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Level Up Your Digital Marketing with LinkedIn

LEVEL UP YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING WITH LINKEDIN
 May 9, 2023 |  Business Tips, Marketing, Social Media |  hiring, networking, Facebook, LinkedIn

By Zach Vesper, Senior SEO and Marketing Strategist

We’ve previously discussed best practices for getting set up on LinkedIn as a small business, but as new features and opportunities become available, it can be difficult to know how to navigate through LinkedIn’s tools effectively. LinkedIn stands out from the crowd due to its focus as a business-oriented digital networking platform. As such, LinkedIn should not always be treated the same as platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok.

If you are looking to expand the use of your LinkedIn Business Page, it’s important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of LinkedIn as a platform. To optimize our efforts, let’s take a minute to explore LinkedIn’s unique features and how you can use them to strengthen your business’ presence online.

Reviewing the Strengths of LinkedIn
In many ways, LinkedIn is set up similarly to other social media platforms. LinkedIn allows users to post content and build an audience over time, it promotes engagement, and it invites users to interact with relevant content based on what their interests are as determined by LinkedIn’s own algorithm. The main distinguisher of LinkedIn is its intended function as a social platform for businesses and business owners to network with other professionals in their industry.

It is fair to compare a personal LinkedIn profile to a resume since it is modeled primarily around skills, background education, and work experience. With these characteristics in mind, it may be helpful to imagine the best demeanor on LinkedIn as similar to Facebook, but while wearing a button-down. Memes and jokes have their place, and a more conversational tone can be valuable and relatable at times. On LinkedIn, businesses will instead benefit from embracing a professional tone.

How To Use LinkedIn’s Strengths To Your Benefit
With the strengths of LinkedIn as a platform better explained, let’s discuss how to best use LinkedIn’s tools to elevate your business.

• Focus on Creating Connections
  Inspectors can begin new relationships by presenting themselves as experts in their field on LinkedIn. Inspectors can plan to partner with other industry experts on LinkedIn to transition into a public speaking appearance, or to develop a presence at other relevant community events. Any opportunity that business owners can get to bring their knowledge directly in front of potential industry partners is something that they should prioritize.
   
• Post as a Thought Leader
  As previously mentioned, while LinkedIn functions similarly to other social media platforms, the expectations surrounding conduct are fairly different. Business owners should keep in mind their goals of how they want to present their company with every post. In short, this means that things like company updates, new service/product launches, employee spotlights, and industry-specific blog articles are the types of content that users expect to encounter on LinkedIn.
  
  Posts that emphasize a business owner’s knowledge and participation in the ongoing discussions dominating their industry are key to establishing themselves as a leader and driver of their business sector, as well. This means that high-quality, and higher-effort posts might be required on LinkedIn, but rules that can make businesses successful on other platforms still apply to LinkedIn, as well.
  
  Images should always be attached to LinkedIn posts (though a collection of 3-4 images would be even better). Additionally, videos are fantastic when it comes to making an impact on LinkedIn’s algorithm, since they tend to encourage the audience to spend more time viewing a post’s content. After posting, it is crucial to capitalize on any engagement by replying to questions or reacting to comments. An audience is always more likely to react to content if they feel that it may garner a reaction.
   
• Find Partners to Expand Your Business
  One important distinction that should be made about LinkedIn, when compared to Facebook, for example, is that the majority of activity should be done through a personal page (in comparison to primary activity with a business page on Facebook). This doesn’t mean that a business page should be ignored on LinkedIn, however.
  
  Business owners should create their company page and link it to their personal account, then have any employees do the same (with their own professionally updated personal profiles). While LinkedIn is also known for their job search and hiring functions, success with these features varies greatly depending on industry and region. For the home inspection field, it may be more effective to simply treat LinkedIn as a professional relationship-building platform rather than opting for the significant investment of a LinkedIn job listing when hiring.
  
  Lastly, business listings should ideally have their own content loop on top of the posts from an owner’s personal page. Potential industry partners or future employees that happen upon an inactive business page may question its recent relevance, which could be avoided by planning out a post or two each week.

Want to improve your presence elsewhere on social media? Contact your NPI marketing team for a social media onboarding, refresher, or to brainstorm new ideas! If you want to learn more about how franchising will elevate all of your marketing efforts, request a free info packet, and contact our recruitment team today!

About the Author
Zach Vesper, Senior SEO and Marketing Strategist
Zach brings more than six years of SEO experience to the table, making him your go-to web optimization specialist--he knows how to help your website reach the first page! He's always more than happy to answer your questions about all things Google. Zach is a film buff, an old-fashioned connoisseur and an avid reader of science fiction. When he’s not working, he’s hanging out with his wife, Stepha.