LinkedIn – love it or hate it – is full of people and opportunities. If you sell direct to consumers, you might find other platforms better for marketing, but if you sell to businesses, LinkedIn is a great place to be.
And when you use it right, it’s actually a fantastic tool for lead generation.
Back in October 2020, I headed over to Warrington to share some LinkedIn content tips with the Habitz team. Check out the video to hear what I had to say about using LinkedIn and read on for additional ideas on what to post.
LinkedIn can generate leads in several ways, depending on the types of post you create.
As mentioned in the video, I think the best way to get results from LinkedIn is having a nice mixture of posts. In this article, I’m going into a little more detail and providing some examples to get you started…
It’s no use just telling people you’re an expert in your field – you need to show them too. And what better way to do that than by sharing informational content.
This helps you build credibility, showcase your expertise and convince potential new customers that you know your stuff.
Plus, if you help people for free through your content, they are more likely to trust you and remember you. So when they are ready to invest in your products or services, they are more likely to come to you.
And it’s so easy to share informational content. You can create a blog post and then link to it from LinkedIn. You can create articles specifically for LinkedIn. Or you can break a subject down and share as a series of posts or tips. You can even create short videos if you’re confident in front of the camera.
…writing your CV
…choosing your web designer
…buying a new car
…fix a leaking tap
…complete your tax return
…train for a marathon
…buying your first house
…starting a blog
…planning a wedding
…honeymoon destinations
…workouts for beginners
…marketing books
…reduce your calorie intake
…get noticed online
…increase the value of your house
By promotional content, I don’t just mean adverts and sales messages – although you should have some of these too. I mean content that promotes the benefits and services of what you do in a non-salesy way.
So for example, my short video animations (shown below) explain the benefits of having great copy on your website and creating content to drive traffic to your site, but they do this without talking specifically about my services. Of course, the hope is that people will watch the videos and ask for my help but I’m not just saying, ‘here’s what I sell, will you buy it?’
Promotional content doesn’t have to be video. You can create blog posts or LinkedIn articles that promote the benefits of your services.
Or you can create simple LinkedIn posts – using a statistic can be a good way to attract interest. For example, “Did you know that websites with a blog get on average 55% more traffic than their competitors that don’t have one?”
Many people understand that you can optimise blog content for search engines by finding out what people are searching and creating an in-depth blog post on that subject.
But LinkedIn content can be optimised too. You can do this by including hashtags in your posts or tagging people and companies.
Hashtags on LinkedIn work in a similar way to Instagram and Twitter in that people can search for a hashtag and will get shown posts that include that hashtag. But the main difference with LinkedIn is that you can follow hashtags.
When you follow a hashtag, posts that include that hashtag will show up in your main feed without you having to do a specific search.
This means you can follow topics that interest you such as #contentmarketing, #blogging or #LinkedInTips.
And the people you want to do business with probably follow hashtags that interest them. So if you create posts that use the hashtags your audience might be searching for or following, then you might get your content seen by more of your potential customers.
For example, if I wanted to attract more business coaches as clients, I could create a post along the lines of:
“Business coaches – did you know that having a blog could help you establish your credibility, showcase your expertise and drive more traffic to your website? As a result, you can win more of the clients you want. #businesscoaches #businesscoaching #businessmentors”
Now I’m not saying a post like that will win me an influx of new business, but it might attract a couple of profile views, maybe one or two connection requests. And that’s one or two new connections who work in the industry I want to work with who will now be seeing more of my content.
There’s another reason you should include hashtags on your post too.
When you write a post, LinkedIn gives it a URL – a unique link – so that you can share it elsewhere. When you use hashtags, the first three hashtags are used in the URL. If your post doesn’t use hashtags, LinkedIn simply pulls through words from the post itself.
Here’s and example where I’ve used the hashtags #makeyourcopycount, #contentwriting and #linkedin:
As you can see, the hashtags appear in order after my profile name and before the unique number.
And here’s one where no hashtags were used:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lisaslater-mycc_what-copywriting-support-can-you-get-for-activity-6785449756308078592-o_jO
So by putting hashtags in your posts, you are getting keywords in your URLs, meaning people can see more easily what the post is about.
To tag a person or company, simply type @ followed by the person or company name.
When you tag someone in a post, their connections are more likely to see the post. And if you are paying them a compliment, they are likely to engage with the post.
Just make sure you aren’t tagging lots of people just for the sake of it, and be careful about who you tag. Some people don’t like it and will disconnect if you tag them in posts that aren’t relevant.
As well as showing your credibility and promoting your services, you want people to engage with you and your brand.
If people know you, like you and trust you, they are more likely to do business with you so let them get to know you, and hopefully, they’ll like you too.
If you are your brand, then you can share personal experiences, stories and anecdotes, or talk about any hobbies and interests you might have.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to confess your innermost secrets on LinkedIn (unless you want to), but just let people get to know you as a person. Share as much as you feel comfortable with.
Think of LinkedIn like being in the workplace – what kind of things would you talk about with colleagues other than work stuff?
If you want people to get to know your company, you can showcase your people, values and quality of work.
Sometimes people just want to be entertained. Entertaining doesn’t have to mean funny, so don’t worry if you don’t know any jokes. Entertaining can be unusual, intriguing, thought-provoking, or just fun.
Think ‘weirdest requests a client ever made’ or ‘biggest design fails’. Maybe you’ve spotted a typo that changes the entire meaning of an advert. Perhaps you sent a message to the wrong person and got an interesting response. Or you could have just come across an amusing cat video that you want to share.
You might hear people telling you to keep your content professional – well, professional doesn’t mean boring. Professional people still have a sense of humour, after all.
Some people stick to one type of content – sell, sell, sell. But do your potential clients really want to be sold at all the time?
Others focus on entertaining their audience – that’s great, but do they know what you actually do? There’s no point people loving you if they don’t realise that you also run a business that relies on sales. So unless you are on LinkedIn purely to socialise, make sure you mention your products and services sometimes too.
Personally, I think a mix of all 5 types of content works well. You get to show your expertise, promote your services, reach a wider audience, build trust and credibility, and show your personality.
You get to build relationships. And that’s what networking is all about.
If you’re still struggling with content ideas, why not book a consultation and let me help you Make Your Copy Count.
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I’m Lisa – owner of Make Your Copy Count Ltd, and author of the ‘A-Z of Blogging’ and ‘The Freelance Fairytale‘.
I help freelancers and small businesses attract more of the clients they want by providing copywriting training and marketing consultations.
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