Over 800 million people use LinkedIn. If you’re not leveraging the platform to widen your reach and the scope of your marketing efforts, you may be missing out.
We wrote this guide to provide everything you need to know about LinkedIn marketing, from the basics like how to optimize your business profile to advanced strategies like how Vimeo leverages video marketing on LinkedIn.
What is LinkedIn marketing?
LinkedIn marketing is a strategy allowing marketers to grow and engage and audience on Linkedin. Growing your audience on LinkedIn includes creating content (like video!) that builds credibility with your target audience, invites them to learn more about your business, and encourages them to interact with your content.
Brands can employ LinkedIn Ads, which are similar to Google AdWords or Facebook Ads, to build targeted campaigns for professional audiences that can contribute to a marketing funnel. With Linkedin Ads, you can choose your target audience based on location, job title, and other factors. We’ll dive into that shortly.
Marketers can also pursue virality and organic growth to build up their LinkedIn presence. Brands can grow and nurture their audience organically by creating content that engages and inspires their audiences.
The more value you provide through your LinkedIn content, the more likely your audience will follow your updates, engage and interact with posts, and the more they’ll see your posts.
77% of content marketers say LinkedIn produces the best organic results.
Bridget Keaveney, Social Media Coordinator at Vimeo, seeings the impact of organic LinkedIn marketing firsthand. “On LinkedIn, we want our posts to always add value to our followers’ feeds,” she says. “They’re choosing to follow us, so we focus on offering them content they’ll find inspiring, useful, (and, ideally, a combination.).”
“Our LinkedIn posts often consist of helpful video marketing tutorials, introductions to new Vimeo hires, behind-the-scenes clips, and more.”
3 tips to improve your Linkedin marketing strategy
Curious how to jumpstart your organic growth strategy on Linkedin? Here are a few best practices Keaveney shared regarding best practices for Vimeo’s organic LinkedIn digital marketing strategy:
Show don’t tell
“When promoting products, the creative asset matters,” she says. The Vimeo team finds that short, snappy, captivating videos work best to show, not tell the value and/or function of a new product.
Focus on your speakers
For events, promotional posts centered around the featured event speakers perform best— particularly, assets including their headshots. “We’ve also started leveraging LinkedIn events to build event anticipation,” Keaveney says. You can feature the event speakers within the event, invite your network, start conversations, and easily share the event natively.
Give the insider’s view
Overall on LinkedIn, the Vimeo audience wants to see and feel what it’s like to work at Vimeo.
“Our audience loves company culture- and employee-centric content, so we give it to them!” Keaveney says.
5 reasons a LinkedIn marketing strategy can impact your business
1. LinkedIn helps you build credibility
More people turn to LinkedIn for reliable content — including content from brands and businesses. This increases the impact of your LinkedIn digital marketing efforts, whether organic or paid.
A report from The Business Insider found that just 2% of LinkedIn users are likely to post deceptive content, compared to 42% on other top social platforms. According to the report, “…because it is primarily a utility for professional networking, recruiting, and brand building, LinkedIn’s own user community could be more motivated to keep it clean than other social platforms.”
The same BI report ranked LinkedIn as the most trusted social media network.
Despite the prevalence of broetry and other self-aggrandizing posts on LinkedIn, it’s still one of the most credible platforms to connect with professionals and potential customers while building credibility as an expert in your field.
This not only applies to your business’s profile, but also to those of your leadership team. When employees at your company are active on LinkedIn, sharing their thoughts and expertise, it contributes to the credibility of your entire organization.
2. LinkedIn’s targeting options are incredibly detailed
One component of your LinkedIn marketing strategy may be paid advertising. If so, you’ll be happy to hear that LinkedIn offers detailed targeting options to power your paid ads. You can target users by factors such as location and language; job function, titles, and seniority; years of experience; company name, size, and industry; and education, degree level, and fields of study.
Paid advertising on social media has become increasingly expensive. For that reason, you want to ensure that the right people are seeing the content that you sponsor. Detailed targeting options also allow you to diversify the audiences that see your ads so you can A/B test what segment might respond best.
Suppose you’re selling training courses on LinkedIn. You could target people who work at companies in your industry or companies with similar positions as yours. If your courses sell for a premium price, you could also target managers or team leaders at larger companies who may have a bigger training budget:
3. LinkedIn helps increase brand awareness
The more people who know about your company, the better. Increase brand awareness through your LinkedIn digital marketing by sharing posts that highlight new products and services or feature a peek behind-the-scenes.
Your company’s LinkedIn page can help you gain visibility and build a brand identity. Encourage employees to interact with your content, and join in on conversations with other brands and thought leaders by commenting on or sharing their posts, too.
