27 Priceless LinkedIn Marketing Tips (That Really Work): Start Dominating LinkedIn

Before you create a LinkedIn marketing strategy, build a network and create valuable content. This will help you both as an individual promoting your personal brand and as a marketer advertising a company. Connect only with the people you've interacted with and then with those who have shown previous interest in your profile, company, or shared content.

This way you can be sure that those who'll see your activity will actually be willing to further look at more similar content, become leads, and finally convert into customers. Present the projects you've worked on, your achievements, and other kinds of significant work you're proud of by using links or LinkedIn posts and articles.

Keep in mind that the LinkedIn community wants to see unique content and hates unwanted messages and spam. Adapt your content to your industry and audience. Finally, remember to keep everything fun and fresh. Despite being a job network, your network will want to see creative content and company updates that don't use pretentious wording.

Contributor: Alexandra Cote

Company: paymoapp.com

When connecting with new people make sure you offer them a reason why you want to connect. Again, thinking of LinkedIn in a digital networking sense, there has to be a reason why you want to connect with that person and not just to get your connections count high. You wouldn’t meet someone and offer them your business card without first engaging so don’t do this on LinkedIn either.

Contributor: Rich Harper

Company: fiftyblue.co.uk

If you can help it, don't make your first engagement with a potential client or contact an In-mail or direct message from out of the blue. Some creative cyberstalking can help you out and make the ice-breaking a little more comfortable. Determine a target or group of targets, (typically decision makers at the types of companies you want to work with) and begin to follow them, like their posts, share their updates, etc. By the time you reach out, hopefully, they will recognize your profile, and your message will be much more welcome. 

Contributor: Jonathan Jenkins

Company: loftyrankings.com

LinkedIn is a great channel for building individual relationships – don’t use it to self-promote but use it to start conversations instead. Think of it like digital networking. We don’t want to hear another sales pitch but we do want to connect with like-minded people that we share ideas with and learn from one another.

Contributor: Rich Harper

Company: fiftyblue.co.uk

When using LinkedIn Ads, make sure you know what your call to action is and what exactly you want people to do. If you’re a newer company, start with brand awareness and share a really compelling or interesting article to build credibility. Often times, it takes someone 2-3 times to view your ad before they make an action. 

Keep your call to action simple. Only one call-to-action per ad is recommended so that potential leads don’t abandon completing your CTA. Create one ad per call to action. 

Take advantage of LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities. You can really hone in on your target audience using these tools such as job industry, seniority, and company size. You can always check the analytics of your ad to make sure that the right audience is interacting with your ad, then tweak your campaign as you go. 

One of the worst things you can do is run LinkedIn Advertising, and neglect your company’s profile. Fill out your profile, add keywords, and optimize it by sharing relevant content. If someone clicks your ad to visit your company page, and they see nothing, you miss out on an opportunity for them to follow your page and receive future updates. 

Building your credibility on LinkedIn is important. For your personal profile, ensure you’re using industry keywords in your profile and fill out your biography completely. These keywords are essential if you’re in the hunt for a new position or even connecting with people in your field. Share content regularly, and interact with other’s content as well. Make sure you’re not just sharing, but including a short sentence or two about what you’re sharing and why. 

Building a successful LinkedIn company page starts with your employees. Ask them to follow and share your content. Your company has built-in brand evangelists, and they are a great solution to building your page following. Featuring your employees or sharing their content is also a best practice to demonstrate your company’s credibility.

Contributor: Alissa McKenzie

Company: thriveagency.com

LinkedIn is not Instagram. Posting once a day is more than sufficient. I personally recommend only 3-4 posts per week so you don't flood people's feeds.

Contributor: Mary Clare Bland | LinkedIn

Many people will shy away from using hashtags on LinkedIn as they think it could be deemed as unprofessional or maybe even a little bit childish as they are often associated with Twitter. However, the hashtag function on LinkedIn makes it a lot more likely that your content, whether it is a post, image or video, will get in front of the right people.

