Before launching her modern canned goods company, Heyday, founder Kat Kavner considered herself a passive LinkedIn user, keeping her profile up to date but stopping short of posting. That all changed once her business got up and running.
“I posted on my LinkedIn announcing our brand launch back in 2022 and got a really great reaction,” she says. “The post went far beyond my first-degree connections and got a great response from the wider CPG community on LinkedIn.”
LinkedIn stands out from other social media platforms for its emphasis on business. If you’re starting your own business, you can use a LinkedIn company page to build brand awareness, recruit employees, and generate leads from fellow LinkedIn users. You can also run LinkedIn advertising to massively scale up your exposure.
Ahead, learn why and how to build an effective LinkedIn strategy, complete with Kat’s tried-and-true tips.
Why use LinkedIn for marketing?
When it comes to business-to-business (B2B) marketing, LinkedIn reigns supreme. Eighty-nine percent of B2B marketers surveyed by digital marketing agency Wpromote said they use LinkedIn for lead generation. What’s more, 62% of those marketers reported successfully acquiring new leads from their LinkedIn posts.
At the center of any LinkedIn strategy is company visibility. You can use your LinkedIn account to showcase your business to others in your network. You can also expand your network by purchasing ads that lead LinkedIn members to your business page.
For many business professionals, a LinkedIn profile conveys legitimacy. By actively engaging in LinkedIn marketing efforts, you can bolster your brand image in the eyes of your business peers and potential clients.
How do businesses use LinkedIn for marketing?
Businesses use their LinkedIn pages to accomplish four principal goals. You can focus your LinkedIn marketing plan on the following:
Brand recognition
Business owners use LinkedIn as a marketing tool to increase brand recognition and share company accomplishments. Use your company pages to inform potential customers about the services you offer.
You can also post content on company LinkedIn pages to announce an expansion, new hires, accolades, and prominent contracts. Consider highlighting team members with links to their personal LinkedIn profiles.
One of the best ways to attract the attention of your client base is to post content relevant to them. LinkedIn’s internal data indicates 97% of B2B marketers use the platform for content marketing with the platform serving as a hub for key audiences. Keep up with the competition by routinely adding engaging content such as polls and updates to your LinkedIn feed.
Lead generation
You can use LinkedIn to generate leads from other businesses (B2B marketing) or via business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. While both digital marketing strategies can be effective, LinkedIn stands out from other social networking sites for its ability to reach business customers.
Many companies tailor their LinkedIn content to engage professionals using the platform via their own business LinkedIn accounts. LinkedIn analytics data reveals the platform’s B2B buyers typically work in IT, finance, business development, accounting, and operations.
Recruiting
Businesses use LinkedIn marketing to boost their employer brand and recruit new team members. In most cases, this means using LinkedIn to post job listings.
Instead of running a broad campaign, you might target individual LinkedIn users by sending personalized messages. You’ll improve your recruitment efforts by keeping your business LinkedIn page up to date with an accurate company description and location.
Reinforcing company culture
LinkedIn can be a useful tool for communicating with your workforce and existing customers. You can use a LinkedIn post to articulate company values and goals. These will be seen by potential clients but also by those already connected to your organization.
You can also suggest your employees create and maintain their own profiles where they provide updates about work they do at your company.
How to align marketing content with the LinkedIn algorithm
- Make your posts easy to read
- Stay relevant to your industry
- Minimize outbound links
- Include images and video
- Use hashtags for relevant keywords
- Tag other LinkedIn users (within reason)
Like other leading social media platforms, LinkedIn uses an algorithm to deliver relevant content to its user base. The algorithm prioritizes keeping users engaged by delivering quality content and minimizing spam. Use these general LinkedIn marketing tips to ensure your content shows up in the feed of your target audience:
Make your posts easy to read
Use concise sentences. Avoid littering your prose with marketing language.
“You see a lot of people using this weird LinkedIn voice and styling. It’s always a super long post made up of single-sentence paragraphs all about the hustle and grind,” Kat Kavner, cofounder of Heyday Canning Co., says. “Just write in your own human voice.”
Stay relevant to your industry
Talk about topics that connect to the services you offer. For instance, if you sell software as a service (SaaS), consider writing posts about developments in the information technology space.
Minimize outbound links
The LinkedIn algorithm may flag outbound links as spam or low-quality content. If you do need to include a website URL, use the real address (not a shortened link) and provide some context about the site you’re linking to.
