INTRODUCTION
In our modern-day internet age, content quality is king. No matter which channels you use to post your business’s content, it needs to be helpful and articulate to best guide your audience along your marketing pipeline, as well as to please the Google search engine algorithm enough to rank high in search results. LinkedIn has steadily become one of the hottest places for businesses to share their content and amass followers that will grow to become heralds for their brand. With tools like the LinkedIn Publisher in addition to the standard post feed, LinkedIn just might be your company’s destination for attracting and engaging your target audience, as well as the start of a marketing funnel that drives conversions! By aligning your total digital marketing efforts, including SEO, you can leverage multiple channels to achieve your growth goals. After reading this blog, you should feel confident about taking some simple steps to beef up your business’s LinkedIn page. Armed with insightful content and helpful information, your LinkedIn page can be a fantastic tool to help grow your brand presence and increase conversions!
TLDR SUMMARY
1. Eat Your Greens: The Importance of SEO and Keywords
2. Best Practices For Optimizing a LinkedIn Page For Google Search Engine Results Pages
3. Using LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform
4. Engage With Your Audience on LinkedIn
5. Maintain Consistent Activity
6. Where LinkedIn Sits in Your Marketing Funnel
7. What do I Say in my Content?
8. Lead Generation Forms
9. Finally…
10. Still Not Sure What to do With Your LinkedIn Page?
11. Conclusion
1. Eat Your Greens: The Importance of SEO and Keywords
Before we get too far, it needs to be said that your business’s SEO goals should be aligned with the content you share on your social channels and email campaigns as well as your website – which is usually a marketer’s first SEO target. That means eating your marketing vegetables and researching the terms and phrases that your business can win in the search results pages, then implementing them across your content. If you didn’t know, you can adjust your settings on your LinkedIn posts and articles so that they appear in Google search results instead of just in the platform. Therefore, you can utilize the same SEO keywords that help drive traffic to your website for your LinkedIn content as well. We call that a double-whammy! Now get this – Google has updated the way they prioritize content rankings as of 2023. The search engine titan is leaning even more heavily into the EAT acronym (Expertise – Authority – Trustworthiness). That means they will rank higher and promote content that is more relevant to the reader’s search as long as it comes from an authority on the subject matter (Think GAF writing content about roofing solutions – you’d trust them, right? This means keyword- stuffed drivel is going to take a back seat to helpful content that shares expert insight from a trustworthy source. This is great news for anyone who searches Google hoping to actually learn something! But what does this mean for your LinkedIn content?
2. Best Practices For Optimizing a LinkedIn Page For Google Search Engine Results Pages
LinkedIn is the perfect place to leverage the authority and expertise of your brand in an effort to provide value to your customers. What’s our advice to you, you ask? Be helpful! And answer your customer’s questions! Sorry for yelling, but this is the core purpose of your entire online presence. For example, if you are a commercial roofer in New Jersey, what content would you share with businesses that may need new roofs? You may publish a blog on LinkedIn about the ‘top 3 roof maintenance tips for the winter’, or maybe share an article you produced that explains the in’s and out’s of roofing insurance claims. Content that helps prospects answer their questions, like mentioned above, is going to outperform self-serving pages that simply talk about how great your company is while using your top 3 keywords a million times. The ‘answering customers questions’ approach will do a couple things; it will help fulfill the first purpose of being helpful, as well as improve your brand image on LinkedIn. Your audience is more perceptive than you may think, and if they see content that looks like it was only created to help show up in a search result, they will tune out fast. On the other hand, if your prospects have leaky roofs and don’t know what to do, they’ll find your page and read how to fix their problems (or, most likely, call your roofing company to do it for them).
3. Using LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform
The helpful content you write should be shared on your website, in social media posts, and on LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform. When content is simply shared as a post in LinkedIn, it’s only shared to your page’s followers, and therefore not garnering the same reach as a published article. LinkedIn allows administrators and super admins to publish long-form content that will appear in Google search engine results pages (SERPs), therefore adding another avenue for your content to be seen. We have a completely original saying around Estes Media, “if it ain’t broke – don’t fix it!” If there’s a piece of content that resonates with your audience, you should re-share it across all of your platforms, including LinkedIn. Your performance data from Google Analytics, SEO tools like SEMRush, and your social media accounts will help uncover which types of content are attracting attention and galvanizing your audience. Make sure to capitalize on what works by replicating that content. Be sure to update and edit your content as time goes on with more up-to-the-minute information and fresh SEO research. Your website traffic will improve the more your articles stay relevant!
4. Engage With Your Audience on LinkedIn
When you share something that resonates with people on social media, they tend to sound off in the comments section. This is a great thing as long as they’re not forming a virtual dog pile and ripping your company’s actions and opinions to shreds. No, that’s not you – you’re sharing tips, best practices, and raining positivity on everyone in your path, and your viewers are letting you know how grateful they are for your wisdom! Let your audience know how happy you are to help and respond to those who engage with your business on LinkedIn. By responding to comments, you let people know that there is an attentive human behind the brand, and that you genuinely care about customer opinions and feedback. This helps boost your trustworthiness and lets you demonstrate your expertise in your field. In the process, you are cultivating a community that shares an interest in your business and industry, priming readers to come back and regularly read your posts and articles. Nurturing that community is one of the best ways to grow your company’s word-of-mouth awareness, which extends beyond the internet. Commenting an example of organic networking online, which is the entire premise for LinkedIn anyway. Engaging with the audience opens the door to new connections and collaborations, and for many companies leads to customer acquisition.
