Ainhoa Rodriguez-Muguruza
82% of the B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn.
Earlier this year, Handmade Marketing conducted a survey that found that over 94% of the top 100 UK construction companies use LinkedIn. Furthermore, the survey revealed that these companies mainly used LinkedIn to share project updates, broadcast industry news, or announce upcoming events.
However, this is not everything you can do with your social media platforms. This blog post will give you a detailed overview of social media for your building product company, but if you want to head straight to the top ten tips, click here.
Understand Your Social Platforms
Social media can be an excellent tool, but no technology is good per se. A good tool is only as good as the strategy that underpins it! With social media, something quite similar happens.
Each social media platform serves a purpose, and you should be using them accordingly.
#1 LinkedIn Works for Lead Generation
8 out of every 10 B2B leads generated through social media come from LinkedIn. Ultimately, LinkedIn is a professional network designed for marketers to leverage professional targeting.
Through this blog post, we will be exploring the tools that position LinkedIn as the main social platform for successful lead generation. Just scroll down if you cannot wait to know!
#2 Twitter Works for Outreach
Due to its instant and dynamic nature, Twitter has positioned itself as the critical platform to share brief snippets of your content, increase your website traffic, and launch promotions. In addition, Twitter benefits from its short character limit!
Forcing you to compress your message into a few words, Twitter makes sure that you deliver precisely the information you want your prospects to get.
#3 Facebook Works for Building Trust
Did you know that, when looking for a company, specially if local, the first thing that people look at is the Facebook account of said company?
There are several reasons why this is the case: companies on Facebook are encouraged to create a business page where prospects can go to find their contact information, reviews, updates, and other resources.
#4 Instagram Works for Quick Content
As Instagram keeps adding tools to its platform, more people have started using it to display their products and showcase them under a different light. In fact, Instagram can be used to show exactly what your business can do.
With a wide range of tools, such as Instagram stories, reels, and IGTV, the possibilities to create quick and engaging content become endless.
#5 YouTube Works for Educative Content
YouTube has been around for over 16 years… feeling old yet? But, good news, it is still relevant! Since the pandemic, this social platform has become the reference outlet for educative content, webinars, and digital CPDs.
Unlike on Instagram, the audience on YouTube is looking for lengthier content, slightly more specific, that will provide them with value and that they can learn from.
#6 Pinterest Works for Brand Awareness
Usually forgotten by marketers, Pinterest has something that no other platform can offer… It can help you rank better on SERPs! Pinterest should not, however, be your main social outlet.
Pinterest can be used as a complementary platform where you repurpose content that you link to your website, so you generate traffic and ensure that your brand is present in a wide range of channels. Also, did you know Pinterest is the main social platform architects go to for inspiration?
Why LinkedIn?
On a previous post about the best social media platforms for construction companies, we declared a clear winner: Twitter. But, if Twitter is the best tool to improve your outreach and brand awareness, why should you be looking into LinkedIn?
Let’s dive into the reasons.
#1 LinkedIn Has The Biggest Proportion of Decision-Makers
With LinkedIn having been created particularly for networking purposes, it is not a surprise that 4 out of every 5 LinkedIn members are decision makers!
A higher proportion of decision-makers will make it more likely for you to find and connect with a good quality prospect. In the same way, it will make it much easier to tailor your content to your audience!
#2 LinkedIn Has The Highest Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate
LinkedIn has a visitor-to-lead conversion rate almost 3 times higher than Twitter or Facebook, with its visitor-to-lead conversion rate being 2.74%!
This might not seem like a big number but, if we put it in perspective, a 2.74% conversion rate would mean that for every 100 people that visit your LinkedIn page, almost 3 of them could be suitable leads. Isn’t that fantastic. If you are curious about qualifying leads through LinkedIn, check out this post from LinkedIn experts Amanda Green and Kaitlin Bellay.
#3 LinkedIn Ads Can Be Targeted For B2B Business Goals
LinkedIn is one of the most compelling social media platforms when it comes to the variety of ads that you can use to reach out to a bigger audience! You can choose among video ads, carrousel ads, message ads, dynamic ads, lead generation ads, and sponsored ads.
A good ad campaign will involve a mixture of every ad type and each ad should carefully fit in a curated content strategy. If you would like to know more about how to nail your LinkedIn approach, check these expert tips gathered in INBOUND2021.
#4 LinkedIn Supports a Wide Variety of Content
LinkedIn allows you to share different types of content, from downloadable guides to educative webinars. When looking at the content to post on your LinkedIn page, it is important to research the type of posts that is driving the best results.
If you understand how to help your audience, you will be able to cater for them a little bit better.
#5 LinkedIn Has Its Own Built-In Reporting Tool
LinkedIn offers three types of reports that can provide you with key insights about your content and how it is performing.
