By Aaron Agius
There are 500 million people who use LinkedIn to connect with others in their industry and advance their careers. With so many decision-makers, influencers, and other important members of your target audience gathered in one place, including LinkedIn in your marketing strategy is key to your company’s success.
Whether you already have a LinkedIn marketing plan in place or not, it’s important to reap the benefits of a focused and effective program and to avoid these LinkedIn marketing mistakes:
1. Posting content without understanding your audience
LinkedIn has become an important tool for content distribution, with 130,000 long-form posts generated each week. These posts are shared through LinkedIn’s publishing platform, Pulse, where you can post company news, stories, and thought leadership pieces, and share them with your audience.
“Writing posts just for LinkedIn is the fastest way to grow your brand and connections on Linkedin,” says Neil Patel, co-founder of KISSmetrics and a top digital marketing influencer.
But writing a post or sharing an update without a clear plan won’t get results. To ensure your posts are read and shared, you first need to understand your target audience.
Fifty-eight percent of marketers name audience relevance as the top factor contributing to content’s success. Ask yourself, who are you trying to reach and why? What are the goals of your audience and how can your business help achieve them?
Once you can answer these questions, you can create content people enjoy, driving leads and traffic to your business.
2. Promoting your brand too much
Though your primary goal with LinkedIn marketing will be to promote your business, you don’t want to turn your audience off by being too promotional in your updates or content.
Content gets 15 times more interactions than job postings on LinkedIn, but if you’re posting content that isn’t attractive to your audience, you won’t see any of the rewards. This is where understanding your audience and what they want from your brand comes in.
Focus on adding value with your posts and content. How does your audience benefit from what you’re saying? This doesn’t apply to just your original content either. When sharing content from an external source, make sure it is relevant and has a purpose for your audience.
You should also be adding value in LinkedIn groups. I run several where people can come together and discuss issues, share content, and ask questions. If your aim is to grow your brand’s community on LinkedIn, groups are a good way to do it, whether you join an existing one or launch your own.
That said, if all you post in groups is how great your brand is, you’ll lose followers fast. Instead, start by engaging users on topics unrelated to your brand. When an opportunity arises to bring your brand into the discussion, take it, but avoid sending a sales pitch.
RELATED: How to Build Trust With Your Buyers—With the Help of LinkedIn
3. Neglecting the power of your employees
To further grow your community, look internally first. Your employees are a powerful resource for spreading the word about your company and gaining new leads and followers on LinkedIn.