Each social media platform is unique and serves its own purpose. One of the strengths of LinkedIn is that it allows people to interact with groups that are similar to their own. LinkedIn immediately seeks to define you as a professional from job, to skills, to experience, to aspirations. This makes it easier for your page (both company and personal) to have meaningful connections (followers, for a company). Without relationships, followers are just an empty number on your analytics. With relationships, they can be clients, brand advocates, and business partners.

You Have To Give Something to Get Something

The reason people follow you on LinkedIn (other than for networking opportunities) is to receive your updates in their feed. The challenge is to bridge the gap between what they are looking for and what you have to offer. You can’t simply push sales promotions. Give something to these potential clients such as information, tip, insights, resources, etc., to get something like interaction, feedback, and new business connections. These small informational transactions open the door to bigger and better relationships.

Serve Bite Sized Content

While a peer-reviewed, academic article might seem impressive, it’s probably not what you are looking for while you stand in line at the coffee shop or quickly scroll through your newsfeed at work. Your followers are the same. Make your content bite sized. Don’t serve entrees, serve appetizers. Quick, light, and easily digestible. Disseminate information in interesting, educational, and memorable ways.

Create Powerful Content

The use of interesting and eye catching media is huge to your LinkedIn success. According to LinkedIn’s own research, there are certain best practices which will increase interaction on your page:

• Include a call to action: make your updates linkable
• Include media: an eye catching image or video goes a long way
• Video links: LinkedIn reports YouTube videos are shared 75% more than other updates
• Plan, but be agile: a posting plan is wise, but react timely to relevant events
• Analyze and fine tune: always analyze your progress and refine your strategy as needed

Powerful content will have your followers coming back for more.

Interact With Followers

Interaction with followers creates a friendly and less stuffy attitude toward your followers. Interaction is the most basic element of relationship building. Here are three ways to interact:

• Always reply to comments or messages.
• Ask interesting questions to stimulate conversation
• Show your company’s personal side (a picture from an office party or event)

Explore LinkedIn

There are many facets of LinkedIn that are underutilized. Here are a few practices which might benefit you:

Showcase Pages: For instance you can create multiple showcase pages for your company, to “showcase” individual brands or aspects of your company. This is extremely useful for large companies like Microsoft or Cisco, but it may also be helpful for smaller companies who are surprisingly diverse.

Sponsored Updates: Sponsored updates is a great way to get your message in front of the eyes of relevant consumers. You can define audiences and choose posting times. However, this is an expensive way to advertise, so explore all of your options.

Leveraging Your Employees: Your employees’ connections are potential LinkedIn followers. Have your employees list you as their employer. They can interact with your page, share posts, and invite connections to follow your page.

At Vision Advertising, we know the importance of building a strong relationships with followers on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and fans on Facebook. If you are looking to increase your social media marketing efforts contact us before you start. We offer a full marketing services including videography, photography, website construction, public relations, and social media, to name a few. Our expert team would love to talk to you.