7 LinkedIn Power Plays for Corporate Marketers - Sandra Long

Corporate marketing professionals are uniquely positioned to leverage LinkedIn to organically accelerate success as individuals. They can increase both personal and company visibility and credibility, build amazing connections, and boost their marketing initiatives and events. 

Here are seven ways that marketers can power up their results right now.

1.    Energize Personal Brands

LinkedIn is a vital social media platform for professionals to showcase their work and build their personal brands. It is also a great place for companies to find the buyers and talent they need.

Personal brands are not just for celebrities or influencers but also for companies and their employees. Savvy marketers support company initiatives to improve employee LinkedIn profiles.

Brand ambassadors are employees who are passionate about the company and want to share their enthusiasm with others. A company's brand ambassadors are those employees who actively promote the company's products and services as well as build relationships on LinkedIn, thus increasing the visibility of the company.

It is important that you and your employees have a strong and friendly personal presence on LinkedIn. The more visibility they have, the better chance of getting noticed by prospective clients and then contacting your team members directly. Business starts with person-to-person connections.

Unfortunately, many employee profiles are resume clones, which makes them appeal mainly to recruiters. Instead, profiles should be oriented to support your organization's goals such as sales, hiring, or thought leadership. Taking action to change a personal profile is a voluntary activity, but one that can drive the success of the entire company.

2. Leverage Company Pages

Smart marketers leverage LinkedIn company pages. The page is a great way to showcase the company's culture, values, and missions. They also allow you to share your latest news and updates with the company’s network and followers.

The LinkedIn Company Page is the perfect place to tell your company's story and share it with the world. Post content that is both engaging and valuable to your audience. Your page will be communicating with clients, prospects, candidates, employees, and partners.

You can post regularly on the company page so that you keep the audience interested and engaged. You could also use it as a marketing tool by promoting your products or services with posts that are relevant to your industry. Remember that helpful and engaging content works best rather than content that is overly focused on the achievements of the company or sounds over the top.

You can post anything from videos, blog articles, or even just a few words about a new hire. Here are some tips for creating great content:

- Be creative! Use visuals and multimedia when possible.

- Share what you're proud of! Share the good stuff that your company has accomplished.

- Be authentic! Showcase your team

Smart Move >>> Individual marketers should schedule their time to regularly comment and engage on their company page(s).

Note that there is a newish feature that helps highlight both the employee and the company. The “My Company” tab provides content for employees to easily share.  For example, employees can find and share trending coworker content in this section of the page.

3. Build a powerful network

LinkedIn is the most important social network for people to build their personal networks and make connections with others in the industry. The problem that I repeatedly witness is that most people have a haphazard focus on connections.

Marketers, like other LinkedIn users, greatly benefit from a friendly, supportive online network. The quantity and quality of the network will directly impact:

·     How often you are found in search

·     Who you can find in the search

·     Who is more likely to see your content

·     What content you see

Everyone, including marketers, needs to be systematic about whom they connect with. Here are two starting steps. First, establish a daily routine to connect with people you are interacting with every day. Secondly, commit to circling back to find past coworkers, clients, prospects, vendors, industry partners, and community connections. Carve out time each week to systematically invite those connections. Be sure to always send a personalized note with each invitation.

4. Use LinkedIn More Strategically

Look at the entire LinkedIn ecosystem to assess opportunities. Understand your buyer’s journey, and how they interact with your company and employees on LinkedIn. As marketers, you can enhance those LinkedIn intersection points with prospects and clients on LinkedIn.

Then look at the other key stakeholders and their LinkedIn journeys. This could include partners, candidates, thought leaders, or vendors for example. Consider your own internal partners such as Sales, HR, or senior leadership. Consider what brand or networking opportunities may exist for you and your team to collaborate or leverage. For example, can a senior leader or HR partner be strategically @mentioned on a LinkedIn post that your team is developing? The optimal situation is when there is a logical tie-in or intersection point.

