Now that the Spring flowers are blooming and weather is warming up it’s only fitting that you extend your cleanup efforts into the social sphere. Time to stop neglecting your LinkedIn profile, think strategically and optimize your professional identity on the “World’s Largest Professional Network.” This way, both you and your employer can receive a fruitful return on social investment. Whether you’ve received every LinkedIn endorsement imaginable or have chosen to flood your profile with all kinds of keyword lingo, it’s time to declutter. Here are 5 simple ways to help you get started:
1. Keep Score of your Content Marketing
Sick of creating useless posts that flood your LinkedIn page? Can’t seem to write content to encourage reader engagement? Worry no more – LinkedIn recently created a content marketing scoring tool that measures user influence. Taking into consideration profile sponsored updates, company pages, personal groups, employee updates and influence posts, LinkedIn’s content marketing score provides users with tips on how to improve their content marketing strategies. Based on a scale ranging from 1–1000, LinkedIn provides users with a private grade, which reflects the impact of your paid and organic content. With LinkedIn providing you recommendations on ways to improve your score, it’s time you start sprucing up that profile and reach your unique masses.
2. Take Advantage of the New LinkedIn Publishing Machine
Similar to that of Google’s Authorship functionality, LinkedIn’s new publishing capabilities provide experienced bloggers with yet another channel to share their great content. LinkedIn has slowly rolled out its publishing feature to all 300 million members, providing them with a powerful way to build their professional brand. If you choose to publish a post on LinkedIn, your content is shared within your trusted network, providing users the ability to reach the largest group of professionals imaginable. What started as an “influencer program” when celebrities like Martha Stewart and Bill Gates posted thought leadership articles, has now resonated into a vehicle of communication allowing everyday users to receive tens of thousands of views and hundreds of likes based on their content. So, what are you waiting for? Get writing and start sharing your content, your 300 million person audience is waiting!
3. Produce Original Content and Watch it Trend
Out of all social platforms, here at Spotlight, we predict that LinkedIn will be the hub of sharable content, making it more important than ever for companies to produce their own original and thought-provoking blog posts, savvy and concise whitepapers, ebooks, and Infographics. Similar to Twitter, LinkedIn now delivers users an opportunity to reach their target audiences while using LinkedIn’s personalized algorithm, in which the platform evaluates user ‘trends’ and categorizes pieces of user generated content into 17,000 topics. The outcome? A list of trending topics that your followers will want to click on and share with their own audience.
4. Use “Whose Viewed your Updates” to Create Maximum Visibility
If you’re not already creating conversational buzz each and every day on LinkedIn, now is the time for you to go ahead and get started. Based on its recent “Who’s Viewed Your Updates” functionality, LinkedIn users can see the number of views, shares and comments their posts receive, as well as how far those interactions were shared beyond their first-degree connections. Use this feedback to help you to become more narrowly focused when you post your updates. This will help you determine what type of information you should share with your audience, as well as the frequency of your posts. In sum, this helpful data will assist your company in creating the most effective LinkedIn status updates.
5. Find A New Way To Showcase Your Company’s Offerings
If you’re busy uploading your company’s specialties onto your LinkedIn “Products and Services” page, stop what you’re doing right now! As of April 14, 2014, these pages have been removed. In lieu of their removal, LinkedIn has launched its “Showcase” pages,” where companies can show off their brands and products. Businesses now have the ability to create unique pages for each product offering, while users will be able to follow products they’re most interested in. LinkedIn’s “Showcase” pages make it easy for companies to build organic communities of brand evangelists who will start conversations around their products and brands.
So there you have it – the top Spring-cleaning trends to help you dust off your outdated LinkedIn profile and start creating content strategies that convert into company sales.
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