LinkedIn is dedicated to helping business professionals around the world connect and share the latest industry news and insights, which probably makes it the most effective way to connect with other professionals. When used to its full potential, it’s also a powerful tool to grow your business. Using the platform, you can establish yourself as an expert in your industry, which encourages people (and other businesses) to look to you for advice, guidance and services.
If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn as a professional networking platform, try reading our article to find out how to set up your company page first.
Why LinkedIn Pulse posts are important
A useful feature of LinkedIn is the publishing platform, Pulse, released in 2014, which lets you write and publish longer blog articles. These posts are an excellent way to promote yourself and your business, and generate interest about your products or services. You can write these as an individual and share them on your personal profile and Company Page. The great benefit of Pulse is that your posts can be published to LinkedIn’s entire network, rather than just those who you are connected with, or follow.
But before you start posting to LinkedIn Pulse there are some important things to remember that will help you achieve success. Read our top five tips for creating great LinkedIn posts.
1) Think about what you want to achieve
Doing any marketing without thinking about what you want to achieve is a bad idea. Decide what your goal is for LinkedIn and make sure the articles you write help you fulfil that goal. It’s important to remember that the aim of your articles should be to inform and educate rather than sell a product or service, so always keep this front of mind when creating your content.
For example, if you’re a local caterer and your aim is to raise awareness about your business, you might write a series of posts which give readers tips on how to plan the perfect party or meeting (with a link to your website). This would be a genuinely helpful post, which will attract your potential customer, and fulfil your goal.
2) Know the basics
As with any social media platform it’s important to get the hang of how to structure and write your updates, including articles on LinkedIn. When publishing on LinkedIn you should include the following:
Following these guidelines will keep your posts consistent and make them easy to read for LinkedIn users.
3) Share your expertise
LinkedIn is the place for you to show the world that you’re an expert in your industry. By writing about a topic you know inside out, you can showcase your knowledge to readers.
However, it’s important your expertise is relevant to your readers. Avoid using too much jargon and think about how your expertise can help other people. For example, a local builder specialising in renovations could write about what a person needs to do before hiring someone to do building work, rather than just about renovations themselves.
Keep your writing focused and concentrate on one topic at a time. There is no limit on how many words you can use but it’s recommended to keep your post under 1000 words. Where possible use pictures and graphs to add interest to your post.
4) Always publish unique content
Always publish content on LinkedIn that’s exclusive to the social media channel; for example, don’t copy and paste a blog post from your website into LinkedIn. Similarly, publishing the same content from LinkedIn onto your website can have a negative impact on where your website appears in Google search results.
Keep your written content original because it’s more interesting for your readers and means that you’re keeping the content specific to each platform and the differing audiences they attract.
5) Study what the best are doing
Keeping up with posts by leading LinkedIn influencers will help you get a better understanding of best practice for your own posts.
In the ‘Discover more’ section, you’ll be able to follow different business people and subjects by clicking on the blue ‘+’ button that says ‘follow’ when you hover your cursor over it. The updates of these people will appear in Pulse and your news feed. This will help you keep track of what’s popular and what gets people talking so you can create posts that generate a similar reaction.
LinkedIn is a great social media channel which gives you the opportunity to connect with other local businesses and potentially gain new customers. Follow our five tips on creating powerful LinkedIn posts and see the impact it has, and for more help, take a look at these articles:
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