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Are you looking for new ways to make LinkedIn work for your business?
Wondering what other businesses are doing with LinkedIn?
In this article, you'll discover how four different companies sustain a successful LinkedIn presence and find tips for building a presence to engage your own audience.
#1: Focus on Employee Experiences and Job Opportunities
With more than 900,000 LinkedIn followers, Disney is one of the top brands on the platform. So how does an entertainment company that's more suited for networks like Facebook and Instagram attract such a large LinkedIn audience? They share content that only LinkedIn users enjoy.
If you visit Disney's LinkedIn page, you'll find that the content they share is mostly about their employees and the business side of Disney. For example, in the article shared below, the housekeeping director of the Grand Floridian explains how she and her team provide first-class service to guests.
In addition to interesting employee activities, Disney posts about the latest jobs available and shares tips and quotes from employees, such as this one from a technology solutions manager.
Promoting employees is effective because according to LinkedIn, employees are 70% more likely to engage with your updates than non-employees. If you publicly display how proud and happy you are that your employees work for you, they'll return the favor with likes, shares, and comments that increase your visibility on LinkedIn. Even when Disney advertises job vacancies, they praise employees.
To maintain a business focus on LinkedIn, Disney shares details about business or product performance. For instance, this update includes a link to an article on how well Disney movies performed at the box office. This way, they only share content that covers the business side of things.
Disney knows that creating a social media marketing strategy for each social media platform is important. The content on Disney's main Facebook page or Instagram account is very different from the LinkedIn content. On Facebook and Instagram, the company directly promotes Disney movies and other entertaining content because their target audience on those platforms is very different from LinkedIn.
#2: Share Product-Centric Content
For several years, IBM has grown an engaged LinkedIn following. In 2012, they had 1.8 million interactions on LinkedIn with 779,000 followers. Now IBM has more than 3.2 million followers.
IBM has grown quickly by sharing compelling content about topics relevant to products, including cutting-edge subjects like artificial intelligence (AI). IBM shares content like this post from the IBM Cognitive Business blog on Medium. The article shares IBM CEO Ginny Rometty's thoughts about AI in the workforce and guiding principles that can help developers overcome fears.
When IBM posts about topics important to the business, they also share content from a variety of sources. For example, other posts on the topic of cognitive computing include a guest article that Senior Vice President for IBM's Watson and Cloud Platform David Kenny wrote for VentureBeat. Kenny reiterates Rometty's thoughts about guidelines and highlights how IBM benefits oncologists.
Because an important IBM product uses cognitive computing, these LinkedIn posts not only help IBM share their leaders' thinking about AI, but also attract a relevant audience that engages with their posts and buys their products.
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CLICK HERE TO LEARN MOREWhen IBM posts content on LinkedIn, the posts are designed to maximize engagement. IBM often creates image posts with a separate link and makes sure a relevant image accompanies the link. According to data LinkedIn has shared, images have a 98% higher comment rate and links can double engagement.
To make sure your image is effective, upload a catchy, relevant image file when you post a link instead of relying on a thumbnail from the website to automatically load.
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If you want positive results like IBM's, start by creating and sharing a lot of relevant content that demonstrates your expertise and that your target audience will like. When you share content created by others, use the @ symbol to tag the creator. LinkedIn allows you to tag both profiles and pages, and doing so will help your page build a stronger network.
#3: Highlight Customer Satisfaction
With more than 420,000 followers, UPS is another popular brand on LinkedIn. The UPS content stands out by focusing on formats and topics that perform well on the LinkedIn platform. For instance, UPS shares a lot of videos like this one of surprising children with tiny trucks. LinkedIn says that videos can increase share rate by 75%.
UPS creates many of these videos themselves. By doing so, UPS benefits from engagement on its other relevant social media accounts. To illustrate, the tiny truck video is getting video views and shares on YouTube, as well as LinkedIn.
When UPS posts links instead of videos, they often add a photo with some text, such as this interesting statistic about warehousing and distribution (topics important to their business). The attractive designs and professional photos stand out well in the LinkedIn news feed.
UPS also shares customer testimonials on LinkedIn. Testimonials and case studies have always been influential in converting customers. People trust customers who aren't affiliated with your company in any way, and their endorsement can help you win more business.
UPS takes advantage of testimonials by posting pleasant experiences from customers, like this one that includes a photo of a happy customer, the employee who helped the customer, and a quote from the customer.
Posts about social good are often connected to topics that people care about and UPS posts often about environmental sustainability. This topic connects directly to UPS because, as a delivery service, they use a lot of packaging material and fuel. Therefore, it's nice of them to inform their customers that they're doing their bit to save the environment.
For example, when Upworthy ran a story about UPS using bikes to deliver packages, UPS shared the story with their LinkedIn followers. Environmentally conscious customers will now be more likely to use UPS for their deliveries.
Your LinkedIn page can also generate fantastic results like UPS if you share a lot of video content and create original images for your other posts. You should also share photos and testimonials from your happy customers. If you're doing some social good, make sure you share it on LinkedIn. People like companies that are altruistic.
#4: Dive Deep Into Niche Topics
BlackRock is a financial services company that invests on behalf of clients. BlackRock's LinkedIn page has more than 330,000 followers, and in 2015, generated $17 to $18 million in revenue from LinkedIn.
BlackRock shares a lot of content about their industry: investment. Most of this content is from their own blog. This strategy works because instead of sharing the same old content everyone has written a thousand times, BlackRock focuses on advanced topics like non-traditional asset classes.
Like BlackRock, you should make a habit of creating content your audience really needs instead of writing about the same old stuff. You can easily figure out what your audience needs with a quick survey and a persona. After that, make sure you share that content on your LinkedIn page and groups.
Want more like this? Explore our LinkedIn for Business guide!
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Conclusion
These four brands are thriving on LinkedIn. You too can achieve immense levels of success like them if you use proven tactics and experiment with different content until you find what connects with your LinkedIn audience.
All of these companies share a lot of content in the form of videos, images, and links to blog posts. They also take steps to engage their employees. All of these strategies increase LinkedIn engagement and can help you build a stronger relationship with your employees and customers, both online and offline.
What do you think? Have any of these tactics worked for you? Have these tips helped you consider how you post content on LinkedIn? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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