LinkedIN is the leading Professional Social Network with over 400 million users. If you haven’t joined up yet with LinkedIN now would be a good time to do you if you are interested in generating new leads and relationships with social network marketing.
Joining LinkedIn is a free, although depending upon your needs, there are a series of valuable and affordable add ons and advertising options that might be useful. You can sign up here using your email or signup with your Facebook credentials.
Images
Rich media has proven to increase reader engagement by at least 2x. Images are much more likely to make readers click on your post; choose a strong image that represents the message of your post and put it at the top of your post. It’s best to avoid using images that contain a lot of text, i.e. Memes. A slogan or your corporate watermark is fine, but you really want the reader to actually read your post and get to your clickable Call to Action versus walking away thinking they got the “whole story” simply from the image. Here’s an article about places to find free images for your posts, social media and websites.
Headlines
Make sure headlines are clear and compelling. Choose clarity over cleverness.
Value of authenticity
Make sure that your posts are authentic, not simply sales copy or advertisements. This helps to creates human appeal and yields trust among readers overtime by positioning you as someone other than just a shameless self promoter.
Keys to authenticity
- Have an opinion – whether you are writing a product review, an editorial about the economy or simply commenting about an industry trend, your opinion matters and your readers will continue to “tune in” to read your perspective, assuming that you aren’t wildly obscene or become known for factless blathering!
- Use personal anecdotes – How to Win Friends and Influence People or Chicken Soup for the Soul – these are perfect examples of using personal anecdotes to add perspective and readability to your posts. Personal anecdotes add a human side to sometimes seemingly boring post topics. Customer success stories are another great example you can use, think “mini case studies”.
- Create insights and share knowledge, tips, tricks and easily implementable strategies are a great way to build trust and continuity with your posts that keep your readers selecting your content to consume versus your competitors.
- Set your post up with a clear intro, and explain your terms – don’t try to cover everything in one post, but also try to avoid drawn out “series” – example: if you have 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (sorry Paul Simon) put them all in one song, not across 10 songs on the album!
- Steer clear of jargon and acronyms – especially in the technology and marketing worlds we love to shorten things to KPI, KEI, ROI, ANSI, LAMP, SSL, etc. Just because you know what the acronym stands for doesn’t mean your reader is always up to speed. Make sure to spell out and explain the acronym BEFORE you use it in your postings.
- Write in a way that starts a conversation. Ask for comments and feedback to engage your audience, but make sure that you respond to these comments at least with a “thank you”.
These are just a few strategies you can deploy to improve the response rate and engagement of your LinkedIN posts. There are many more available, but these are the basics. Please comment and let us know of your strategies or tips on using LinkedIN.