Being active on LinkedIn is important to maintain your growth. It ensures your stay relevant to potential customers and partners.
However, accomplishing this is easier said than done. Original quality content takes time and careful consideration to produce, but there are still ways to interact with your audience on LinkedIn in the meantime, and it is important that you do so.
Interactivity is how you maximize brand visibility, so staying engaged on LinkedIn should be a crucial component of your marketing plan. Today, we’re going to discuss 5 specific ways that you can stay active on LinkedIn, and we hope that you’ll be able to implement at least one into your activity moving forward.
- Comment on others’ posts
You should think about interaction as more than just generating your own content but connecting with others as well. LinkedIn has made changes that make your activity on the site more visible than ever, and across more avenues than ever as well. Take advantage of this and boost the your presence on the platform by interacting more frequently with others.
Outside of producing more long-form content of your own, you can also share ideas and perspectives by commenting on others’ posts. You might come across another piece of insight concerning your industry and find that the topic is relevant to your business, especially when it comes to the audience it is intending to reach. Don’t be afraid to comment on these posts and share your own insight and perspectives, showing your willingness to engage with your industry while gaining visibility for your profile as well.
You may come to find in time that people value your insight on others’ content as much as they do your commentary on your own topics. This is a great marketing opportunity for you and while this does not have to be an everyday occurrence, try to pencil in times where you intend to comment on others’ posts.
- Diversify your posts beyond sales and marketing
Awareness and brand visibility goes beyond content purely intended for sales or marketing use. Your business will gain recognition anytime your name is included, so don’t be afraid to expand the scope of your content beyond your obligatory sales and marketing pieces.
Commenting on others’ posts and sharing your own insight is a useful exercise, but also consider creating posts intended to solicit others’ advice as well. Next to having the right answers, asking the right questions is a valuable contribution to discussion as well. Create content asking others in your network for advice, and not only will you connect with them, but you may also find yourself receiving interaction from their extended network as well.
You can also use your posts as an opportunity to share recruitment notices, conduct market research, and even find investors. LinkedIn as a platform has managed to combine individuals from just about every area of business. The opportunities made available through networking on the site are boundless if you utilize the tools correctly.
- Join events
Perhaps one of the most useful initiatives you can follow through on with LinkedIn is events. Meetups, conventions, and other in-person meetings have been the bread and butter of networking for decades. The recent increase in the use of online meeting tools has only made gatherings even more prevalent. Events are a great way to connect with other parties who assuredly have something in common with you (the topic of the event itself) making connections much simpler to gain and maintain.
If you currently have a lull in your original content, or you feel you need a fresh approach to networking, then adding events to your schedule is a great objective. Look for events hosted by or attended by entities that you are interested in, or who you feel can enable the right relationships for your business. In-person meetups are always nice because you can share business cards and make direct contact. But don’t undervalue the worth of online events either.
With online events, you still have the opportunity for speaking roles and other engagements, and some may find that these tools make the ability to focus on one party at a time even easier. These tools are also useful for keeping the discussion going online, so you can make posts sharing your experience about the event, tag others you saw, and request their opinions, and you may even be approached by some attendees yourself.
- Share others content
Going further with the thought process of commenting on others’ posts, another avenue you can approach for staying active on LinkedIn is to share others’ content and add your own input, acting as a “curator” of sorts. Savvy business marketers may even accomplish more through their content curation, than their own original posts.
Finding thoughtful insight and useful market research is a task in itself, if your audience sees that not only do you put in this work, but that the results are valuable, they will remember your efforts, and possibly even help extend the reach of your business as well.
Anything that your audience will come to associate with your brand name will become a part of your business profile. If you are prone to share funny videos and more entertaining content, then viewers might feel like you are more approachable and human, though you also run the risk of people not feeling like you take your position too seriously.
Ultimately, you should think about what you want the view of your business to be. If you want to position yourself as a thoughtful expert in your industry, then seek out the content to share that will support this image.
- Stay in touch through direct messaging
After utilizing these methods and creating your own content, you may be fortunate enough to have started developing a nice network of your own. The broad general content you posted that initially attracted them to your business is essential to keep creating, but you also have new responsibilities when you start gaining more personal connections. Consider direct messaging and maintaining relationships with your network as part of your regular LinkedIn interactions.
You shouldn’t think of this as too intensive of an exercise, and it certainly doesn’t have to be something you do every day, but every couple of days or even weekly, you should make sure to reach out directly to a couple of your connections and keep them aware of your presence as well as to foster a deepening of the relationship.
There aren’t too many general guidelines for this approach to interaction, and you should consider the unique case of each one of your contacts, and how you want your relationship to progress with them.
Maintain your LinkedIn growth with consistent activity
LinkedIn contains several different tools and features that make it an essential platform for any business professional interested in marketing, networking, and frankly any other business initiatives. To utilize these tools to their maximum benefit, you need to have the correct strategies on hand to navigate the site.
If you want to learn more strategies to maximize your LinkedIn marketing strategy and other tips for utilizing the site to its full potential, contact us today!
