, in association with company page performance:
In addition to the updates driven through personal LinkedIn profiles, scheduling regular organizational updates can help your brand communication stay top of mind for target audiences. Company updates will often appear in user’s newsfeeds when they log into LinkedIn, and as the site continues to place an emphasis on being a content resource (through the content publisher platform and LinkedIn Pulse), sharing content in this space can help increase your reach and visibility.
Interact to Build Community
Yes, posting in LinkedIn groups and commenting on what others have shared is something that is regularly recommended in posts about LinkedIn. However, how many of us have actually done it? Have you ever set a goal to comment 5 times per week in an industry group or connections’ posts?
Set a reminder on your to-do list or calendar once per week to visit your regular active groups or even your newsfeed when you first log in and leave a few thoughtful comments on the content that catches your eye. You’d be surprised at what a 10-15 task like this will do in terms of building your own network and community.
Additionally, your activity on LinkedIn is shared on your connections’ feeds, so when you comment on a post, it also gives you more visibility to your connections.
Utilize SlideShare Integration
LinkedIn acquired presentation and image sharing platform SlideShare in 2012, and has since integrated it with its existing platform in order to help users showcase their SlideShare uploads on LinkedIn. You can decide which files you’ve uploaded to SlideShare to feature on your profile.
The cover photo of the slide is embedded in the Summary section of your profile, and when clicked, takes the user directly to the full presentation on SlideShare. If you are regularly doing presentations to clients or at industry events, create a SlideShare account and upload your presentations. This will give your presentations more visibility, as well as strengthen your LinkedIn profile by offering insight into what you know about.
In addition, presentations uploaded to SlideShare don’t have to be from in-person presentations. Consider doing a PowerPoint on the key takeaways from white papers, blog posts, or interviews you’ve done, and post upload those. These often get thousands of views and also allow for embedding in blog posts.
Final Thoughts
Luckily for B2B marketers, LinkedIn is a very robust social networking site that allows you to share content, engage with your connections, and even find the best new addition to your team. B2B marketers should be utilizing LinkedIn to strengthen their own personal branding, as well as offer more opportunities for their company to be found via regular updates and content.
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