Before, people used LinkedIn only to search for a job, post resumes, and hire people. But in today’s time, people exchange business ideas, make meaningful connections, build businesses, and reach out to a business professional in their space.
According to sources, there are over 900 million users with more than 58 million registered companies on LinkedIn. This increase in the number of users is the reason content marketers, content creators, and businesses cultivate a presence on this platform.
However, if you don’t know how to build a strong presence on the LinkedIn platform, you won’t see the level of LinkedIn engagement that you want.
But don’t worry; this article covers 15 effective strategies that help you to establish a deeper and stronger LinkedIn presence.
15 Effective Strategies To Build a Strong LinkedIn Presence
LinkedIn users refer to this platform as a “professional social networking site.” So, there is no need to say why LinkedIn is important for professionals.
However, you can’t get what you want, not just by being on the platform. To stand out from the crowd, you must have a well-thought strategy.
Read on to find the top 15 effective LinkedIn strategies to build an engaged LinkedIn presence on the platform.
1. Optimize Your Profile
There is a saying, “First impression is a last impression.” And on LinkedIn, your profile is your calling card. For that reason, you must ensure that your profile introduces you and your company.
Follow the tips below to optimize your LinkedIn profile:
- While creating your profile, you should post a decent profile picture that shows professional looks. And for your business LinkedIn account, you can use your company logo or pictures related to it.
- Update your headline and make it well-created by including your target audience and what you offer to them. Include the motto of you/your company. This way, when people look at your profile, they get to know it’s an authentic account.
- The next thing to consider is to include the target keyword in your headline. Users look for company names and locations, so include them and make it people easy to find you. The same goes for an individual profile. Use buzzwords while describing yourself.
- Don’t forget to upload a background picture on your profile. It is a perfect place to brand your company and yourself. Pictures can easily grab users’ attention.
- Another thing that you should consider is updating your experiences in your profile. Include numbers or dates while updating experiences. Change it as per your strategy.
- For a personal profile, you can include any projects you want people to know about.
- If you have received any awards, skills, certifications, or honors from a company/organization this year, add them to your LinkedIn profile’s Awards and Honors section. It will help you to highlight the accomplishment.
- Add (3-30 sec) introduction video including who you are, what you or your company offers, what you do for work, and your talents.
Lastly, in this era, many companies have similar names, so make it different than others and include every possible thing that reflects you.
Also, to make it different from your regular account, you should use a different phone number than your personal number while registering a LinkedIn account.
You should create an account using a valid email address or phone number with a strong password. It’s because in case you forget the password of your account, you can use them to recover your account.
However, as per LinkedIn, you should add at least one phone number to your LinkedIn account. And if you want to keep your number private, get virtual phone number for LinkedIn.
2. Build Your Network
The network is something that is too important to have. When you have a strong network, you can expand your social connection for knowledge exchanges, inspiration, or to achieve you/your business goals.
However, that doesn’t mean accepting everyone’s connection request or sending a connection request to anyone randomly.
You can use the search bar to search for the people you want to connect with. Also, you can use the “People You May Know” feature of LinkedIn to send a connection request.
However, you must be choosy while building your network. Only connect with the industry professionals that are related to your niche.
When you send a connection request, you should personalize your invitation. Tell them how you met and why you are connecting with them. Show them the benefit of connecting with you.
Further, it is not just only a platform for our own posts. It shares what posts you like, shares, or comment on. So, join relevant LinkedIn groups and like, and share the LinkedIn posts.
Reply to your connection’s messages, and respond to their comments on your post to show what they are meant for you.
It is key to building your network over time. Therefore, building a network on LinkedIn must be part of your regular activity.
3. Create and Share Quality Content
Creating and sharing quality content on LinkedIn is another top strategy anyone can apply to build a strong presence on this platform. However, to create and share content, you must find out your target audience and their interests.
Your post should show how to solve a problem, what you offer to the audience, and you/your company’s motto. You can share blog posts, informative articles, and infographics that reflect your brand. You can include the target keywords in your post’s caption. Give them a relevant title or description.
Additionally, mix different types of content formats (video, image, infographics) and experiment with them. It is found that images get two times higher comment rates, whereas video gets five times more engagement. So, create eye-catching content and share them on feeds. It will help your brand get noticed.
However, sharing content at random times is not an effective move. You must share the content at a particular time and consistently. When you share posts steadily, your brand’s content will get more visibility, and your audience can also know when to expect your post.
Share informative articles, blog posts, and infographics with keyword optimization.
