Tag Archive for: Social

Using LinkedIn To PR Your Business

/in /by

LinkedIn is a platform that we utilise often for our clients, especially those in B2B industries. With an audience of nearly 31.2 million users in the UK, 57% of which are between 25 and 24 years old, it’s hard to deny that there’s an opportunity here to PR your business. But how do you get the message right, and ensure that you’re using LinkedIn in the right way?

Adjusting Your Message For LinkedIn

LinkedIn is not your typical social media platform, it’s a professional networking site and though many argue that it’s becoming “more and more like Facebook” in recent years, the reality is, it hasn’t. From our perspective, LinkedIn is actually set very far apart from other popular social media channels such as Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Due to this, the content you post and the tone in which it is written ought to be considered. We wouldn’t recommend a ‘copy and paste job’ from one platform to another if you want to yield the best results. Instead, your message should be professional, informative and share all your best aspects as a company. Though a friendly and approachable voice is fine, think about how laid back you want to be, and keep in mind that LinkedIn is a professional channel at the end of the day.

What Should You Post On LinkedIn?

Referring back to the point made above, many would argue LinkedIn is becoming more like Facebook due to the content that sometimes goes out on the platform. So, what should you post on LinkedIn? We love seeing stories on business growth, and even personal development. But where to draw the line is perhaps leaving sharing what you had for dinner to other social media platforms. Instead, from experience, the content that tends to perform well includes…

  • Corporate personnel updates such as new hires and internal promotions
  • Positive things happening for your business such as profits and other good news
  • Sharing what you’re up to; if you’ve just attended an industry event – let us know
  • Any charity or CSR work that you or your business is doing
  • Examples of good work from your business, we love a proud and positive post
  • Updates for your stakeholders such as product launches and notable dates

And this is just a starter for ten! In reality, there’s lot’s that can be shared on LinkedIn, so long as the messaging is right. The best way to decide whether content belongs on LinkedIn, is to ask yourself if it will add value? If the answer is yes, then fire away.

Utilising Your Employees As Brand Ambassadors

LinkedIn is a really powerful tool, especially for individuals. Industry influencers such as Steven Bartlett (ex-Social Chain), and James Watt of Brewdog, often use LinkedIn as a way to communicate on behalf of their business. Any company can encourage this, no matter its size or industry. Your employees can act as ambassadors of your brand and share some of your messages so that not everything is being filtered through the company channel. This not only helps diversify content, but it also increases the chances of getting it seen by more people, which is always a good thing. To our clients, we often encourage their employees to get involved with LinkedIn where they can, and this starts with having consistent profiles (team headshots work well) and maintaining a certain level of integrity with the content that’s posted. Having some gentle guidelines isn’t a bad idea, and means that all members of a team are always putting their best selves forward on this platform.

How Often Should You Be Using LinkedIn?

Sometimes, companies get it wrong by posting too often or too little on LinkedIn. Using it as an effective tool to PR your business is achieved by getting the balance just right. Content can be either short-form or long-form (though LinkedIn has a very generous word count – make use of it where appropriate!) but should be posted moderately. We find that 1-2 posts a week work best for our clients; but don’t just post for posting’s sake – always make sure you have something important to say.

Making Use Of LinkedIn’s Content Tools

Another thing worth considering when using LinkedIn to PR your business is the tools and capabilities it has as a platform. The site has the functionality to host blogs that sit on your page, and can be shared on to the feed. Though this isn’t (unfortunately) yet a feature available for business pages, it’s something to consider for individual members of a team. Powered through LinkedIn Pulse, blogs are a great way to craft long-form content that can be easily accessed on the app or on desktop. Some might think that blogging is dead, but we have to disagree. Despite obvious SEO benefits when writing content for your own site, even blogging on LinkedIn has its benefits. Not only does this give you a chance to talk at length about your thoughts and opinions, but every month, an average of 409 million people view 20 million blog posts and 77% of people say they read them – numbers don’t lie!

Strike The Right Balance Between Sales & Exposure

It was found by Hubspot, that LinkedIn is around 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter – so don’t discount it as a marketing and sales tool. For B2B businesses in particular, there’s a big audience at your disposal. Thinking back to blogs and the power they can have, it was found that 60% of people are inspired to seek out a product after reading about it online. Reach those audiences with the right messages and you’ll not only grow your brand, but you may even pick up more business in the process. You can’t go wrong with that! We often talk about how PR isn’t about generating sales, and that social media activity should not all be about ROI. However, when it comes to LinkedIn, we are aware of its capabilities as a sales vessel, and do consider this in our strategies. Striking the correct balance is a good way to go. Keep most of your content informational to help build your brand’s exposure, but then also take advantage of the opportunity every now and again to help market a new product, or your services.

