7 Ways To Inject Some Life Back Into Your LinkedIn Company Page
Is your LinkedIn company page struggling to perform? Are you seeing little to no engagement and a lack of visitors? What can you do about this? Well, one of them is better status updates! The better your updates are, the more followers you will gain which can result in much more engagement. And this is good news for recruiters. It has been found that if a person follows your company on LinkedIn, they are 81% more likely to open your InMail than a non-follower. Also, in the same survey it was found that the majority of people who follow your page follow it because they would like to work for the company (lead!).
So it’s time to breathe some energy into your LinkedIn company posting and optimise your updates so you can start building your lead pipeline. Here are 7 things you need to do to optimise your LinkedIn updates!
1. Incorporate Your Target Audience’s Pain Points In Your Messaging
Company updates don’t have to be all about you! Too many companies post content on LinkedIn that is of little value to users. When you post on LinkedIn next, think about how this post is going to benefit your audience. Is this content really helpful, informative and relevant to them?
The best way to think about this is focus on your customer pain points. What are their biggest challenges/frustrations? What does success look like to them? What does failure look like to them? Answering these questions will help you decide on the types of content you wish to push out on your LinkedIn company page. Users today expect authenticity, relevance and value from the LinkedIn accounts they follow. Knowing exactly what your customers want and need from you means you’re far more likely to engage with them on an emotional level. Check the example below to see how we capture a recruiter’s panic during the recruitment process.
(Related:
Mapping Your Candidate Personas)
2. Use Rich Media Constantly
Today’s world is visually-obsessed. Rich media like photos, podcasts, infographics and videos allow audiences to consume content more efficiently and satisfy their information needs. In a world where 55% of users who view a page spend less than 15 seconds looking at it, capturing a user’s attention is vital. More employers must learn to visually engage with their audience and this also applies to LinkedIn company updates.
The great thing about LinkedIn company pages is that they support all sorts of media, including YouTube & Vimeo videos, SlideShare presentations and URLs. Your LinkedIn company updates appear in user news feeds so it’s important to post some eye-catching visuals to help your update stand out from the clutter. Check out Marketo‘s update where they share a cartoon targeted at their main audience, marketers.
(Related:
Video and Job Advertising: The Perfect Marriage)
3. Make A Genuine Effort To Engage With Your Audience
With over 400 million users on LinkedIn today, it’s safe to say a few of these would have some insights and have something to contribute! So why not ask them? Ask a relevant question on your company’s LinkedIn page and see what sort of engagement you get. Your LinkedIn page should not be used for one-way communication, instead you should be fostering two-way communication as much as possible. More answers = more engagement. More engagement = more visibility in the news feeds. It’s a no brainer.
If you do get comments flooding in, make sure to keep the conversation going. Respond to people as much as you can. This will help foster a sense of community and will encourage your followers to engage with you on a continuous basis. You can also create a really good piece of content by pooling the best questions and comments.
4. Have a Clear Call-to-Action
Your call-to-action (CTA) is essentially a link in your LinkedIn company update that urges candidates to click through. Company updates containing links can have up to 45% higher follower engagement than updates without links. The links should direct users back the company website where you could be promoting a job ad, an employee spotlight video or a blog post for example.
Whenever you copy a link to a status update, an image automatically appears with the link. This image does not always look optimised so our recommendation would be to upload your own image with the link so you can optimise the status update as you please (see below).
5. Keep It Short
Does anybody scanning through the LinkedIn news feed actually want to read a status update that should be a long-form blog post? Of course not! You’re posting a company update and that’s exactly what it should be – an update i.e. easily consumable. While you should aim to keep your update as brief as possible, you should make sure that it is also high quality so it can be easily absorbed by users. If it is too long, LinkedIn introduce a ‘more’ button which users can click to see the rest of the status but this is something that you should avoid because it presents an obstacle for users to view the update.
A good rule of thumb is to keep the status update under 140 characters which is the Twitter status character limit. This will help you keep your updates succinct and meaningful. Forbes nails this.
6. ‘Behind the Scenes’ Content
Professionals don’t just want to see industry-related content on their LinkedIn news feeds every time they log in. Sometimes, it helps to steer away from the blog posts, the product updates and the event promotions which can get tiresome. Instead, posting ‘behind-the-scenes’ content helps you build a more genuine connection with followers. The reason for this is that users are thirsty for transparency and an inside look into how things are built and done within your company.
So what do we mean exactly by behind-the-scenes content? Well, it can be anything from team-building content showing how well your team work together, progress content such as company accomplishments to funny content. See the example below of a recent company update we posted about a football tournament we entered. Content like this is great way to humanise your brand and can show that you can have fun outside office hours! This content also typically triggers more engagement which is exactly what you need.
7. Test
It may be tempting to post blindingly on your LinkedIn company page, wait to see if you get engagement and make a decision on future updates. However, the best recruiters are much more proactive and are continually testing their initiatives, whether it be LinkedIn posting or something else. The reality is that some LinkedIn posts are going to work much better than others depending on your audience so you need to educate yourself on what your audience prefers.
The great thing about LinkedIn is that it provides metrics for each company page where you can view things like reach, engagement, follower vs visitor trends and follower vs visitor demographics. These metrics can help you understand why certain posts flop and others perform well which can help fine-tune your posting strategy. You may be a bit overwhelmed with all of this data once you see it so our recommendation would be to first focus on the engagement percentage for your update. This is derived from the the number of clicks and interactions of an update vs impressions of that update. Based on this, you can start writing updates (backed by data) that your audience will love!
With over 400 million users, LinkedIn represents a fantastic opportunity to engage with your target audience. However, you need to make a long-term commitment to your plan for LinkedIn which includes ongoing monitoring and analysis of company updates. Company updates are the only way you can foster meaningful conversation and engagement with your followers and target audience and doing this effectively (by following the techniques above) can increase candidate quantity and quality.