4. Utilize LinkedIn Features
Linkedin’s functionality has bolstered to a wide range of content tools, including newsletters, articles, videos, events, and live streaming. And to enhance the user experience, LinkedIn regularly rolls out new features.
- Utilize the creator mode, which was introduced in 2021, to showcase and encourage the work of content creators and thought leaders.
- You can publish articles and share posts on LinkedIn, including relevant keywords and internal links.
- You can use hashtags on your posts or profile related to your skills and talents. For business purposes, use the product and company-related hashtags.
- Add a Call-to-Action website link in your profile’s introduction section to drive traffic to a website or product demo, Git profile link. You can customize the CTA text of the link (up to 30 characters).
- You can use LinkedIn Ads to reach out to the audience who are unfamiliar with your products. The benefit of using LinkedIn Ads is that you don’t have to guess the audience; the targeting information that you include in the ads dashboard will find them. That’s why advertising is the best thing you can do.
- Broadcast live video content on your LinkedIn profile using LinkedIn live feature. It is the best way to get more user engagement. If you want more people to view your live video, you should let them know the time when you will go on Live.
You can launch new products, announce job openings and celebrations, host webinars, and start Q&A sessions in the live video. However, you must ensure that the topic you discuss relates to your product, skills, business, and so on.
5. Monitor Your Analytics and Adjust Your Strategy
Once you optimize your profile, build your network, and share content, it’s time to monitor your analytics. However, just monitoring data is not a good action for a successful LinkedIn Marketing Manager. You should monitor the insights and use analytics tools to refine and adjust your approach.
Additionally, LinkedIn is a constantly evolving platform, so you must regularly review and update your LinkedIn marketing strategy to stay current and effective. Stay on top of new features and trends, and be willing to adapt your approach as needed.
You can use LinkedIn Analytics to find what kind of content performs best, what times of day or days of the week audience are most active, and what audience segments engage most.
Also, to find the area where you and your competitors are different, you must keep an eye on your competitors.
After analyzing the analytics, you should adjust your content strategy to create content that resonates with your target audience.
6. Connect with Recruiters and Employers
For an individual’s LinkedIn profile, optimizing the profile with relevant keywords is important. Include keywords related to your desired job title and the company you want to work for. And don’t forget to follow them. It’s an easy way to know what position is vacant in their company and what the requirements are to get hired for that position.
Additionally, do like, comment, and share their content. This way, when you apply for jobs in their company and when they view your profile, they get to know you are engaging with them.
You can also use Linkedin’s job search feature and apply directly from that platform. But to give the best impression to recruiters and employers, make your profile strong.
Further, make your profile public so anyone on LinkedIn can find you. You can also include your email address to remove communication barriers.
7. Build Your Personal Brand
Building your personal brand is establishing and promoting yourself as a unique professional with specific skills, knowledge, and values that differentiate you from others in your industry. It is about presenting yourself in a way that resonates with your audience and helps you to stand out in a crowded marketplace.
So, create your personal brand and use the networking opportunities and connections to promote it. Once you create your brand, you can promote your brand on your LinkedIn profile and the content you share. Share content that aligns with your personal brands, such as articles, videos, and infographics that showcase your knowledge and expertise.
Colors, logo, Imagery, and tone of voice on content must be consistent with your business. To get good recognition from the audience, you must post content on LinkedIn, reply to audience messages, or respond to a particular comment.
Additionally, you can use LinkedIn’s publishing platform to showcase your expertise and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
8. Leverage LinkedIn for Networking and Business Development
Nothing can be a better place than LinkedIn to create a professional business bond. So use LinkedIn’s search feature to find potential clients or business partners. You can also increase your LinkedIn network by synching your profile with your email address. It enables LinkedIn to recommend people you could connect with.
It is important to note that business owners should connect with strategic partners, prospects, competitors, and referral partners on LinkedIn. And after connecting with them, the business owners can decide how to grow the relationship.
One way to build a strong relationship with relevant professionals is to communicate with them using LinkedIn’s messaging feature.
You can also use LinkedIn’s sales navigator tool to identify and target potential customers based on industry, job title, company size, and location.
With Sales Navigator, you can access detailed insights about your prospects, including their activity on LinkedIn, and engage with them more effectively. The platform also provides personalized lead recommendations and real-time sales updates, allowing you to track and prioritize your sales activities.
9. Utilize Hashtags
You should use hashtags in your articles and posts to increase the chance of your posts being discovered. However, including hashtags randomly is not a smart move. You should do heavy research by querying relevant hashtags. After that, find how often hashtags are used. Then include 3 to 5 hashtags in your articles.
