Say what?
Yes, LinkedIn is having a moment, and it’s not just for job seekers or B2B folks anymore. I always tell my students to look for usage data trends that might give them a leg up… and LinkedIn is showing a lot of promise.
First, it’s growing at an alarmingly fast pace. Between 2017 and 2020, its users have increased by 300 million. What’s more, its revenue had a 19% year-on-year increase in 2020 alone. This is on pace with apps like Instagram, but since it’s a niche app, we don’t hear about it as much.
These topline numbers signal that LinkedIn is an app to watch, but is it an app to use? In other words, will your business benefit by posting on the app regularly or even running ads? Yes, and eventually.
Out of its 690 million users, only 21.7 million (or 3%) post once a week or more. With algorithm advantages for people who post more frequently (and a natural advantage to being among 3 in 100), posting a time or two a week on LinkedIn doesn’t seem like a bad strategy.
Additionally, LinkedIn has a younger audience. According to HootSuite, 59.9 percent of LinkedIn users are 25-34, 20.3 percent of users are 18-24, 16.9 percent of users are 35-54, and 3% are over 55. If you’d like to reach a younger audience but your business doesn’t have the personality for SnapChat or TikTok, LinkedIn might be your new best social media friend.
Here’s how to use LinkedIn on a more regular basis:
Take a look at your current social media calendar. Regular readers of this blog likely already have a spiffy one. If not, refer to this post to get advice on how to create one. Is there a post or two a week that is more formal in nature that you can repeat on LinkedIn? Can you prune an eblast? If so, start there.
LinkedIn is a great forum for professional discussion. In fact, the main two reasons people go on LinkedIn are to apply for jobs and network professionally, so invite people into your conversation. Asking questions in your posts is a great way to do this. Just don’t forget to respond to your comments!
I’m also a fan of LinkedIn articles. Why? Again, the power of the few. Only 2% of LinkedIn users have ever posted one… and there’s no barrier to entry. What type of educational content related to your industry can you post for a huge credibility boost?
Finally, as with other social platforms, you can look at your LinkedIn insights and see which posts performed the best. I like to take a holistic look at how my audience is responding to my posts in three-month increments and deduce what type of content works best because that is a great starting place for ads. If you already know what works best content-wise, you’re three-quarters of the way done with your first ad… the rest is just learning the ad platform. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves… while LinkedIn is a great discovery tool for organic use, I am still waiting for the numbers to convince me to run ads with it. Time will tell…
Now it’s your turn… give it a try. Post one to two organic posts on LinkedIn each week and start thinking about what content you can turn into an article. Set a calendar reminder to evaluate posts data after three months so that you know what your audience likes best as you add paid traffic to the mix.
