My 15 Minutes of Fame: Dramatically Increase Social Lead Generation with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the biggest professional network in the world with over 200 million users, and LinkedIn continues to expand rapidly with 120 new users joining each minute. The social network is a great digital destination for building and strengthening connections, staying in the know about industry news and trends, promoting your content, establishing a following and magnifying reach and brand recognition. Without doubt, LinkedIn is the best social medium for B2B companies. The social network has a visitor-to-lead conversion rate of 2.74%—outranking Facebook and Twitter by nearly threefold.

While LinkedIn’s conversion rate is highly tempting, you should stop yourself from engaging in hard selling or push marketing tactics on LinkedIn. It is a social network after all, so add value as an informational resource; post links to highly shareable content with relevant, high-impact and information-rich solutions and deep industry insight. LinkedIn offers a prime opportunity to boost engagement, promote your company, attain status as an industry thought leader, and dramatically increase lead generation and conversion.

5 Ways to Boost LinkedIn Lead Generation

1. Be Strategic About When You Post Your Status Updates

You should post status updates at the times of day, when you get the most impressions on LinkedIn. Generally, companies get more engagement in the morning. However, mobile use, which is rising, spikes in the evening on LinkedIn. Experiment with different times of day to uncover which ones are optimal to reach your target audience. Analyze your LinkedIn engagement metrics, including impressions, clicks and social shares, to determine which types of posts trigger the most website traffic and lead generation. Closely monitor which content incites the greatest number of social shares, since high rates of social content curation translate into increased visibility in LinkedIn streams, amplified reach, and increased lead generation and conversion.

2. Add Customized Banners

Adding banners is free of charge, and each banner can link back to your company website. You are authorized to add up to three linkable banners to the Products & Services section of your company page, which is great for funneling LinkedIn traffic to your blog, premium content, webinars or landing pages. Many companies on LinkedIn do not take advantage of this valuable feature, so give your company an edge. When prospects visit your Products & Services section, offer them a quick and simple way to contact your company by linking your website, your blog or a strategic landing page to your banners.

3. Deliver Custom-Tailored Content and CTAs

LinkedIn company pages can offer specific content based on the profile of the visiting LinkedIn member. This optimization allows you to use the most appealing language according to industry, geographic location, job function and company size—to name just a few. Tailoring content for specific LinkedIn members helps you drive them to highly relevant landing pages and offers, and the set-up is streamlined and user-friendly.

4. Win with the LinkedIn Lead Collection Widget

The LinkedIn Lead Collection widget is a great resource for testing an ad campaign budget. Add the widget to your company page. A little box will sit at the top of your page—allowing prospects to submit their email address to you with just one easy click. The widget can help you generate more leads at a faster rate; it is especially effective with mobile users, who are likely to opt out, when asked to type all their information into a standard landing page.

5. Send Personalized Messages to Your Prospects

LinkedIn Sponsored InMail is an outstanding marketing tool. With InMail, Linked identifies exactly who you should contact to advance your business. Just create your message, add your URLs, and then let LinkedIn take care of the rest. Consider these messages highly targeted sales pitches. While it is not free, InMail is well worth the cost for its ability to reach the right prospects, generate new leads and send highly targeted traffic to your website. An InMail campaign may be just what your company needs to optimize LinkedIn lead generation.

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