Contributor: Ryan Jones

Company: imaginaire.co.uk

80% of posts should be content, only 20% should be direct product promotion. The biggest error I see on LinkedIn is people that just post about their product. This just irritates people and invites them to unfollow you. 

Contributor: Mary Clare Bland | LinkedIn

Pods start off as a great idea but can become very limited as you end up sharing content with the same people over and over. Better to keep pod interaction to once per month. Otherwise, it's a waste of time and can be counter-productive if your pod's comments continually flood your connections' feeds.

Contributor: Mary Clare Bland | LinkedIn

Publish long content on LinkedIn Pulse! This increases your credibility on the platform and helps establish you as a thought leader in your space.

Contributor: Mary Clare Bland | LinkedIn

These tips all support your LinkedIn activity to generate leads... Just posting content, without using LinkedIn to generate and interact with leads, is not an efficient use of time - better to post the content on your website and generate traffic to your site. Use LinkedIn to connect with potential leads and build a relationship.

Contributor: Mary Clare Bland | LinkedIn

I've seen many LinkedIn campaigns fail because people were afraid to move from marketing into selling. Digital marketing has really blurred the line between marketing and sales. If you are running a LinkedIn marketing campaign you need to work closely with your sales team to move leads into your sales funnel. If you don't have a sales team, you need to start calling people yourself! 

Contributor: Mary Clare Bland | LinkedIn

Make use of your LinkedIn headline! What does your LinkedIn headline say right now? Is it just a copy and paste of your current job title? It probably is and that’s a massive waste.

You see, your headline is, in fact, your most prized piece of advertising space on LinkedIn. It’s the line of text users see below your name every time you leave a comment or look at someone’s profile. What you should use your headline for is pitching you or your services. Instead of saying, “David Vallance — Head of Content at LeaseFetcher”, you could say, “David Vallance — I help leasing brokers find more leads”. With a value proposition in your headline, your profile is always selling, which helps generate interest and attract more business.

Contributor: David Vallance

Company: leasefetcher.co.uk

In general, we generally find that the cost of reaching users via paid marketing efforts on LinkedIn can be considerably more expensive than competing platforms such as Facebook, Twitter Instagram, Pinterest, et al. Because of that, it's important to ensure that anything marketing activities a business or individual undertakes across LinkedIn is built with checks and balances in place to measure and properly attribute sales, revenue or other business goals back to the individual marketing channel.

If the average cost per click to reach a user on LinkedIn is 77-100x higher than a similar user on Facebook, LinkedIn may still be a viable marketing platform -- but only if you can prove that the LinkedIn users generate 77-100x more revenue than Facebook users, all things equal.

Contributor: Andrew Becks

Company: blog.301digitalmedia.com

The final step is to encourage conversation and commenting on your post. People like to be told what to do when reading content, so there's no shame in asking people to share, like or even comment on something. In my case, I asked people to comment on a post to encourage engagement. Something like: 'once I reach 100 people commenting this post, I'll share the free value works'. It might be hustling the system a bit, but hey - who cares - it works.

Contributor: Jonathan Jeffery

Company: 24Slides.com

Typos and poor writing are huge red flags. There’s nothing which shows a lack of professionalism and care like improper writing and simple mistakes. Besides for spell-checking, it’s important to keep your paragraphs clean, clear, and concise. Be sure to logically split up information and don’t be afraid to have your profile reviewed by a close friend or colleague. It’s no secret how important first impressions are, and LinkedIn is often the first glimpse people get of you and your business.

Contributor: Nate Masterson

Company: mapleholistics.com

Recruiters look for active workers who are constantly moving forward. LinkedIn profiles aren’t just for job titles and descriptions, so don’t be afraid to post event pictures, big projects, or creative presentations. This simple step makes a huge difference in the eyes of recruiters and lets them know that you’re engaged in your job. The popular site now functions like a digital portfolio for business people where new and relevant information is the name of the game.