Visitor Analytics will showcase information about people visiting your page, including the type of device they use to navigate through LinkedIn, the amount of people that check your page, the companies they come from, etc. The Update Analytics will include impressions, clicks, and interactions; and the Follower Analytics will give you a deeper insight on your audience’s demographic data.
10 Tips That You Can Apply Today To Turn Your LinkedIn Into A Lead Generation Tool
Optimising your LinkedIn company page might seem daunting, and, truth be said, it should be planned within a strategy. There are, however, some quick tips that you could apply to your LinkedIn page that would instantly help you have a better online presence, increasing your chances of attracting new leads.
#1 Nail Your Branding
Your page should have a logo, that is non-negotiable. Companies with logos on their pages get six times more visits. Your branding should not, however, stop with your LinkedIn page… Get your employees on board!
Make sure your profile pictures have coherent aesthetics and design banners for their profiles, so they match your branding.
#2 Offer a Powerful Value Proposition
Your LinkedIn Page description should be solid, strong, and capable of standing out in the crowd. When searching for your company’s LinkedIn, Google will only show 156 characters about your page, so make the most of them!
Make sure your value proposition is robust and add any relevant information that you think your audience will be attracted to.
#3 Associate Your Page To At Least Three Hashtags
LinkedIn recognises hashtags, just as much as Twitter does! Include three hashtags on your page description that describe your mission and can position you within the industry.
You should choose hashtags that already exist and that will attract people interested in those topics.
#4 Complete Your Page
Fully completed LinkedIn Pages get 30% more visits than those that are incomplete. This is because decision-makers are driven by first impressions.
Without a fully curated page, chances are the visitors to your page think that, if you have not cared about your online presence, you surely will not care about the relationship with your clients...
#5 Make It Part Of Your SEO Strategy
Anything that you write on your page should be coherent with your SEO strategy. LinkedIn ranks on SERPs like any other website and, as a result, your need to make sure the content you produce for this platform helps you rank higher for your target keywords!
And, of course, use LinkedIn to produce backlinks to your website.
#6 Align Your Content To Your Business Goals
Avoid coming across too company-centric… You can speak about many more things! Try sharing company news, new business initiatives, updates, and other announcements.
The more human, the better! So, if you have a new member joining the team or an event to celebrate, share it with your audience.
#7 Start Using Video
Video posts can generate more than 300 million impressions a year, three times the engagement of text posts. Video content allows you to give a better and more detailed view of your product, including graphics and testimonials.
A key tip for video content? Fit your message within the first 10 seconds and keep it short! Shorter videos, under 30 seconds, have better completion rates.
#8 Make the Most of LinkedIn’s Engagement Tools
Look at the tools the platform offers you and explore them. Did you know that LinkedIn allows you to create pools? Or that you could Livestream your events from your page?
In the same way, make sure you are using different content types, including charts, infographics, how-to posts, lists, etc.
#9 Set Up Your Own LinkedIn Group
LinkedIn groups can help you create a community surrounding your product, service, or message. You can position your company as an industry expert and enable like-minded people to get in touch with you, expanding your network and becoming more attractive to your prospects.
You can easily search for groups from your homepage.
#10 Publish LinkedIn Articles
If you were to implement only one of the tips on this list, I would encourage you to go for this one: repurpose some of your best-performing blog content on a LinkedIn article. LinkedIn articles can achieve views significantly higher than what you might achieve on your company blog
Engage with anyone commenting on the posts and check your content’s performance on LinkedIn Article analytics. You will be surprised!
#BONUS LinkedIn Showcase Pages
Showcase pages are very similar, in HubSpot vocabulary, to landing pages. These are pages where you can create personalised content depending on your buyer persona or your targeted companies. LinkedIn users can follow a Showcase Page, making sure they are updated every time content is available.
Showcase Pages can act as customized pages for campaigns or events and can be used as a help centre, FAQ forum, or resource for product training.
LinkedIn Should Not Be Your Lead Generation Plan, But Part Of It
As you can see, the possibilities are endless.
With over 98% of specifiers preferring to research products online, understanding your digital presence as a priority has become a must.
Not adapting to this new specification landscape could lead you to losing incredible opportunities, with specifiers turning to competitors with a better online presence. So, if this lead generation has proven challenging in the past, grab a coffee and spend the next few minutes reading our “7 Pillars To Lead Generation” guide.
If you found the information in this post insightful, we recommend you look into some of the most popular articles in the Insynth Blog regarding lead generation! Our favourites are:
- How Sales and Marketing Alignment Can Drive Lead Generation
- What Is Lead Nurturing?
- Have Your Got The Right Tools For Lead Generation?
About Insynth
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.