For many businesses, being available on different social media platforms is no longer just optional. It is necessary. With more and more people getting hooked on social media nowadays, the opportunity for businesses to reach their target market also increases.
Nowadays, social media networks are not just used for communication and socialization among friends and families. Social media has become a sophisticated, quick, and effective way for businesses to bring their brand in front of their customers, gain valuable insights, drive traffic to their website or blog, and grow their brand.
Of the most popularly used social media platforms today, LinkedIn stands as the largest professional networking site in the world. At the time of this writing, over 722 million people and organizations from more than 200 territories and countries are now using LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is regarded as the best social media site that businesses, brands, bloggers, and influencers can use to improve their connections and grow their professional network. LinkedIn does not only help brands with their customer acquisition, marketing, and recruitment efforts but it also helps them drive high-quality direct traffic to their blogs.
However, simply having a LinkedIn account and marketing your brand on the platform won’t provide you with the best results. Below are some proven effective ways to improve your LinkedIn presence and use it to drive traffic to your blog.
Optimize your LinkedIn Profile
In order to reach your target audience and drive traffic to your blog, you need to improve your LinkedIn presence first. The first and most critical step is to optimize your profile. Your LinkedIn profile will provide a quick glimpse of both your brand and your blog. If you want your target audience from LinkedIn to have a good first impression of your brand, you need to make sure that your profile is optimized.
Here are some tips you can use to optimize your LinkedIn profile:
- Create a branded company and professional or personal profile.
- Create and add a banner image that best describes your brand.
- Add your brand logo to make it easier for people to recognize and remember you. Make it personalized and catchy but still professional-looking. Also, add a professional headshot to your personal profile.
- Add your blog to both your brand and personal profiles.
- In the about section, add a brief history of your brand, what you offer, and who your target audience or market is.
- Complete your profile by providing all the necessary information needed in all sections.
Your LinkedIn profile will talk a lot about you and your brand so you have to make sure it is optimized and it represents your brand in the best way possible. It is also important that your profile does not only succinctly convey who you are but is also trustworthy, welcoming, and friendly.
Build and Grow Your Connections
You need to have good network connections to successfully bring traffic to your blog from LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers you a great way to develop your network, keep in touch with your professional, personal, and business contacts, and reach people with the same interests and industry as yours.
You can treat LinkedIn as an extension of your personal connection. If you meet someone in person, connect with them through LinkedIn as well. Connect with everyone you come in contact with in person who also has LinkedIn profiles like:
- Your co-workers or people you have worked or you are currently working with
- Your email or phone contacts
- People you met at certain events offline
- Your past and present customers
- Your business partners
- People you are connected with on other social media platforms
- Schools, institutions, and organizations you are connected with
- Influencers within your industry
The more connections you have and the bigger your network is, the more people will see and trust your brand. Needless to say, more people will get interested in visiting your blog as well. This would mean more traffic to your blog.
Join and Actively Participate in an Active Group
Joining an active group on LinkedIn is an excellent way to connect with more people. Simply joining an active group won’t be enough to get noticed, however. You need to actively participate in the group activities and engage with your co-members as well.
Though it is fine to join any active group that interests you, it is best to connect with high-quality groups within your industry or relevant to your brand. This way you can be able to generate more targeted and relevant traffic to your site, and reach like-minded people who are more likely to get interested in what you offer.
Share Relevant Content
The advantage of LinkedIn over other social media sites is that it allows your content to easily reach your target audience. The other social media sites are jam-packed with all sorts of content that people want to share and re-post. Sadly, most of this content is irrelevant and may not be industry-related.
This large amount of irrelevant content may cover up your content, making it more challenging for it to get noticed and stand out. With LinkedIn, however, users only tend to share relevant content. So, if your content reaches your target audience, the likelihood of your content getting noticed and shared is bigger.
You can either share relevant posts from your blog, write unique content and post it on the LinkedIn blog, or share interesting industry news and then add a link back to your blog.
Writing and sharing industry-related and relevant content will not only help you drive traffic to your blog but can help build your authority, expertise, and leadership in your niche.
Use LinkedIn Pulse
You may also consider posting some content on LinkedIn Pulse. LinkedIn Pulse allows you to post and share relevant content with a simple interface. It allows you to post blog posts with links to your blog or website, infographics, videos, and other graphics.
Use LinkedIn’s Recommend Feature
LinkedIn comes with an amazing recommend feature that allows you to endorse people on the platform. You can use this feature to recommend anyone in your network. Just make sure to recommend only those you know and believe are trustworthy, credible, and good at their craft.
The good thing about recommending other people is that you can also expect others to recommend you to others as well should they find you worthy of it. While others do this to return the favor, others would recommend you simply because you deserve it.
The recommendation feature works like feedback or a review. The more recommendations you have, the more likely people will see you as a credible and authoritative brand, thus helping you build your LinkedIn presence, improve your following, and eventually drive more interest and traffic to your site.
Drive Traffic but don’t Overly Promote Your Brand
While you need to promote your brand to achieve your marketing goals, you should not overdo it. Your main goal here is to drive more relevant and high-quality traffic to your blog from LinkedIn, and not to advertise using the platform.
And you should always stick to this goal in order to gain better results. You can self-promote your brand but make sure not to try to sell anything while doing so especially when introducing yourself and engaging with different groups. You can tell people about what you do and what you offer, but avoid selling your products or services in a very obvious way.
Endnote
These are just some of the many ways to use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your blog. As you build your LinkedIn presence and nurture your brand authority, more and more people will get interested to connect with you. This way, you can reach a wider audience, get more prospects and eventually generate more traffic to your blog.
Related posts:
- Drive More Traffic to Your Blog Through LinkedIn: Here’s How - September 2, 2021