Most importantly, consider your own marketing initiatives that are on your plate right now or in the near future. Marketers are on the front line of many strategic corporate initiatives. This could include:

·     Brand positioning

·     Website / SEO

·     Product launches

·     Community building

·     Sales enablement

·     Social media strategy

·     Email campaigns

·     Mobile strategy

·     Regional customer hub

·     Events and shows

Further, LinkedIn is an indispensable tool that can help you accelerate your top business opportunities and programs. There are at least three ways, including:

a.    Research

LinkedIn allows you to research your target audience and find specific people and organizations. Discover what marketing initiatives are working for others in your industry. You can also use the platform to research competitors and see what they are doing right or wrong.

b.    Partnering

LinkedIn allows you to find, evaluate, and connect with potential project partners, vendors, or collaborators more easily.

c.    Visibility

Gain greater visibility by strategically aligning with other key stakeholders or partners who have a vested interest in your marketing initiative.

 5. Have a Relationship Mindset

Everyone is talking about mindset now. And for good reason. Mindset impacts how we show up online and offline and the perceptions that result from people interacting with us. Marketers are wise to avoid being obsessively product-oriented while using LinkedIn. Instead, a relationship-building orientation will be more fruitful.

My personal mantra for using LinkedIn is to “Be the Friend First.” This means we don’t wait around for someone to do something nice. Be the first one. Be the friend first.

Individual LinkedIn members and companies can be known to be friendly and helpful:

- Use LinkedIn to build relationships and make connections.

- Share helpful articles that are related to your industry.

- Comment on people's posts and share their content.

- Share interesting articles or resources with your connections.

Don’t try to sell all the time. People don't want to constantly hear about your products, so don't be pushy about it.  Instead, use LinkedIn to provide value with things like informative articles, industry insights, etc.

In fact, if you want someone to buy something from you, why not let them get to know you by seeing you and your company in action, reading your posts, and learning from you?

LinkedIn has a lot to offer. You never know whom you'll meet and so it's important to not come across as too spammy when trying to sell your product. Be friendly and don't be afraid to let others do the talking too! Our goal should be to build relationships and engage in meaningful conversations while on LinkedIn.

 6. Leverage Content

Marketers love content. The good news is that LinkedIn offers so many potential types of content for its individual and company users.

In my book, LinkedIn for Personal Branding, I write extensively about the 3 Cs for content. These include creation, curation, and commenting. All are important, but I recommend spending 80% of your time on commenting.

Make valuable comments on industry and connection posts. This will enhance your visibility and credibility immediately. It also enhances your relationships as you are engaging in online conversations.

Sharing (curating) helpful marketing or industry articles is a good idea too. You can share many types of content on LinkedIn, from a blog post, video or even an article from another website. You can also create polls or ask questions which will help you engage with other people’s posts, articles, and polls.

Marketers are all about creating content. The LinkedIn options include Posts with text only, images, links, or documents; Articles and newsletters; Videos; LinkedIn Live; Audio events; and Polls. Be sure to leverage hashtags and @mentions strategically in your content. Don’t overdo either one.

LinkedIn has created an option for more advanced content creators called Creator Mode, which provides access to special features such as Audio Events, newsletters, and Live, but also has some tradeoffs regarding networking because the Connect button is replaced by the Follow button. Look at the option carefully before deciding if it is for you or someone on your team.

7. Supercharge Your Events

LinkedIn is a great tool to promote or leverage events. You can connect with potential attendees, speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors.

Connect, message, or post about the event before, during, and after it has taken place. Comment on other people's posts and share your event with your network using the event hashtag.

Your content before the event can focus on the planning. Posts during the event can feature onsite images and videos. Content posted after the event can be a gratitude post mentioning the people and companies you met. People love to be mentioned and thanked.  You also may wish to create an event post on LinkedIn using the information from your event survey. This will help potential attendees remember what you talked about at the event.

The most important thing to remember when promoting an event on LinkedIn is to be creative and friendly. People are drawn to the excitement of events, so take advantage of this momentum.

Summary

Corporate marketers have a unique opportunity to make a real impact for themselves AND their organizations by using LinkedIn more strategically. Leverage the amazing brand, network, and visibility opportunities from LinkedIn to accelerate your initiatives right now.

- Sandra Long | LinkedIn Author & TEDx Speaker

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