How To Build A LinkedIn Marketing Strategy As An SMB

A strong online presence is a must-have for all businesses nowadays, and that goes for SMBs as well. And while social networking platforms like Facebook and Instagram are important, LinkedIn is where you ought to concentrate, especially if you’re offering services to other businesses.

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If you haven’t really figured out how to make LinkedIn work for your business, here’s a helpful guide with LinkedIn marketing strategies for small businesses to help you get started. 

Why a LinkedIn presence is important

Let’s start by addressing the obvious: why an SMB needs to have a strong LinkedIn presence. LinkedIn has a staggering 880 million users spread across 200 countries, and all of them are there for professional reasons.

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That means they’re all looking to connect with people from their industries, people to work for or work with, and other businesses to partner with. That makes LinkedIn the ideal platform for you to engage with these people and organizations to get your brand noticed and grow your business.

LinkedIn marketing strategies for SMBs

Now, you’re probably wondering how you’re going to get noticed among so many people and huge businesses. While you may think you are a small fish in a big sea, LinkedIn is made up of people from every possible vertical, all with unique needs. 

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Building a rock-solid LinkedIn marketing strategy will definitely get you the attention of your target audience. Here are some LinkedIn marketing pro tips for SMBs.

1. Keep an eye on competition

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An important aspect of your LinkedIn social media strategy ought to be to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing on the platform, and if they’re being more successful than you are, to learn from them.

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The best way to go about this would be to first shortlist 5-10 businesses in the same space as you across all scales, i.e., small, medium, and large. Watch their pages for what type of content they post, what topics they post on, and who their target audience is.

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Doing so will give you insights into what’s working (or not) for them, and allow you to design your own strategy accordingly.

2. Update your profile regularly

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Whenever someone visits your company's LinkedIn page, the first thing they will see is the profile picture and banner. The way LinkedIn’s algorithm works is that having high-quality profile pictures and banners will get your business page a lot more organic traffic, by as much as six times.

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Your chances of getting noticed are also higher when you change both of these periodically. It is also important to update the rest of your profile regularly so that people who visit the page know that your business is not static

3. Ensure key information is filled

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Key information fields ought to be filled so people can learn more about your business when they visit your LinkedIn page. These fields include details like what industry you’re in, your company website URL, how large your business is, and contact information.

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Most importantly, use the 2000 character limit you have at your disposal in the “About us” section to wax eloquent about who you are as a company, what your values are, what you do, and everything you feel your target audience ought to know about your SMB. 

6. Share quality content

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One of the most effective ways to grow your contact list and engage with prospects on LinkedIn is by sharing quality content on your page. This could be content-rich blogs, infographics, videos, or images. 

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Keep in mind though that the engagement levels differ depending on the type of content you post. For example, video content is five times more likely to start conversations than any other form of content you may post. Even there, the LinkedIn algorithm favors content that can play on the native video player over content that needs other embedded players.

7. Use keywords to optimize content

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If you want your LinkedIn profile and the content you post on your company page to be found easily both on LinkedIn and on Google searches, you will need to make sure everything from your profile information to the content you post is optimized by using relevant keywords.

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If you’re wondering where to find these keywords, Google’s Keyword Planner is a great place to start. Using these keywords will ensure that whenever anyone uses these words or similar words to search for services or businesses, your LinkedIn company page will be among the top search results. 

8. Post content often, even if it means recycling

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With the variety of content that you can post on LinkedIn to get attention and engage your prospective customers as well as peers, you also ought to keep in mind that the more often you post new content, the better your reach will be.

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However, if you run out of steam coming up with fresh content, worry not. You could revisit previously posted content that did well, refresh it with new snippets or content, and repost it. 

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That being said, simply reposting old videos of images will not do much for you. Put in the effort to reimagine the content with new additions before sharing it again. 

9. Target the correct audience

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Obviously, you want the content you post on LinkedIn to reach a certain demographic, namely, people who would want to do business with your company. LinkedIn’s algorithm works best if you use tags and mention pages to target certain audiences. 

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Other ways to target your audience include using polls and asking questions that lead to discussions, which in turn could convert into business leads.

10. Endorse and get endorsements

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LinkedIn allows you to offer skill endorsements to your peers, and you could also ask them to endorse your skills in return. When you get endorsed by your peers, it adds credibility to your profile and shows that you have the domain knowledge required. 

11. Time your posts

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Once again, this has to do with how LinkedIn’s algorithm behaves. The days you post on, as well as the times you post, make a difference to the reach your posts are likely to have.

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The best times to post, as of December 2022, are: 

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• Wednesdays at 8 AM, 9 AM, 10 AM, 12 PM, and 3 PM
• Thursday mornings 9 AM and 10 AM, as well as afternoons 1 PM and 2 PM
• Fridays 9 AM to 12 PM

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Sundays are supposed to be the worst times to post on the platform. 

12. Explore data from LinkedIn Analytics

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As the owner of a business page on LinkedIn, you have access to LinkedIn Analytics, which gives you data that can be very useful to market your business on the platform.

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For example, you can access data about how many page visitors you have had, who the consumers of your content are, and how engaging your content is. You can also see how many likes your posts have got, how many people have mentioned your page, and how many times your content has been reshared.

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All of this information goes a long way in helping you build a target audience. 

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