With LinkedIn, you can also track metrics like engagement and reach to better understand what content resonates with your audience and what encourages additional engagement, such as visiting your website or signing up for your email newsletter.
4. LinkedIn is a referral goldmine
LinkedIn is an excellent platform for referrals. Here are a few ways you can use LinkedIn to generate referrals for your business:
- Find contacts who work at your target companies
- Identify which employees are most likely to refer business based on their job title, location and connections on the platform
- Build relationships with these people through LinkedIn’s InMail feature
This is a more “guerilla” approach to your LinkedIn hacks, but pretty effective nonetheless. And as you expand your LinkedIn network, you’ll also build brand awareness and attract talented employees, too.
5. LinkedIn has the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate of any significant social media platform
According to a study of over 5,000 businesses, traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74% — almost three times higher (277%) than both Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%).
5 LinkedIn marketing best practices
1. Use eye-catching videos
Video marketing communicates your message quickly and effectively on noisy social media. 86% of video marketers consider videos most effective for generating leads.
In one year, LinkedIn video posts generated over 300 million impressions on the platform.
We’re living in an age where people are bombarded with information at every turn, and video gives your brand the chance to stand out. The best LinkedIn videos are short, sweet, and to the point.
Here are some types of videos to consider posting:
- Company overviews. Introduce your company to potential clients and customers. These videos are also useful when trying to raise funds or secure funding from investors
- Product demonstrations. If you have a new product or service in the market, a video showing how it works can help sell it better than any other medium
- Educational videos about industry-specific topics. These videos help build authority and credibility among your audience and showcase your expertise
- How-to videos. Teach someone a valuable skill without requiring them to read a long guide or consult with an expert over the phone or email
- Live streaming. Use LinkedIn Live to host webinars or live events on your company’s page, engage your audience, and boost awareness of your brand
- Customer testimonials. Testimonials from happy customers can go a long way toward convincing potential clients that your products or services are worth using, too
You can also showcase the results of your work, whether that’s growth data, a before-and-after photo or a peek into a customer’s work with you. For example, the Vimeo LinkedIn page recently featured a new video created by the Wix team.
Wix Playground made this video to launch their new typeface called “madefor.” The team wanted to present the new font in “a way that celebrates means of communication and the relation between words, ideas, and symbols.”
Here are some tips for incorporating video into your LinkedIn marketing:
- Keep it simple. Don’t use overwhelming graphics or text in your video that may distract viewers from what you’re trying to communicate
- Create a thumbnail that looks good on desktop and mobile devices. Featuring a thumbnail that resonates on both desktop and mobile devices will help increase engagement with your content
💡 Pro Tip: Use the “Publish to Social” feature on your Vimeo account to publish videos created with Vimeo directly to your LinkedIn company page.
2. Join groups with your target audience
LinkedIn groups are highly underrated. When you join groups that have a common interest with your target audience, you gain access to their attention and a front-row seat to their discussions, interests, and pain points.
Start by searching for groups on LinkedIn using keywords that reflect what your audience cares about or what you sell. You can also search by industry or interest group.
Once you find a group you like, request membership. After joining the group, slowly and naturally engage with others’ posts by commenting and asking questions. This will help build trust among the group and increase the likelihood of people engaging with your content when you start posting.
Be cautious of posting overly promotional or product-related content. Lead with the intention to provide value to each group—not gain traffic to your LinkedIn page or conversions on your website.
3. Use LinkedIn Publisher to boost your brand awareness
The LinkedIn Publisher feature allows you to create and publish your own blog content on LinkedIn’s platform. This allows you to distribute your content and expand your reach to new eyeballs, as well as continue to establish your credibility and expertise among your LinkedIn peers.
Publishing your content on LinkedIn is also a valuable way to drive traffic back to your website and even convert readers right off the platform. In every article you publish, include a call-to-action at the end. This CTA could be your website, email, or a calendar link for folks to book time with you.
Lastly, LinkedIn Publisher is valuable for more than just blog content, too. Use the syndication opportunity to amplify case studies and testimonials from real customers, and encourage readers on LinkedIn to engage with questions and comments below each post.
4. Use social proof to boost conversions
The noisier the internet becomes, the more powerful social proof is for marketers and businesses. An A/B test run by WikiJob found that social proof leads to a 34% increase in conversions.
As we established above, LinkedIn is the most trustworthy social network. For that reason, social proof resonates much louder on the platform.
Here are some ways to add social proof to your LinkedIn marketing strategy:
Add recommendations from past clients and colleagues. If you have any recommendations on your profile, this will help build credibility for you and your business.
