How “exposed” are you on LinkedIn?
Are you getting traffic to your blog? Maybe a little bit, but know you could be getting more? Or, none at all because you haven’t quite figured it out yet?
Never fear!
Today I’ve brought in a guest superhero to share with us just what we can do on LinkedIn to reach more people with our blog posts and attract more high-quality traffic back to our blogs.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ll be trying these tips to promote your next post, or what you’re doing on LinkedIn that’s working for you.
Guest post by Sarah Santacroce
Most people don’t immediately think of LinkedIn when they want to get more exposure for their blog post. They think of Triberr, Twitter or Facebook which are all great options to increase reach. But LinkedIn has made so many changes recently and is striving to become one of the most respected business content sharing platforms. The word ‘business’ is quite important: indeed if you are writing a blog about Tamagotchi (those little Japanese toy ‘animals’) then LinkedIn probably won’t work for you. ;-)
Active LinkedIn users are in a business mind-set: they either want to be informed, educated or inspired. Research from Hubspot, an inbound marketing agency, also showed that LinkedIn gets the highest visitor-to-lead generation. This means that the chance that a visitor who clicks from LinkedIn to your website, has an almost 3x higher chance to convert into a lead compared to click-overs from Twitter or Facebook. Again this comes back to the mindset people are in when spending time on LinkedIn. They are in business mode, ready to take action. And let’s not forget that LinkedIn users have a higher average income …
So these are all very good reasons for you to want to increase your reach and get more exposure for your blog posts via LinkedIn. Let’s look at some of the ways to do that:
1) Share with your network via LinkedIn Share Button
I’m sure as regular readers of Michelle’s blog you all have some kind of social plugin installed on your blog. Well, the first thing to do when you publish a new post is to go ‘click-crazy’ on those buttons. In particular the LinkedIn Share button.
So the first thing you want to do is to share the post with your own LinkedIn network. And don’t forget to add a little description to let people know what the post is about.
2) Share Your Content On a Few Targeted Groups
Second of all share it with some of the groups that you’re a member of. Some groups have thousands of members, so I’m sure you see the potential here. There are a few rules to respect though:
- don’t post to too many groups at a time
- only post to groups where the content of your post is relevant
- don’t post and run; always check if people leave comments on your discussion and comment back
- ALWAYS fill out the ‘Subject’ and ‘Detail’ field: a question in the ‘Subject’ field works best because what you’re really doing is starting a discussion around the topic of your blog post
- remember that the group moderator’s goal is to keep people on his group, not promote your blog post
3) Schedule Some Additional Shares with Hootsuite
Once is not enough. You want go over to Hootsuite and schedule some additional shares for the next couple of days. In order to share on LinkedIn, you have to add it first. While you’re at it you can of course also schedule some tweets or Facebook messages.
4) Share on Your LinkedIn Company Page
If you have a LinkedIn Company Page (if you don’t, create one here) it’s a good habit to share your post also on your page. You could also do that in Hootsuite if you have added your page there. If you have a very big following, you can even target your updates (by geography, industry etc.). So depending on the topic of your post, you can only send it to certain people.
5) Send an Announcement on Your Own Group
Another powerful tool to get more exposure and be seen as a thought leader is to create your own group on LinkedIn. A LinkedIn Group comes with very handy marketing features such as the option to send out a weekly message (LinkedIn calls it an ‘announcement’) to all the members of your group. Now I’m not suggesting that you’re sending everyone a message each and every time you publish a new post, but every now and then, when you’ve produced a masterpiece, this is another way to get more people to read (and share) your posts.
6) Get Featured on LinkedIn Today
Finally, if you’re very ambitious, you can work towards getting your content featured on LinkedIn Today. This is the content that you see in the box on your homepage where LinkedIn recommends articles to its readers. BIG exposure!
Below is a screenshot of to LinkedIn’s Help Center with recommendations on how to be featured on LinkedIn Today. Give it a try ;-)
I guarantee you that if you apply the above strategies, your traffic referral from LinkedIn will go up, and in the long run so will your leads. But don’t take my word for it. Check and measure under Google Analytics/Traffic Sources/Sources/Referrals and there look for linkedin.com.
Now of course LinkedIn is just one piece of the puzzle. For other ways to give your posts more exposure I recommend you watch Michelle’s video How To Promote Your Blog Posts.
Now it’s your turn. Are you already using LinkedIn to give your posts more exposure? Are there other ways that I overlooked? Please share your experience with us!
Sarah Santacroce helps small business owners and individual entrepreneurs find their place in today’s online world: increase their online presence and brand awareness, understand the ins and outs of Social Media and how it can increase their leads and help them understand the complexity of Internet Marketing. She frequently speaks at virtual conferences & webinars about social media, small business & online presence. To read her latest blog posts go to http://www.simplicityadmins.ch/blog.
