#140 Using LinkedIn content to grow your reach and build a community

Blog header #140 Using LinkedIn content to grow your reach and build a community  - Building a modern, magnetic employer brand podcast with Susanna Rantanen

LinkedIn doesn’t provide us with full value unless we use it for posting content.

Posting content can be anything from creating our own content to repurposing existing company content, resharing other people’s content or becoming active in commenting and engaging in other people’s posts.

Whether you are a recruiter, coach, solopreneur, growth business founder or work in employer branding, you need LinkedIn to build your growth.

In this week’s episode of the Building a Modern Employer Brand podcast, we talk about using LinkedIn content to grow your reach and build a community that helps you advance your business and career goals.

This episode is inspired by Mr Daniel Kading, a LinkedIn copywriter who helps SaaS founders build lead funnels on LinkedIn.

You’ll find him on LinkedIn, and I recommend following him to learn more about his content creation and copywriting tips!

Using LinkedIn content to grow your reach and build a community

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8 reasons to use LinkedIn content for business and personal growth

I want to start this episode by giving you eight reasons for using LinkedIn content for business and personal growth.

#1 LinkedIn is the best platform specifically for work-related content

Despite having turned somewhat Facebookish, LinkedIn remains the primary stop when you want to reach people and companies for business purposes. Whether looking for a new job, hiring people, selling, or just building your professional network, LinkedIn remains the go-to social media.

#2 Your company page on LinkedIn works like a social website giving you a destination to lead traffic within the platform

We know how negatively social media platforms treat organic posts with links driving traffic outside the platform. However, driving traffic to your LinkedIn company page is a great idea to build your company following, be it potential customers or potential job applicants!

#3 What about lead generation? LinkedIn is an excellent platform for generating talent acquisition and sales business leads

Regular content marketing is key in building trust and growing awareness of what value you can offer your target audiences. A social media scheduling tool helps you keep up with regular content publication.

#4 LinkedIn is also a great platform to establish thought leadership

Active content publication on your subject-matter expertise helps you become your niche audience’s go-to person.

#5 Did you know Google ranks LinkedIn profiles and pages more willingly than it ranks websites? 

That’s why you should link your company blog, website, or career site to your LinkedIn company page.

#6 LinkedIn provides us with a blogging tool called LinkedIn Pulse

This is nothing new, but many of us overlook the value of LinkedIn Pulse as a blogging tool for employer branding, for example.

Because driving traffic from your post outside LinkedIn – to your company blog – is not supported by the LinkedIn feed algorithm, consider taking advantage of LinkedIn Pulse from your business page.

Post employer branding blog content on your company’s LinkedIn page and drive traffic to it instead of your website.

#7 Research your customer and talent audiences on LinkedIn

Learn about your target audience by reviewing their pages, profiles and posts. Check out the relevant topics for your target talent audience and see what matches your content strategy.

#8 Source and engage with your target talent audiences

Search for talent profiles matching your hiring needs or sales needs.

Review what they post about and when they last posted or commented on LinkedIn. This indicates how frequently they use LinkedIn.

Make an effort to engage with their posts and reshare posts that make sense to your followers. Start following or invite to connect and introduce yourself. But instead of pushing something you need in your intro posts, such as “I’m connecting with you to sell or hire”, connect to engage and grow your professional network. That is much more welcoming.

How to use content on LinkedIn to build your growth

LinkedIn doesn’t provide us with total value unless we use it for posting content.

Posting content can be anything from creating our own content to repurposing existing company content, resharing other people’s content or becoming active in commenting and engaging in other people’s posts.

Whether you are a recruiter, coach, solopreneur, growth business founder or work in employer branding, you need LinkedIn to build your growth.

You can use your personal profile or create a page for your business. I recommend using your personal profile.

In a recent Social Media Marketing World -presentation, Daniel Kading shared the following tips on how to use LinkedIn content for meaningful business growth. These same tips apply very much to your professional growth.

Copywriting 101 for your LinkedIn post

  • The ideal length for your LinkedIn post is between 700 and 1300 characters. This keeps the reader on your post long enough for the algorithm to take note that something is interesting in your post.
  • This character count makes an ideal post 5-8 paragraphs long.
  • And you should not write more than two lines of text at a time before a line break.

Carousel posts are visually stimulating on LinkedIn too 

We are familiar with carousel posts on Instagram, aren’t we?

Did you know the same visual stimulation effect works on LinkedIn too? They perform well because people will click through them if they are catchy and easy to consume.

You can repurpose some of your written posts or blog content into a colourful carousel post. Canva is a great tool for creating visually appealing social media posts.

Using selfies in your posts build trust and win attention!

I know many people are opposed to selfies, yet most people stop at someone’s selfie and take a minute to look at it. And the algorithm goes woohoo! Something interesting here because this user stopped scrolling!

Selfies are great because they are You, the author of the post. 

