Is your company’s LinkedIn page languishing in the traffic netherworld?
There’s no shame in that. LinkedIn might be one of the most visited social media websites in North America, but its high overall traffic volumes split among millions of individual and corporate pages. Only a small fraction of LinkedIn users get the kind of traffic they deserve.
Now, how does one go about changing that? Simple: by implementing some time-worn strategies to drive more traffic to one’s LinkedIn page.
It’s not as difficult as it sounds. In fact, you can get started on some of the more straightforward initiatives on this list today and complete them in relatively short order. Read on to learn more about how you should proceed.
1. Focus on Telling Compelling Stories
Content marketing begins and ends with great content. That’s certainly true for content marketing on LinkedIn, where audiences are unusually discerning and attentive. If your LinkedIn updates don’t consistently tell compelling stories that your audience finds valuable to their decision making processes, you’re not utilizing LinkedIn’s potential to its fullest. And you’re all but certain to be leaving traffic opportunities on the table.
2. Use Bright, Engaging Visuals in Your Posts
Don’t neglect to use bright, engaging visuals to liven up your LinkedIn posts. These visuals don’t need to be professionally produced or needlessly complex. Asiaciti Trust’s LinkedIn page demonstrates the potent power of crisp, simple visuals in supporting the stories that you should already be telling on LinkedIn.
3. Repost Longform Content You’ve Published Elsewhere
If your company blog is already active and engaging, leverage it as a resource for your LinkedIn campaigns, especially early on. There’s no shame in reposting high-quality blog content on your LinkedIn page. Remember, it’s all about sharing compelling stories and adding value to the conversations your prospects want to be a part of.
4. Connect and Converse With Influencers in Your Field
Set a goal to connect with at least 10 influencers in your industry every month. Once you’ve made these connections, keep them going by engaging in meaningful (but respectful) conversations about the topics that matter to you most. If these conversations are publicly visible on your LinkedIn page, you’ll draw interested visitors and perhaps some participants as well. Even if they’re private, you can bet that your new influencer connections will reward you with mentions and endorsements.
5. Link to Compelling Content Written by Influencers (And Other Relevant Sources Too)
This is another way to leverage LinkedIn’s rich stable of influencers and authoritative content sources. Linking isn’t always a two-way street, and Google’s rules around reciprocal linking can be dicey, but your efforts will be rewarded to a greater or lesser extent.
6. Reach Out to Connections With Requests for Endorsements
Endorsements do more for your image than a dozen blog posts, especially when they come from influencers whose words matter to their followers. Don’t be shy about asking for endorsements from people who’d have legitimate reason to give you a public thumbs-up. Think past and present colleagues, business associates, vendors, employees, and members of your professional network.
7. Join Interest Groups Likely to Drive Traffic to Your Page
Joining and actively participating in LinkedIn interest groups, such as industry or professional associations, is a high-probability way to drive traffic to your LinkedIn page. The more you participate in conversations through these groups, the more you’ll be seen as a valuable member of the niche — someone whose content is worth consuming.
8. Publish LinkedIn-Exclusive Content and Promote It Through Other Social Media Channels
Speaking of content worth consuming: nothing drives traffic to a LinkedIn page like high-profile, LinkedIn-exclusive content. You’ll need to pull out all the stops to make this type of campaign successful, leveraging other high-traffic social media platforms like Facebook as well as your company website, press releases, and perhaps even earned media. Over time, a stable of content available only on your LinkedIn profile could turn it into a destination for prospects hungry for insights.
9. Commission Studies and Reports for Publication on LinkedIn
This tip closely follows on the one above. These studies and reports don’t have to be exclusive to LinkedIn, per se, but they should be “destination” reading or viewing. In other words, they need to stand out from the usual LinkedIn updates by way of scientific methodology and insightful conclusions that can’t be found anywhere else.
10. Be Honest, Authentic, and Raw (But Always Appropriate for the Workplace)
Authenticity always sells, even on businesslike venues like LinkedIn. But you do have to be careful to remain on the right side of the line between professional appropriateness and “not safe for work” territory. The price for crossing that line is too high to bear.
11. Create Your Own LinkedIn Group
If you can’t find a LinkedIn group worth joining? No sweat — create one of your own. You’ll attract a host of new followers and immediately gain recognition as an influential leader in your field, no matter how narrow it might be.
12. Engage in Targeted Content Sharing (But Don’t Let It Take Up Too Much of Your Time)
Lastly, be sure to share relevant content with individuals and small groups (including LinkedIn groups) to whom it’s likely to speak. This sort of targeted content sharing has a high probability of conversion when done right and can spark a virtuous cycle whereby newly turned-on prospects refer others to your LinkedIn domain.
Start Driving More Traffic to Your LinkedIn Page Today
Whew — that was quite a list. Do you feel more confident that you know what it takes to drive more traffic to your LinkedIn page? Are you ready to get started?
Ready or not, you’d do well to get on it. Every day, your competitors are putting their noses to the grindstone, working to shore up their LinkedIn profiles and draw more prospective to their pages. Give them too much room to run and they could elbow you off the court completely.
We know it won’t come to that, of course. You know what’s at stake, and you wouldn’t have gotten this far if you didn’t know what it took to reach your goals. Here’s to a more engaging, popular LinkedIn presence — not tomorrow or the next day, but today.
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