Sandy Bassi
LIVE FROM #INBOUND22
Tapping into creativity will help your brand stand out on LinkedIn. Is your building product business making the most out of LinkedIn?
We’re live from INBOUND 2022 and this session tapped into how you can grow your LinkedIn presence through impactful and differentiated content.
Felipe Ortolano and Amanda Green cover the best practices for creative on LinkedIn, how to maximise different content types on LinkedIn, such as sponsored content, or newsletters, and create a content plan for LinkedIn.
Here’s the run-down…
Who’s On LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is different, it’s built for B2B. It allows individuals to network and builds on their relationships.
To create breakthrough content on LinkedIn, consider the following:
1. Embrace Emotional Connection
It's perceived that emotional-based content shouldn’t be on LinkedIn, but this isn’t true. We’re human beings and we feel things.
In fact, brands that leverage emotional content see a considerable improvement in performance. 64% of individuals who feel a high personal and emotional connection with a brand are more likely to buy from it.
However, appealing to emotion doesn’t have to mean making someone feel ‘emotional’ as in unhappy. It can be subtle and it can be thought-proving.
An example of emotional content can be highlighting the following:
- Community and causes
- Diversity and equality
- Personal stories
- Passion and aspiration
You can always add sparkle to your brand and you don’t always need to use humour (but if you can use humour, do it!)
2. Be Distinctive, Consistently
For an ad to work, it must be attributed to your brand. That’s why we recognise iconic brands because they become ‘fluent devices’ and they’re consistent. And having a fluent device can increase your market share by 10%. It doesn’t need to be a funky character, it could just be you using consistent colour and owning it.
Adopt a distinctive, ownable and repeatable look. You can see how salesforce does this in their ads:
Get Personal
People want to know ‘what’s in it for me?’ we tend to think about ourselves and not the customer. Communicate personal benefits of your brand to your customers, help them solve their problems and focus on their pain points. You want your customers to feel the following when they see your posts:
- The brand helps me achieve my goals
- The brand helps me present myself to others as the person I want to be
- The brand makes my life more meaningful
- The brand provides me with some emotional benefit
Don’t Assume Your Audience Will Read In A Linear Way
You need to maximise the most valuable assets of your post, this could be putting the assets in the middle, bolding them or increasing the size. Maximise the space you have!
Call Your Audience Out
Call out to your audiences and address them - by doing this you can see a 54% increase in engagement. For example in your posts write, ‘Calling all architects’ or ‘Are you a project manager?’. Feeling like you’re getting mentioned will mean you’re more likely to engage.
Find The Right Balance Between Information And Intrigue
Find the balance between information and intrigue, you don’t have to give all your information away and overload your customers with all these impressive stats.
A tip is to bitesize information on posts.
Creative tip: carrousels provide an engaging storyboard experience right in the feed
Don't Forget Hashtags
Hashtags can boost your post with a 2.9% increase in click-throughs and a 1.5% increase in viral action gain.
TIP: Use 2/3 hashtags in your post and use them within the middle of the copy instead of the beginning or the end – it has proven to be most effective.
3. Break The Format
How many pieces of content does an individual need to see before engaging with your building product business? If you’re thinking double digits, you’re correct. It’s 10! No matter how great the creative, a single brand touchpoint is just not enough, we have to be nurtured.
You must have at least 1-2 formats of content types to be effective (case study posts, testimonial posts, blog promotion etc).
Use Video To See Engagement Rate Increase
Videos are a great idea - Ads that have videos have 3x more views. Amanda suggested using a video of no more than 45 seconds on a social post and you can put the longer version on a landing page to navigate individuals to your page.
Keep your videos visually appealing, because:
- Video ads earn 30% more comments per impression than posts without video
- 79% of videos on LinkedIn are watched with the sound off
Using Articles For Page
LinkedIn articles are a great method to market yourself and your building product business, gain more visibility, and reach a larger audience.
Publishing articles on LinkedIn not only enables you to establish yourself as a thought leader and expert in your sector but also fosters trust and expands your network.
Why articles for pages?
- Easily post long-form content on LinkedIn
Any Page on LinkedIn can create an article, hosted from their page.
- Reach more people with your long-form content
Share articles to your page feed to promote. Articles are eligible for organic discovery via the feed and notifications.
- Prove the value
Easily access content performance from the article or your Analytics tab, detailing views, engagements, and audience firmographics.
Have You thought About Social Proof?
Social proof can sway confidence and trust in a purchase, 1 in 2 buyers say that peer validation is a primary vehicle for increasing trust in a product.
To display social proof, bring customer experiences to life – post a testimonial or a case study. Make individuals feel like everyone else is adopting something, so they should too.
Aim For Actionable CTAs
A strong CTA that is straight to the point addresses the audience, and is ideally one line long should be used in your posts/graphics.
This is so you’re enticing the individual to take action.
Conclusion
Your LinkedIn profile is your chance to get your name or your building products business in front of hundreds (or even thousands) of professionals in your industry.
LinkedIn is a powerful tool and one that can be easy to use and take advantage of. With these tips, you can make your social posts stand out amongst the noise to target the building products industry.