5. Maintain Consistent Activity
Social media is a massive flowing river of content where every post is swept by. It’s easy for your message to get lost in the deluge of blurbs that your audience sees in a given moment. The more you post, the more weight you have on a channel like LinkedIn, and the more the algorithm will favor your content in their suggestions. With the sheer volume of content flooding through the web, people will soon forget your meticulously crafted think-piece in a matter of seconds – therefore, it’s crucial that you keep a steady pace of content so that you remain in the front of your reader’s mind. Once your digital wheels start rolling, you don’t want them to stop. Otherwise you lose momentum and make waste of all your hard work – and advertising spend. Getting advertising, content publication, and social credibility back up to tip-top efficiency doesn’t happen that quickly when you suddenly halt your digital efforts, so you won’t want to take your foot off the gas once you have a routine. The sudden absence of social posts, blog publications, and advertising can make it look like something bad happened to your business in the eyes of your prospects, which can sow doubt in their minds about your ability to perform your services reliably. Don’t give your audience a reason to feel unsure about your brand – post often and proudly!
6. Where LinkedIn Sits in Your Marketing Funnel
First and foremost, LinkedIn is a channel for brand awareness, that cheeky little term that doesn’t shout ROI, but is critical to developing a word of mouth following for your business. With enough awareness, you can begin to build a community of people to engage with your company online. LinkedIn can be a channel for converting unknown visitors into known visitors – that is, people you know are interested in your business and frequently visit your pages to see what’s happening – and further develop them into converted customers. You can even use LinkedIn content to propel your active prospects into ‘closed-won’ customers, and even your current customers into fanatic evangelists for your brand (think of guys who ride Harley Davidsons, they’re like walking advertisements for the world’s most attitude-forward vehicle manufacturer). Producing and publishing that helpful and informative content on your LinkedIn page will display your authority in your professional domain. It will guide wisdom-seekers to the rest of your websites, social profiles, landing pages, advertisements, and more. You want people coming to you for your sage advice, whether it’s in roofing, HVAC, or Harley Davidsons, even if they ultimately end up purchasing from someone else. They may come back to you if they’re unsatisfied with the business they choose and need a real professional to get it done right! Here at Estes Media, our construction clients who win are often fixing the problems of less capable contractors, and it’s the trust that is built from brand awareness that ultimately brings the woeful property owner to their senses. Your page views that Google is registering with every visit is fueling your trustworthiness fire, and each one adds a bit of credibility to your business – helping train the algorithm to show your content more and more.
7. What do I Say in my Content?
Let’s back things up a second. Maybe you get the hang of all of this ‘consistent posting’ and ‘credible authority’ mumbo-jumbo, but still don’t know where to start developing content. We like to ask each of our clients, “What are the most common questions you get from your customers?”. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer and think of (or listen to) what they want to hear. If they want to know how much a new roof in Atlanta, Georgia costs, write a blog that discusses the average prices of materials and labor in the Peach State. If they often need help navigating the insurance claims process, post some helpful tips on your LinkedIn page, and always include a call to action (CTA) that guides them to your landing pages and form-fills. Secondly, pose questions to your audience in your LinkedIn posts and read the answers they write in the comment section. This is an invaluable way to hear exactly what your audience wants from you, so you can turn around and give it to them! There’s no use in reinventing the wheel here, simply ask people what they want and deliver to the best of your ability. Customers chiming in on your posts also creates a town hall effect that is great for attracting like-minded people in search of services. The more people sounding-off in the comments increases your distinction as an industry authority. It also helps people feel like they’re a part of something bigger when they connect with other professionals in a social space. Remember, people don’t want to simply buy goods and services, they want to feel like a part of the story!
8. Lead Generation Forms
Lastly, it would behoove any business to use LinkedIn’s lead generation forms to collect prospective leads. With prefilled accurate data based on profiles, users can submit their information in exchange for additional content or exclusive offers. Consider crafting a newsletter, email campaign, or even financial offerings like rebates, discounts, and referrals in exchange for your reader’s contact information. This lets you know who’s interested in your business, or as we like to say who your ‘warm leads’ are. Then you can fire up your sales team to round up these organically acquired leads and start converting customers!
9. Finally…
Implement your content strategy into these aspects of LinkedIn for a robust and complete brand message, image, and presence. In doing so you’ll improve your authority online and your pages will begin to perform better in the search engine results pages. Stay committed to increasing your market share with authoritative content, helping create a sense of trust within your industry. When brands take the time to cultivate a following online, they often end up creating a loyal fanbase that actively promotes your business on your behalf because they feel it’s the right thing to do. And that’s the truth of it – helping businesses that help others is the right thing to do!
10. Still Not Sure What to do With Your LinkedIn Page?
Contact the Estes Media team today! We’re a group of content-obsessed marketers with decades of experience helping businesses grow revenues by developing their digital channels. Take a look at what our current customers have to say about us!
CONCLUSION
1. Implement your content strategy into these aspects of LinkedIn for a robust and complete brand message, as well as a chance to appear higher up in the Google (and Bing, I guess) search rankings.
2. Stay committed to increasing your market share with authoritative content, whether it be written, spoken on video, or in person.
3. Develop channels to funnel your leads and track where they come from (we suggest HubSpot)
4. Watch your business outperform the competition!
