Grow Your Influence, Build Your Brand: 4 Powerful Ways to Use LinkedIn

Gaining traction on LinkedIn is much more than simply posting a few things once in a while. LinkedIn has introduced several new upgrades, tools, and methods for businesses to gain a fabulous brand standing and benefit from increased followers. Including LinkedIn in the social media strategy is excellent for brand building, business development, brand recognition, and establishing the brand as an Authority. 

With B2B marketing constantly evolving in the digital space, it has become essential to meet audiences, spark meaningful conversations and exchanges, and build excellent, long-lasting relationships with clients. According to CMI, 96% of content marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. However, there needs to be a way for marketers to stand out and gain an edge in the market for the brand. 

1. LinkedIn Newsletter

Publishing articles on LinkedIn is quite simple and helps build a decent following. However, with the new Newsletter feature, LinkedIn is assisting marketers in increasing the chances of creating relevant connections between target audiences and brands. 

Publishing a newsletter is a relatively simple process and quite similar to the steps needed for articles. Marketers publishing an article per week can get good traction with current followers. However, even with the number of followers, only a certain percentage would get access to view the article (based on the algorithm) on their newsfeed. 

On the other hand, publishing a newsletter ensures each subscriber or follower is informed via a notification about the new shared content. The notification feature (plus the original new content) could lead to a higher engagement rate. For newsletters to be successful, marketers need to chalk out a plan, consistency rate, and a relevant topic that sets the brand as an Authority. Scheduling the newsletters, editing, and managing through the Vista Social Social Media Publisher is an easy solution that helps plan all the content and streamline the posting. This calendar is seamless, easily integrated to LinkedIn, and allows marketers to collate and schedule all the material on one easy-to-use software. 

Marketers can also seamlessly integrate topics, manage the newsletter content about specific targets, and publish ideas, blogs, and articles according to the content strategy. Newsletters particular to a case or a product and service get higher engagement than those not unique and specific to the target audiences. Vista Social LinkedIn Calendar can help arrange these newsletters according to frequency for better audience penetration. Starting a newsletter with weekly publishing like Latesha Byrd, CEO of Perfeqta, can also get 5,000 subscribers within two months. Newsletters on LinkedIn help reach all the brand subscribers, are made public, and help gain more traction in the long term. 

How to Start the Newsletter Feature?

The newsletter feature isn’t available to everyone currently. Marketers have to turn on creator mode from the Dashboard to access the newsletter mode. Marketers also have to ensure the brand account page meets certain specific criteria (150 contacts or followers, recent history with original content shared on the platform, and so on). 

Once the Newsletter feature is available, there will be a ‘create a newsletter’ option at the top of the box next to ‘write an article. Marketers need to scroll down towards the Dashboard on the profile page to access the feature. 

Benefits of Newsletter Feature:

The Newsletter feature on LinkedIn has become a new way for brands to engage with audiences and grow their reputations across demographics. 

• Create Killer Content: Creating killer content and publishing it via Newsletter is bound to get more engagement since the LinkedIn algorithm boosts the post to all followers and subscribers. This automatically ensures that people engage more with the post and share, like, and comment on it. 
• Increase Engagement: Newsletters help automatically refine the contact list. Only those who want to interact with the brand regularly will sign up for the newsletters. However, this does not mean that marketers should not use other methods to refine their target audiences. Instead, Newsletters should be used as one more critical engagement tool to bring in larger target audiences. 
• Build Authority: Constant engagement and relevancy in good quality newsletters help build trust. Since LinkedIn is a professional networking site, building credibility and relevance is a necessity in the long term. The LinkedIn Newsletter is one of the best ways to establish the brand as an authority. 
• Generate Leads: Generating leads is the reason for most marketing strategies. The LinkedIn Newsletter can help create invaluable leads and become part of the inbound marketing arsenal. Linked is 277% more effective than Twitter and Facebook for lead generations leading to conversions. 

2. LinkedIn Live Conversations

Live videos and conversations between business owners, key stakeholders, and roundtable discussions on relevant topics are excellent ways to boost engagement and grow the circle of brand influence. Marketers that help brands tap into the incredible pool of video engagement can get better, faster, higher results than those that do not. Hosting key videos can lead to live audiences between 100- 500 viewers. 