Add certifications. Certifications show that you have knowledge and experience in areas relevant to your business and show how you can help customers and clients, too.
Include testimonials from happy clients or customers. While you can’t add reviews to your LinkedIn company page like you can personal profiles, you can share testimonials and reviews as posts on your page. Consider adding images or videos to complement your content and increase engagement.
5. Participate regularly in discussions
The more active you are on LinkedIn, the more visible you’ll become as an influencer in your field. Participate in conversations by commenting on posts and sharing content from other members’ posts and pages (with their permission).
If you’re operating your company’s LinkedIn page, encourage employees to engage with the content you post. Alternatively, share and amplify posts shared by employees, too.
Finally, don’t forget to engage with other folks who comment on your posts, if not to remind them that there are people behind your brand, too.
3 LinkedIn marketing hacks from Vimeo’s social media team
Vimeo has also developed a significant following on LinkedIn — almost 105,000 people follow the page. We followed up Vimeo’s social media team to learn some of their best practices for using LinkedIn to reach new audiences and how they spice up their LinkedIn digital marketing.
1. Create posts valuable to your audience
If your target audience isn’t reading your posts or clicking on your links, they’re probably not going to buy from you either.
Rob Alderson, Director of the Vimeo Content Studio, agreed. “As a brand that’s looking to build relationships with marketers, we’ve found LinkedIn really powerful because we know that’s where a lot of marketing professionals spend time. We’ve seen some really encouraging early success with our LinkedIn newsletter Outside the Frame, which provides ideas, inspiration, and insights to help marketers think differently.”
“By going to the space where our target audience is, creating content that adds value to this community (not content masquerading as a sales pitch), and using the tools the platform itself provides and encourages as a best-in-class experience, we think we’ve hit on a really interesting new marketing channel,” shared Rob.
1 out of 5 investors consider LinkedIn as their go-to platform when they want to learn about a topic. Your audience is already craving valuable information — your job is to create that valuable information and get it in front of the right people.
Here are a few ways to do so:
- Write a post based on user feedback. Ask your customers what they think about a certain product or service. This will help you improve the quality of your product or service while also providing valuable information to future customers
- Mix up your personal pronouns. When writing about yourself or your company, try using personal pronouns like “we” or “us” instead of “I” or “me” to sound more engaging and inclusive
- Be relevant and timely. People expect to see posts about trending topics on LinkedIn. To be trusted by potential customers and industry experts, ensure your content is relevant, timely, and speaks to current events
- Choose an appropriate image for your post. The image that accompanies your post can help draw attention, especially if it’s compelling and relevant to your content
2. Create an event and tag speakers
The LinkedIn feature ‘Events’ allows users to create events and invite others to attend. These events can range from conferences and seminars to webinars or meetups.
Once you create an event, tag speakers and sponsors so they can share the event with their own audiences.
This also gives people more information about the speakers and helps them decide whether or not they would like to attend. The speakers’ followers may also see this post when viewing their feed and will be able to join in on the conversation as well.
Suze Kaufman, Manager of Social and Content Distribution at Vimeo, shared that LinkedIn and LinkedIn events are powerful tools for Vimeo when connecting with their audience: “We’ve harnessed the power of LinkedIn events to spread awareness of our virtual events (we love the ability to add speakers to the event page and tag them in it so they can share the event with their connections), and we’ve discovered the power of tools like the poll feature to engage with our followers around relevant topics.”
3. Prioritize native videos in your feed
LinkedIn makes it easy to upload and share videos to the platform, but the key is to post native videos. Native videos are videos you can create and post directly on LinkedIn, and these perform well because they look best on users’ newsfeeds and play automatically.
Vimeo’s Suze Kaufman also believes that native video is a “huge part of Vimeo’s LinkedIn strategy.” She suggested, “Since LinkedIn prioritizes native video in the feed, we’ve found the video to be the most impactful way to launch new products or promote upcoming events. Keeping our followers interested with new and interactive content formats is key to our success on LinkedIn!”
How Minjae Ormes (VP, Global Brand & Consumer Marketing at LinkedIn) sees LinkedIn Marketing in her first 90 days
As Minjae Ormes began her onboarding process — the initial 90 days of getting to know the business — she saw that people were trying to reconcile their personal and private identities on LinkedIn.
She also maintains that professionals from all walks of life are telling them that it feels good to be seen, heard, and acknowledged.
Creators are championing their stories, their experiences, and findings ways to strengthen the emotional connections they form with their products. Data shows that creators are building connections with new people—especially those who are starting out in their journey and those who are considering and making pivots in their industries.
Discover more ways to power your marketing strategy with video