  • They help show who wrote this post. Your profile picture is such a tiny thumbnail, especially on mobile devices, that it doesn’t make anywhere near a similar impact.
  • We also know posts with an image tend to perform much better than posts without any image. And when you post, it’s very easy to snap that selfie and add it as an image for the post.
  • Selfies are very humane. They are real, and people love humane and authentic on social media when so much of the content is pretend-make-belief.
  • When we show our faces, we build trust, which all social encounters benefit from!

LinkedIn Polls

Do you use polls in your LinkedIn content marketing?

I’ve noticed a growth in posts with polls, albeit it was much higher some time ago.

Well, polls continue to be great content to boost your LinkedIn growth as they engage people in three ways:

  1. Sharing their opinion, choice or a view. You get insight from your audience that you can repurpose for other content.
  2. Getting the conversation started about the topic as people engage in the comments.
  3. Get the algorithm to support your organic reach as it detects a post that LinkedIn users like.

According to Daniel Kading, the key here is to give only two options: I agree or I don’t agree.

Nothing else. Because then people are more inclined to comment on the options as giving a harsh yes or no is against our human nature.

We like to compromise, and your duality option prevents vanilla responses!

LinkedIn video content

Needless to say, video content rocks on LinkedIn too. But, based on my experience, go for short-form videos instead of long-form. 

If you create short-form videos, such as Reels, YouTube Shorts or TikTok’s, simply repurpose those for LinkedIn. But again, I have to remind you not to share a link but to download your video and post it natively on LinkedIn.

And remember subtitles!

People are more likely to watch your video when they can read what you say.

I record a lot of my video content with a Teleprompter app.

There are plenty of teleprompter apps available. The one I use takes your “teleprompted” words and creates subtitles on the video of them! This makes the very handy! 

Check out these blog posts with teleprompter recommendations for you:

5 free teleprompter apps to read scripts while shooting videos or hosting webinars

13 best teleprompter apps for 2023

Engaging with others supercharges your LinkedIn growth

By now, all social media users do know about posting content. 

But how active are you with commenting and engaging with other users’ posts on LinkedIn?

Because if you truly want to turbocharge your LinkedIn growth, this is a must for a few key reasons I will tell you next.

First, LinkedIn is a social media where social engagement is the greatest driver of your reach, like in all social media platforms. Most benefit comes from spending a little time talking with people instead of just shoving a post and leaving. Or better yet, not even going to LinkedIn because you schedule your content on a third-party tool! 

As Daniel Kading says: “Community creates business opportunities.”

Your LinkedIn community are people whom you follow, who follow you or your business and unconnected users whom you engage with in your posts or other people’s posts.

Business opportunities can come in the forms of:

  • partnerships for solopreneurs and founders.
  • direct sales
  • inbound requests for an offer
  • sales and recruitment leads
  • your new employees
  • higher reach and more organic visibility on the platform
  • new contacts and followers
  • support network

How to engage on LinkedIn for growth?

The simple answer is to comment on other people’s posts.

Respond when others comment on your posts.

Reshare other people’s posts with your two cents, as in a comment and thank and comment when others reshare your posts.

When you comment and connect with people, the algorithm detects this and boosts the visibility of your post. The more active the commenting is, the more visibility your post gets. You understand this is FREE, as in, you don’t have to pay for the visibility? 

Simply create a habit of commenting and engaging on the posts.

Or pay to boost and promote your posts.

Commenting and engaging on posts is a key growth tool on LinkedIn.

And any other social media, too, for that matter. 

The Power Hour after posting on LinkedIn

One more thing I want to share with you today.

Daniel Kading introduced this term in his Social Media Marketing World -presentation: The Power Hour.

Albeit knowing of this important hour right after you post, I’ve never heard this term be used about it. And I like it because it sticks into your mind and tells you the essential about this critical hour after posting!

Unless people start engaging with your post within the first hour after you post, the LinkedIn algorithm tanks the post.

Daniel Kading, LinkedIn Copywriter

Unless people start engaging with your post within the first hour after you post, the LinkedIn algorithm tanks the post.

You should also comment back within the same hour to leverage this hour when the algorithm wants badly to help you succeed with your post.

That’s why you want to post during the peak times your audience is active on LinkedIn and react to notifications on your own posts.

You can also tag people in your post if they want to comment it.

Ask a question and ask for their opinion on it. Make it easy for them to respond.

How about that!

Are you excited to grow your LinkedIn reach and try some of these tips?

Ok, that’s all for this week, my friends! 

My name is Susanna Rantanen, and I teach branding, marketing and communications for the HR Industry professionals who want to build a successful career and get the life you deserve!

I’m looking for new coaching clients, and if you are looking for a coach to help you to build your personal brand as a talent acquisition or employer branding professional or as a coach in the HR industry, contact me to set up a free discovery call to see if I might be the perfect coach for you!

Check out this 12-week coaching program to revamp your in-house recruitment process to accelerate employer branding.

Drop me an email at susanna@emine.fi for inquiries!

Thanks for listening! Until next time!

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