Include images and video
LinkedIn metrics indicate that video posts are 20 times more likely to be shared on LinkedIn than any other type of post.
Use hashtags for relevant keywords
Hashtags can help your content turn up in LinkedIn searches. Make sure these hashtags relate to the core subject of your posts; avoid hashtags like #subscribe or #follow, which are not useful to users and can come across as spam.
Tag other LinkedIn users (within reason)
Tagging other LinkedIn profiles can inspire the tagged people to share your content with their networks. However, tagging too many people may cause the LinkedIn algorithm to flag your post and limit its exposure.
Tips for building an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy
- Post at the right times
- Offer high-quality content
- Leverage your LinkedIn connections
- Join LinkedIn groups
- Encourage team members to contribute
- Respond to comments
You can boost your LinkedIn exposure by adhering to six simple guidelines. Start with these tips for publishing content on LinkedIn:
Post at the right times
Research suggests there are good times to post on LinkedIn. Weekday mornings tend to get strong engagement, while nighttime and weekend posts see less exposure.
Offer high-quality content
Approach your content posting strategy with the goal of informing your readers. Home in on a niche and publish content regularly. You can link to your company’s website or highlight your accomplishments, but take care not to bombard your reader with sales language.
Leverage your LinkedIn connections
LinkedIn offers opportunities to connect with other business professionals online. As you add people and businesses to your LinkedIn network, include them in your posts.
For instance, you can tag them in a post and ask them to weigh in with their opinion. You can also share their posts, adding commentary of your own.
“I post everything from my personal LinkedIn and then reshare it from our Heyday page,” Kat says. “I’ve worked in CPG for the last 12 years, so I have a decent network of CPG industry pals and connections, so I just get more eyeballs on our posts if I do it that way instead of posting from Heyday’s page.”
Join LinkedIn groups
LinkedIn groups are opt-in forums for people who share an industry or general interest. You can join as many LinkedIn groups as you like.
While it’s unwise to post overt marketing content in these forums, you can still build brand awareness by staying active and participating in group threads. Establish yourself as an honest and reputable group member.
Encourage team members to contribute
Your employees are among your best ambassadors. Encourage them to share content from your LinkedIn business page and to post updates of their own. Their posts can reach LinkedIn users who don’t already follow your company on the site.
Respond to comments
User engagement is one of the key metrics that LinkedIn’s algorithm relies on to recommend posts. In other words, a post with lots of comments may appear in more people’s feeds than one with no comments. You can promote dialogue by joining in the discussion yourself. Pose questions in your posts and respond to others’ comments.
How founders can leverage their personal LinkedIn pages
In addition to using LinkedIn to market your business and products, the platform can be a great way for founders to establish themselves as business leaders. “[I post] all of our big pieces of news on LinkedIn as a way to disseminate news and create some industry buzz,” Kat says.
Here are Kat’s tips for leveraging your personal LinkedIn profile as a founder:
- Post from your personal LinkedIn and then share from your business page. “Sharing our news from my perspective makes the posts more interesting/human and makes it feel more like the reader is along for the journey versus posting from our brand account,” Kat says.
- Write in your own voice. “Tell your story, share authentically about the motivation and ‘why’ behind what you’re doing,” Kat says. This will help LinkedIn users form a connection to your brand.
- Think of your LinkedIn posts as mini press releases. “Use it as your own little press release, because in many ways it can function that way,” Kat says. LinkedIn is a great place to share business news in a less formal way than a press release.
LinkedIn marketing strategy FAQ
How effective is LinkedIn marketing?
LinkedIn can be an effective tool for generating leads and driving web traffic to your site or ecommerce store. According to an internal study by LinkedIn, 96% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content.
Is LinkedIn marketing expensive?
LinkedIn ads often cost more than ads on other social media networks. Based on 2023 data from digital marketing agency WebFX, the average cost of LinkedIn ads is $8 to $11 per click, $33.80 per 1,000 impressions, and 50¢ to $1 per send.
Can I get leads on LinkedIn?
Yes, digital marketing agency Wpromote reports that 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation, and 62% say it generates leads for them.
Is influencer marketing effective on LinkedIn?
Some businesses use LinkedIn for influencer marketing, but the practice is not as common as may be observed on video-forward social media networks such as TikTok.
How can I get more traffic to my company page?
You can drive more traffic to your LinkedIn company page by posting on a regular basis (several times per week), tagging your LinkedIn connections, posting at the right time (weekday mornings are generally a good time), and offering concrete data and useful information in your posts.