LinkedIn allows the Live videos to remain as recorded videos, and many times, the engagement numbers go up by nearly 100% in the matter of a few days or weeks. Sherrell Dorsey of The Plug has also found excellent results using LinkedIn Live discussions with a live engagement of 400 viewers, leading to 4000 – 5000 viewers who watched the recorded video a week later. The increase in viewers of the live conversations led to a marked increase in newsletter signups.  

The Vista Social LinkedIn Management Tool for Business provides the tools to manage multiple LinkedIn Company Pages, Messenger conversations, interactions, and engagement to drive higher growth and business efficiency through LinkedIn Marketing.

How to Start the LinkedIn Live Feature?

Like the Newsletter feature, LinkedIn also has strict criteria for Live Features for individual profiles and businesses. Some of these access criteria are:

• Audience Base: The audience base must exceed 150 followers or connections
• Sharing Original Content: Most marketers keep the brand page active by resharing content put up by other sites. However, sharing original content (within the rules of LinkedIn) is critical. 
• Professional Community Guidelines: Flouting the guidelines set by LinkedIn will see rejection in the Live Video Feature. It is best to ensure that the brand page and all posts follow the professional community guidelines. 

Benefits of LinkedIn Live Conversations:

LinkedIn Live allows marketers to create deeper connections between the brand and target audiences. LinkedIn Live gets nearly 7x more reactions with 24x more comments than native videos. It is also ideal for excellent engagement, announcements, product releases, launches, interviews, demonstration expertise, and a substantial increase in organic views. 

LinkedIn, being made up of highly professional communities, leads to higher engagement with authentic user bases. LinkedIn Live Conversations help bridge the gap between frivolous content and serious content that gets more shares, likes, and comments. 

3. Create Or Reshare Quality Video Content

For many marketers, finding adequate business and professionals for Live sessions each time is daunting. The challenges in time management, time zones, and scheduling create unnecessary conflicts, leading to delays in marketing strategy implementation. If this is the case, then sharing or creating fresh video content is better than hosting a live session or not sharing anything at all. 

Marketers need to have a cache or store of quality, viewable, relatable video content. Not posting regularly (as per schedule) can deter target audiences from engaging with the brand. Marketers need to ensure constant engagement and relatability with the products, services, launches, and offerings. Sharing, commenting, and liking relevant video content collateral is critical in keeping the engagement levels high. 

Most of the content on LinkedIn does not need to be extremely high quality. How-To videos, infomercials, product reviews, trials, and other video content, can also engage with audiences. Many small businesses and brands on LinkedIn do not have access to excellent quality video content but ensure that they post a video or two as per the schedule and keep their audiences engaged. This helps increase conversion rates and allows the brand to become relatable and trustworthy. 

Some companies even benefit from adding Behind The Scenes (BTS) videos about the products, their challenges, and how they overcame issues. Since LinkedIn is a professional site, the challenges and solutions need to be highlighted more than just the offerings and value add. 

Marketers can also use a few videos made for other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, to create a hype and buzz about the brand on LinkedIn. The only significant difference would be to show a business aspect of the video and not an up-sale or marketing aspect. 

Benefits of Resharing and Creating Quality Video Content on LinkedIn

Since video is considered highly by LinkedIn’s algorithm, there is a higher chance of a video reaching the target audience feed rather than a post with text or only an image. Videos that cover the story behind the start or ideology of the business, the challenges in finance, accounting, raising capital, and more will get more traction than just product description videos. 

• Telling the story: Marketers can leverage the emotional ideology behind a business or brand and make the startup story relatable. Most people watching the videos immediately connect with the brands, their ideals, and their beliefs. 
• Promotions: Indirect promotions to services, products, and other brand offerings are possible with strategic use of video content on LinkedIn. For instance, a video between the founder and an interviewer about the hardships of launching a product and why it was critical for the launch to go off could be a relatable video theme or idea. 
• Attracting Talent: LinkedIn has always been the go-to for excellent talent. Most large businesses find their talent from LinkedIn. 4 people are hired per minute through LinkedIn. 

4. Find Clients and Other Businesses

LinkedIn is one of the most influential digital media sites. Most businesses also use LinkedIn as a highly successful networking tool. The site has a Service Marketplace for business support. The marketplace is designed to assist businesses with finding contractors, vendors, retailers, and wholesalers. This initiative is also excellent for small business owners who cannot afford permanent staff and full-time help. 