Contributor: Nate Masterson

Company: mapleholistics.com

LinkedIn video now gives marketing specialists the opportunity to produce and publish videos on LinkedIn up to 10 minutes long. To me, this is the most powerful way to advertise your business on LinkedIn as video content is promoted over anything else on this platform.

Furthermore, it has been proven that videos get more shares than other content on social networks. LinkedIn video helps you reach an audience of business executives. All you have to do is create interesting, well-produced videos to catch their attention.

Contributor: Gregory Golinski

Company: yourparkingspace.co.uk

One really great and not well-known part of LinkedIn is Slideshare. Whenever you produce visual marketing material such as sales brochures, infographics, presentations or documents then you can add these through LinkedIn Slideshare. The beauty of this is that it puts your content in front of individuals that are interested in what you have to say. People can like or share your content helping get your message out to the world.

Contributor: Damien Buxton

Company: midascreative.co.uk 

Our company uses LinkedIn's sponsored posts for marketing our services. While these promotional posts are not free and cost a little bit per day, you have control over the budget and how much you're willing to spend. You also control who sees the posts through demographic targeting by choosing which geographic area you would like your audience to be in, their age range, and their professions. 

We have found that sponsoring really unique content, like original videos, works best. Don't forget to include a link back to your website in the sponsored post! You always want people to go to your site and learn more about your business and services. You want them to act immediately after seeing your ad, and linking to your website is an easy way to get them to do this. 

Contributor: Keri Lindenmuth

Company: kyledavidgroup.com

As many professionals know Facebook groups are a powerful way for you to spread a message or even build a community, however, today they are very saturated with marketers and a great deal of competition. 

This makes Linkedin groups an incredible alternative as you have all of the same abilities that you do on Facebook, but there is barely any competition. For many industries, if you create a group now and start inviting people you can be the only group covering your niche. With this, you can talk to your current and potential customers to establish yourself and your business as an industry leader.

Contributor: Ryan Frampton

Company: frampzmarketing.ca

The audience, context, and user experience is vastly different between LinkedIn and Facebook, and your content strategy should be, too. Too often, brands focus on taking an easy route and simulcasting Facebook posts to LinkedIn, which generally yields little to no engagement and isn't helpful in building meaningful, long-term customer relationships.

Contributor: Andrew Becks

Company: 301digitalmedia.com | blog.301digitalmedia.com

LinkedIn Sales Navigator alerts me when key decision makers, and people I believe we should be engaging with, change jobs or post content. I can then engage with or use that information to help funnel the lead to a higher or lower priority.

Contributor: Gary Corrin

Company: buffalo7.co.uk

Take advantage of its B2B marketing potential LinkedIn is a goldmine for B2B advertising. Because it is a network built around business, most of its users are decision makers or have close relationships with decision makers. Advertisers should take advantage of the fact that they can show their product to the people who decide what company tools to use & make a good impression.

Contributor: Chinedu Okigbo

Company: hotels.ng

LinkedIn marketing should not be limited to paid ads. A lot of users go on the platform when they need to find one service or the other (either for themselves or for the company they work for). It's not uncommon for people to message me asking for partnership opportunities or if our company can help them with one travel need or the other. This is only possible if you make yourself and all you (or your company) has to offer visible.

Contributor: Chinedu Okigbo

Company: hotels.ng

Headshots should be updated every couple of years and should reflect what you actually look like now. Profiles with missing images or photos tend to be overlooked by potential recruiters or employers. This is a quick way to dramatically improve profile visits. 

Also - Repeat after me: selfies are not headshots.

Contributor: Maree Jones

Company: mareejones.com

Where possible, always engage with rich media as opposed to just text. Posts with images are six times more likely to attract readers and have increased engagement over posts that do not have images or video. Take full advantage of multi-media in order to gain a greater response from your audience.

Contributor: Harrison Doan

Company: loomandleaf.com