In addition to other famous hashtags, you can use your own branded hashtag. Using branded hashtags helps increase brand awareness and make your content more discoverable.
Ensure your branded hashtag is unique, easy to remember, and relevant to your brand or industry.
You can also include your company and product name as a hashtag. Be careful while using hashtags in your post because overuse of hashtags will give an unprofessional look to you.
10. Engage with Influencers
Finding out relevant influencers and engaging with them is the next thing that you should do to build a strong LinkedIn presence. When you engage and interact with influencers’ posts on LinkedIn, you will put a range of interesting content that adds value to your feed.
Further, you can collaborate with influencers or celebrities and attract new audiences to your brand. It’s a mutual benefit for you and the influencers.
You will get brand recognition from influencers whereas influencers get your audience recognition. You can tag the influencer you are collaborating with within your posts.
11. Leverage LinkedIn Analytics
LinkedIn analytics will help you to gain information about how your target audience is interacting, show you the post which gets the most engagement, type of content that is driving traffic to your website.
Further, it will provide full information about your follower’s and visitors’ demographic and engagement data for your updates.
You can use these insights to find out what is working and what’s not. By looking at these analytics, you can see whether you achieved your target goal or not. If not, you should align your content and offer what your visitors want.
To optimize engagement, you can also experiment with different content formats (text, images, videos, etc.) and posting schedules.
Generally, using LinkedIn analytics means taking advantage of opportunities and reducing vulnerabilities. You’ll also want to keep doing those things that work best for your company.
12. Utilize LinkedIn Polls
Using LinkedIn polls? Too cheesy.
If you have ever felt this way and not using LinkedIn polls, you are missing a big thing.
You can ask questions, and the audience can vote from a list of options in LinkedIn polls to make them more engaging and interactive.
Since answering the polls is easier than leaving comments on a post, the audience can engage in it. In fact, LinkedIn polls reach 3X to 5X more people than posts without a poll.
You should create these polls to collect information about your LinkedIn audience, recent trends, content preferences, and LinkedIn issues. Moreover, you can use polls to plan content strategy and get feedback. And those details can also be used for lead-generation efforts.
Further, people find it pretty comforting to know what other people are thinking. So, share the results of the polls in your content.
13. Utilize LinkedIn Stories
Looking like a simple feature, LinkedIn Stories has more power to engage its audience. Using LinkedIn Stories to share what you or your company is doing is an engaging and fun way.
You can add stickers, post “Today’s Question” tag users and URL links, share official news, etc., on your Story. Since you can add fresh content on Stories, you can use it to share your company behind the scene content and showcase new products. In this way, you can humanize your brand.
Further, Stories provides a degree of privacy that is unavailable when your audience leaves comments on your feed. That’s why the user feels comfortable interacting with you by responding on Story.
14. Promote Your LinkedIn Presence
Building an online viewer base and creating an influential online presence is one of the major social media pain points. And that’s more so in the case of LinkedIn. But there’s a solution for that as well.
You can only connect with a few people only by being on a single platform. But if you are on a different platform, you can connect with a wide range of audiences.
So, if you have a previously established social media account, use it to promote your LinkedIn account. You can draw the attention of people from outside the platform. However, just only by placing the profile link on other social media won’t drive public attention.
You must showcase your best post and show them the benefits of following you. Provide quality and information-rich content to your audience.
Additionally, you should add your or your company’s LinkedIn Follow button to your website and place a link in your email signature. By doing so, you can drive traffic to LinkedIn.
15. Focus on Personal Branding
People, particularly professionals, and salespeople invest a lot of time in building a brand. It is important for us to market ourselves. That’s why leverage personal branding (even though you think investing time for yourself is selfish).
Remember that you are the straightforward reflection of your brand. No one can represent you and your business more than you. That’s why personal branding is a must-do.
Depending on your niche, LinkedIn can be a great channel for building your personal brand and even making you a thought leader within your industry if you have the right connections.
Conclusion
Your business grows, increases sales leads, and gets the best out of most when you have a strong presence. However, building a strong LinkedIn presence requires proper planning and perseverance. But by following the above-mentioned strategies, building a strong presence on LinkedIn is like a cakewalk.
The key strategies for building a strong LinkedIn presence include optimizing your profile, engaging with your network, creating and sharing valuable content, participating in LinkedIn groups, utilizing hashtags, building personal brands, leveraging LinkedIn’s features, and investing in advertising.
These efforts require time and consistency but can help establish you and your organization and build valuable connections.