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Amazing Tips. Really. I want to share it in my groups.
Once again thanking you the sharing information.
you’re welcome, Ashish, glad you liked them ! And thanks for sharing ;-)
Thanks for sharing, Ashish. :)
Hi Sarah (and Michelle)
I’ve only just started with social media so haven’t got as far as LinkedIn yet but this will be an excellent resource when I get there!
Thank you :)
Yep, keep it handy and you’ll be ahead of the game when you’re ready to jump in over there, Tamsin.
You’re very welcome, Tamsin. Glad you found it useful ;-)
Thank you for sharing this wonderful advice today!
Admittedly, I haven’t taken advantage of the LinkedIn features you mentioned to promote my blog post. I’m going to test run your tips to see if there’s improvement in my reach. Thanks!
Wow thank you for these strategies. I am in search of companies to use my service. I have a LinkedIn account and blog posts are auto posted there. I didn’t even know I can do all these other things. So thank you so so much! Now I’m off to LinkedIn in search of companies. I just need 15 more businesses to meet my goal this month.
Thanks so much for this extremely useful information! Since my market demographic are business women, LinkedIn is a natural social media platform for me to use – and I have been, regularly, but in reading your post I see there is much more I can be doing to increase the likelihood that LinkedIn members will visit my site or read my blog and opt-in to my list. I’ve definitely seen that happen more often with LI than other social media platforms.
Great post!
thanks Evelyn. Indeed your target group is definitely present on LinkedIn. And you’re right, as proven by the Hubspot data, you will get higher visitor to lead generation. Apply and measure ;-) Thanks for the comment, much appreciate it !
glad it came in handy, Marilyn and Regina
LinkedIn is a great tool that I am yet to fully leverage but hope to do so in the coming months. Great post to whip me into action sooner.
one more thing to add to your to-do list ;-) Thanks for stopping by, Carlana !
Michelle,
This looks really awesomely helpful. I’ve never understood linked in but this helps!
LinkedIn can be a bit of a learning curve, so I found it helpful, too. ;)
yes, there’s more to LinkedIn than we think ;-) Glad you found it helpful !
Great tips for Linkedin, Sarah!
I learned a few I did not know about, like getting featured – I thought that was completely random based on the number of likes, shares, etc. :)
you’re welcome, Delia. Until not long ago I thought so too, then I came across this help topic ;-) Go for it !!
I’m with Dalia. I had no idea it was that straight forward for getting featured on LinkedIn today. I wonder what criteria they use to decide what gets featured once they are contacted. Thanks so much for sharing Sarah.
Isn’t that cool? I always learn awesome things when I host guest bloggers. :) Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Johnny.
Hi Johnny,
thanks for stopping by. Just for the record: I’ve never been featured on LinkedIn Today and don’t know what criteria they use to decide what gets featured. That would indeed be good to know. I still think it has a bit to do with the popularity of your content. So the more shares you already have, the more likely LinkedIn will also feature it… But hey, if they say that you can contact them, why not give it a shot, right ?!
What are your thoughts on sharing directly on LinkedIn vs linking in your twitter feed directly to your LinkedIn account?
Hi Jeff, good question. If it’s easier for you to share on Twitter, you can do that, however be very careful and selective. The LinkedIn crowd is not the same as the Twitter crowd, a large percentage doesn’t understand the Twitter language. So no @ and RT and #… Also make sure you only share business related info on LinkedIn. If you apply these rules and don’t just share the same content as you would on Twitter, this strategy works fine.
When I first joined Linkedin, I was very hesitant to share or post articles there. I was thinking, all these business people probably do not have time to care about the things I’ve shared. I was wrong.
This article has enlightened my mind and I’ve learned so much. Thank you for sharing these wonderful tips.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Jane. People do business with people, right? I’m glad you learned a few new tricks ;-)
Thanks for the gentle 2×4 to the head. When I was doing this consistently, I got loads of traffic from LinkedIn. For some reason, I kind of “forgot” about it and sure enough, hardly any traffic from LinkedIn. Not smart, because I found that the opt ins I received from LinkedIn were definitely quality subscribers that turned into clients. Excuse me while I go post to LinkedIn!
Thanks for sharing your experience, Daphne – I love seeing your updates on my LinkedIn news feed, so haven’t seen them in a while. Glad to hear that you’ll get back to it ;-)
Wow Sarah!
This one post alone is like a mini ‘how to” course in effective use of social media in marketing and linkedin, in particular. Great job! Thanks!