The reason why LinkedIn is a must for the growth of your business online is, according to the latest figures reported by Social Media Today on the 2nd November 2019, LinkedIn has currently over 610 million members. There are 27 million in the UK. Every day there are more than 100 million active users.
And yet the big problem you may be facing on LinkedIn is …that a lot of business people and marketers just think that all you need to do is make lots of connections on LInkedIn and then send out promotional sales messages to those connections.
This is really not the most effective LinkedIn strategy and if you want to achieve success with either your own personal LinkedIn site and / or an additional business LinkedIn site, then in both you short and long term LinkedIn marketing strategies need to be based on a sound ‘engagement strategy’ with the aim to build a strong marketing foundation on LinkedIn.
In other words, you need to build a relationship with people rather than just attempt to sell, sell, sell to them through LinkedIn.
That’s because LinkedIn is not like other social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. However, if you approach marketing through LinkedIn in the right way, then it is a potential goldmine for you.
Which means you have to increase your visibility as well as your trust and credibility with new potential clients by building a responsive network that will then in turn, be responsive back to you and your business product and service offers.
Why? Well, one big benefit of increasing your ‘engagement’ is that LinkedIn will reward you with more exposure. That’s because LinkedIn really want people to keep ‘talking’ and this means more than just “Liking” a post. The LinkedIn algorithm is programmed to look for engagement and therefore will show more of your content as a result.
So, let‘s take a separate look at some of the key engagement strategies that you can use to build good relationships that will help to grow your business…
- You Must Present a Professional Image: This is essential because it can make all the difference for you and your business on LinkedIn. This means posting regular professional updates about your business. And if you have images that reflect this then use them to enhance your posts. In addition, other business people connecting with you will be impressed that you have new contracts and won new business …so, tell them about it. By achieving this will mean that they will come to expect and look out for the consistency and commitment that you put into your posts.
- You Post High Quality Content: To achieve the high levels of engagement you want on LinkedIn, you need to differentiate your account so that you stand out among the crowd. That means posting your own unique content to demonstrate your authority, your credibility, and your expertise and this will help you to achieve more connections.
- Be Sure to ‘Like’ your Posts: You might think that this is a strange action to take or bit self-serving, but you should always like your own posts. The reason is, when you do this you will increase the engagement that the post gets. The same also goes for your status updates. And another step after that is to like your comments as this will ensure that your connections will be notified that you are doing this and is a good way to get them back to your post to re-engage with them again.
- You Always Engage with Comments: This may seem obvious, but when you receive comments you have then got to thank people for leaving them and ‘like’ their comment. You see, your strategy should be to do what you can to keep the conversation going with them… Like when you meet someone at a business event. So, reply to their comment and ask a question which will prompt another response from them, because they will receive a notification when more comments are left for them. This is a good way to drive even further engagement and the ultimate aim here is to encourage people to share your content with their own networks.
- You Harness the Power of LinkedIn Groups: The LinkedIn data shows that there are more than a million active groups on LinkedIn. And as a standard member you can join up to a hundred of these groups. When you join groups that are relevant to your market you can really drive your own engagement levels up because group members tend to be the most active on the LinkedIn platform.
In summary, it’s about creating business conversations by increasing the news on your LinkedIn site that’s worthy of being “business talk”. This in turn increases ‘engagement’ and builds strong relationships which are the very foundation of every business’ growth strategy. 
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