Statistics show that LinkedIn members are 50% more likely to buy from a company page that they engage with on LinkedIn. A company’s LinkedIn page has the potential to reach an extremely large audience. Due to the quality of the education levels of LinkedIn members, it's vital that you don't post updates without any meaning; more time and consideration needs to be taken with your company’s posts and activity on LinkedIn to ensure you’re maximising your efforts on this social networking platform.

Before your company dives into using LinkedIn, it needs to ensure it is set up for success. A social media ‘’champion’’ should be appointed to coordinate and track your company’s social media activities. If your champion is new to using LinkedIn, ensure they commit to researching LinkedIn and how companies use it successfully.

Ensure that different colleagues within your organisation are utilised to assist with providing specialised content from their areas of expertise. If possible, create a calendar displaying the different themes to be disseminated throughout LinkedIn over a period of time.

Note: Don’t be afraid to publish timely and relevant content that may arise but which is outside the scope of the topics included in your calendar. Appearing to be up-to-date is a big advantage for your business to come across as an expert in your company’s field.

Here’s a 5 step model used by the leaders in Social Media to engage with followers on LinkedIn:

1. Establish your presence
2. Attract followers
3. Engage followers
4. Amplify through the network
5. Analyse and refine

1. Establish your presence

• Design your page to tell your company’s story. Use descriptive language that helps readers understand what your company is all about and the value it has to offer.
• Ensure your company page is SEO friendly. Ensure the first 156 characters of your description are keyword rich and descriptive to ensure the description is found by Google.

2. Attract followers

• Engage your colleagues. Encourage them to add an icon to their email signature, linking to your company’s LinkedIn page. Employees are also 70% more likely to engage with your company updates – encourage this sort of behaviour!
• Tell everyone about your new LinkedIn Company Page. A compelling blog post or email newsletter announcement will help push traffic to your page.
• Embed a ‘’Follow’’ button to your website. A ‘’Follow’’ button can be added to your website or blog by retrieving the code from developer.linkedin.com.
• Join LinkedIn discussions. This is the best way to build your Company’s LinkedIn page.

Find the right groups that are relevant to the industries and customers you serve. These groups can be found by searching relevant keywords in LinkedIn’s search bar.

Contribute to discussions that are popular. An increase in likes and replies to your comments will increase your chance of becoming a ‘’Top Influencer’’ in the group.

Share insights and assist members to be seen as a problem solver by other members.

3. Engage followers

Provide company updates that are informative, insightful and inspirational. Status update tips:

• Lose the sales pitch – provide some sort of benefit.
• Consider the timing of your posts – experiment to determine the most appropriate time to publish content.
• Remember to consistently post updates to keep your followers wanting more.
• Link to great content – don’t forget an interesting tagline to go with it.

Tailor your content to specific audiences. When updating your status you can select to share with ‘’all followers’’ or a ‘’targeted audience’’. Consider sharing updates with certain groups based on multiple criteria. Remember, don’t target too narrowly otherwise the reach of your post will be limited.

Don’t forget to watch the professionals at work. Observe large corporate giants and the way they disseminate content.

Break up big chapters of content into smaller, bite-size pieces. Followers will begin to expect new content that builds upon content previously delivered.

4. Help your content go viral

• Invite customers to write reviews. Product and service recommendations are key to building followers, and ultimately, business.
• Post interesting videos. Links to YouTube videos received twice as much engagement than posts not containing videos.
• Listen to conversations externally of LinkedIn. Status updates can be created from popular trending topics that have been identified by your target audience. These trending topics can identify data gathered from various contact forms, call centres, and blog comments.
• Embed the LinkedIn ’share’ plugin to your website

The "Likes", Shares and comments your updates receive amplify your messages and act as endorsements for your brand and content. Remember to thank followers who contribute to your discussions.

5. Analyse and refine

‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’.

• Test. Different types of content should be experimented with to identify what type of content resonates within your follower groups and at what times your posts receive the most engagement.
• Measure engagement. LinkedIn provides analytics on your business page posts. You can analyse the impressions, clicks, interactions and engagement of the post. A link shortening service, such as bit.ly or ow.ly, can also be used to keep track of total click-throughs and other statistics that these services track.
• Set targets. Targets could be set for the number of new followers to acquire and they should be based on past results or future marketing initiatives in the pipeline.

Click here for our building engagement on Facebook blog or here for our building engagement on Twitter blog.