It May Be Time to Give LinkedIn Some Serious Consideration
First, a confession: back in 2019, we were exactly where you may be. We didn’t think social media could be an overly successful channel for B2B marketing. Fast forward to 2020 when the pandemic hit. Our clients were actively looking for ways to reach their customers digitally, since in-person visits were no longer an option. People were being inundated with email marketing, so we turned to LinkedIn, the social media platform of choice for professionals. LinkedIn not only got the job done; it was amazingly effective and has since become part of most of our clients’ customer outreach programs.
The Unique LinkedIn Algorithm & Why It’s Beneficial to You
LinkedIn is similar to other social channels, but its amplification method is very different. While typically in B2B marketing, we focus on the Company Page, Individual Pages hold the power. Why? First, people follow people on LinkedIn; they’d much rather connect to a person than follow a company. Second, when a person posts on their profile, that post is shared with their Connections. When their Connections ‘Like’ the post, the post is further amplified and shared to additional Connections, etc. Thus, the magic of our B2B LinkedIn success comes from employee advocacy—using company employee profiles to broadcast company content to their connections and amplify that content exponentially.
To Begin Your LinkedIn Journey, Ask Yourself These Questions:
Who’s My Audience and Am I Connected to Them?
Getting Company Page Followers is challenging, but what about your salespeople’s LinkedIn networks? Are they actively connecting to their customers and prospects? While you’d expect the answer to be a resounding ‘yes’, often the answer is ‘no’. They’ll need a push, but you can help guide your sales teams in expanding their LinkedIn Connections by focusing on:
- Current customer contacts
- Prospects you are looking to do business with
- Partners
When looking for prospects, LinkedIn Groups may be a good place to start. You can search for a specific topic or organization to find like-minded individuals in your target audience. If you have a specific company in mind, visit its LinkedIn page and find relevant employees by filtering based on job title or location. Either way, prospecting is feasible on LinkedIn and it’s relatively easy to increase your Connections with minimal effort. You’ll be surprised by how many people will accept your request, without even knowing you. For more in-depth prospecting, LinkedIn also has a paid product, called Sales Navigator, that allows you to perform even more refined searches.
What Can I Post?
- Thought Leadership: Authored articles by experts within your company.
- Featured Products/Services: Original posts about specific products or services that your company provides.
- Customer Stories: Original posts detailing customer challenges, solutions, and outcomes.
- Curated Content: Relevant articles authored outside of your company, that make sense for you to comment on.
How Do I Implement My Employee Advocacy Program?
There are numerous ways to implement your program, all with varying effort and metrics. At one end of the spectrum, you can ask your sales teams to manually share posts; however, they often won’t follow through. Alternatively, you can purchase a social amplification automation tool to streamline and automate the process. At Markitects, we prefer the tool for consistency in messaging and ease of use. Using this, Markitects can automate company posts to share on relevant employee profiles, at different times and with different messaging—without the employee having to touch the post or LinkedIn. In addition, this tool allows us to schedule all posts on a calendar and access aggregate metrics for reporting.