Businesses need marketing, designing, graphic, public relations, accounting, lawyers, taxations, and more. Through the LinkedIn platform, companies can leverage existing small firms and professionals by requesting a proposal and quotation for work. It is also possible to find professionals based on their designations or titles. 

Marketers can also help brands by finding new clients. Suppose the company is a product or service provider. In that case, marketers can click the find potential clients button at the top of the profile page and increase audience reach and aid with potential client acquisition. 

While these are the 4 main, powerful ways to grow brand influence on LinkedIn, there are also other ways that marketers can help grow the business. 

LinkedIn Analytics:

Deep diving into LinkedIn Analytics is excellent for understanding what is working well with existing audiences. For marketers, understanding the type of posts that the audience interacts with and those that drive the highest engagement is critical in the long term. Many digital marketing agencies also rework their social media strategies on LinkedIn wholly based on Analytics. 

Just like marketers can know which posts are trending, they can also know who the existing audience is and how they align with the target audience demographics. Armed with this knowledge gained through Analytics, marketers can strategize, rework their content plan, and implement better marketing strategies for higher relevancy, brand building, and engagement. 

Apart from LinkedIn Analytics, Vista Social Analytics also helps take all the guesswork out of the data and helps in applying the metrics to the social strategy. The platform helps measure the metrics, compares with other social media platforms, and can produce actionable insights with their toolset. 

Other Engagement Driving Features:

Apart from LinkedIn Live, there are also other engagement features that marketers can use in their arsenal. 

• LinkedIn Polls
• LinkedIn Reactions
• LinkedIn Stories

LinkedIn Stories are excellent for sharing professional updates that help keep the content fresh, dynamic, versatile, and increase brand visibility. They last for 24 hours and can be customized with text overlays, questions, stickers, and more. They are also excellent for sharing real-time event updates and product and service launches. 

LinkedIn Polls help with increasing brand visibility and are fantastic for discovering what audiences want to interact with on the site. Many polls are also opinionated, informative, descriptive, and more. 

Add Hashtags:

Most businesses and marketers feel hashtags are helpful only on sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. However, hashtags are critical in reaching out to newer audiences on LinkedIn. While building the brand, it is necessary to connect with new target audiences who need to discover all the brand content. 

Adding a few relevant hashtags at the end of the posts (consistently) helps make the content more discoverable. Trending hashtags about social topics thought leadership, current crises, and more will make the content readable, relatable, and engaging. The hashtags will also make the post instantly recognizable on different media resources. LinkedIn can help the business become influential with clients, talent, and other competitors. 

Add Images To Posts:

Like many other platforms, LinkedIn is also becoming a visual platform. Adding relevant photos, professional images, and branding collateral can help increase the brand’s influence. 

Initially, LinkedIn was a text-only platform. Now, they are a photo and video-supported platform. Audiences interact more with videos and images than text-only posts. Adding thought leadership quotes, motivational ideas, and thought-provoking pictures can lead to higher engagement rates in the long term. 

Since the LinkedIn algorithm prioritizes higher engagement posts, the ones with images and videos will keep getting boosted automatically. Another good way for marketers to reach larger audiences and keep the market share on the brand is to ensure that the images are of excellent quality, with readable fonts and texts. Since images take up more real estate, the photos make the brand stand out and noticed by customers, clients, competitors, and target audiences. 

Marketers can also use the LinkedIn Documents feature to create a carousel of engaging images to attract eyeballs. 

There is plenty that LinkedIn can offer businesses for their growth strategies. Including LinkedIn in the overall marketing strategy is critical to getting professional recognition. Growing the influence and brand need not be hardship with LinkedIn’s significant features. Building a strong LinkedIn digital media strategy can help increase the brand’s impact on the market. The site is helpful with engagement, brand recognition, growing trust, and ensuring the business is positioned as an Authority. Using the engagement tools to increase the brand influence and make a difference are a few of the best reasons to jump on the LinkedIn bandwagon. 

Looking for a tool to help you with your LinkedIn marketing? Take a look at LinkedIn social media management features offered by Vista Social. Create a free account today!