How to Grow Your Business with Social Media: 5 Secrets to LinkedIn
By Shannon Ballard
There’s a lot you can do on social media, but with more than 690 million members, LinkedIn is the best platform to grow your business. LinkedIn marketing tools and features are available for every business type and size, making it easier than ever to engage with top prospects.
So where should you start if you want to continue building your business and expanding your reach? These five secrets will help you get the most out of the powerful platform.
- Stand out for free
Your company probably has a LinkedIn page set up by now (and if it doesn’t, make one!), but you might’ve overlooked LinkedIn Stories and Products on Pages.
Stories are a direct way to share real-time experiences with your networks, and for audiences to interact with and learn more about the people, companies and topics that are important to them. The Products on Pages feature highlights the best of your product portfolio. By building a knowledge hub and community of advocates, users can quickly grasp what you do and why you do it best
2. Turn conversations into conversions
Conversation ads have a click-through rate that’s three times higher than your average InMail. Why do they work so well?
- Multiple calls to action
- Qualifying questions drive higher-quality leads into your pipeline
- Reports show how engaged they are in the conversation or offer
With better engagement and conversion metrics across the board, it’s clear conversation ads click with users.
3. A new way to run professional events
Events continue to be a top growth driver for marketers. Over 50% of B2B marketers use events to drive conversation, and 93% include them in their marketing strategy. Hosting LinkedIn Events lets you leverage your own online network to spread the word and attract the right professional audience to your event. Since LinkedIn is a trusted environment, holding an event on the platform adds credibility and makes it more accessible. Maybe the handiest feature is the ability to create event reports, providing insights to help you improve your next event.
4. Using the most underused LinkedIn feature
While not as popular as Instagram’s Stories, LinkedIn’s underrated Stories Ads help you reach more audiences through immersive, full-screen videos served in between member and page Stories at the top of the mobile app. You can drive off-site traffic with a swipe-up feature, making these a flexible addition to any marketing strategy.
5. Connecting with bigger companies than ever before
LinkedIn is perfect for account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns, a focused, data-driven approach that’s used in B2B marketing to target best-fit accounts for conversion. It’s a premier platform for account targeting – there are over eight million LinkedIn company pages, after all. Alongside account targeting, LinkedIn offers email contact and lookalike targeting, too, giving you several avenues to reach new audiences.
There are endless ways to grow your business on LinkedIn. Whether it’s engaging in conversations, hosting events or showing off some fun stuff in Stories, be sure you’re making the most of the opportunities LinkedIn offers.
About Shannon Ballard
With 20 years of experience in brand development and customer experience strategy, Shannon Ballard has a proven track record for helping organizations position, develop and differentiate brands to inspire employees and drive growth. As co-owner of Jan Kelley, a creative digital agency and WBE-certified organization, Shannon helps businesses grow by developing, implementing and optimizing strong digital-first marketing strategies and programs. Jan Kelley’s philosophy brings together the power of technology and the brilliance of humanity to spark ideas, generate momentum and drive lasting results.