We use LinkedIn every day for our clients, and it’s an area we’re well versed in here at Source PR. If you’re looking for social media assistance for your brand, then get in touch with our friendly team.

5 SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS TO KEEP YOUR ENGAGEMENT UP

/in /by

Plunged into the second England-wide lockdown of 2020, it’s imperative that communications are continued on social media. Remaining vocal not only reassures customers, but it also keeps a brand at the forefront of their mind. When a company has something to sell through lockdown, even better. You can read our blog from the first lockdown on the importance of continuing your marketing efforts by clicking here.

Below, our social media experts at The Source have gotten their heads together and put together some helpful social media tips to keep your engagement up. The kind of advice that focuses on quality engagement, as opposed to vanity metrics and big numbers. After all, it’s better to have 10 interactions from users with purchase intent, than 100 people who’ll just scroll on without a second thought.

Five Social Media Tips For Good Engagement

Don’t Sleep On Boosted Posts

Don’t have the money for a paid ad campaign on Facebook right now? Don’t worry. Boosted posts are a great way to get around this, as you can push specific content out to a certain, refined audience (that you build yourself). You won’t find yourself paying out big budgets for this either. If you have something particular to push over a short period of time, such as last-minute room availability in a hotel, or an offer linked to an upcoming holiday (Bonfire Night, for example), then a boosted post may be the ideal cost-effective solution for you. Pre-lockdown, we boosted a Facebook post for one of our clients in the hospitality sector and for just £30, over the course of 7 days the campaign returned over 100 targeted website link clicks, as well as a reach of nearly 7000 people. That’s around a 30p cost per click and 0.04p per eyeball. You can find out more about the ins and out of boosting posts on Facebook’s help page.

Social media tips - boosted posts on Facebook

Promote On Other Platforms

When it comes to boosted posts, the usual go-to is Facebook – but the same advice can be used on Instagram too, which has a boosted post function that works alongside Facebook (due to their ownership of the platform). This means it’s super easy to do. One that’s often not mentioned in social media tips, but one that’s well worth considering… LinkedIn. Their sponsor function is a little trickier to get to grips with, with extremely specific audience filters that can provide a reach anywhere from hundreds to millions of users – but once you do get a hang of the process, it’s a great way for clients to reach the audience that are exactly right for them. Despite it being a little more costly (a daily sponsored post must be £8.00 minimum), LinkedIn was designed with B2B companies in mind, so if your clients are aiming to reach businesses and business owners, it’s well worth the investment.

Hashtag Phrases, Not Words

You can get a lot of engagement out of hashtags on Twitter in particular, but one of the best approaches (due to character limit) is to focus on phrases as opposed to single words. The reason for this, is that if someone is wanting to find out information about marketing, for example, then it’s easy enough for them to simply type the word ‘marketing’ into the search bar. Whether you’ve hashtag-ged in the post or not, as long as you’ve used the right keyword, your tweet will still be filed there. Hashtags that consist of multiple words or slogans usually get better engagement as they’re related to specific search patterns. The best tactic to use is to jump on the hashtags that are trending, wherever they’re relevant to your brand. For example, if you work with a client that produces cakes or baking ingredients, then rather than using characters up to hashtag #cake, why not wait until a Tuesday and start up a conversation around the Great British Bake Off? Use the hashtags #GreatBritishBakeOff or #GBBO which are usually trending in the UK between around 7pm-10pm on a Tuesday evening (when GBBO is on TV, that is). Another tip when it comes to hashtags, is capitalising each word to make it easier to read, for example you should say #ShopLocal instead of #shoplocal.

Tap In To New Industries

Crossing over to new industries is a great way to build your following up and widen your exposure. If your business is in food sauces, for example, try linking your content in to relate to restaurants or cafes, as opposed to keeping it really niche. This way, your business is available to a much bigger audience – but as those restaurant owners might want to purchase your sauces in the future – it’s a relevant audience too. One of the best ways to reach these new sectors is to share insights and relevant content. Get a Feedly stream going that includes trade publications for the industries you’re hoping to target so you can reshare their content, and don’t miss appropriate hashtags too, especially on Twitter and LinkedIn. They can help make sure you’re reaching the right people.

Try New Things

Lastly, another great social media tip to keep up the momentum with your social media is to experiment and try new things. A/B testing is an excellent method to trial different kinds of content, and you’ll likely find a tactic that works really well for your business. Every brand is different so it’s imperative you find what suits yours best. You could also try different platforms to see what works well for you. You might have traditionally always used Facebook and Instagram, but how about LinkedIn to reach a more corporate audience? Or, if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, TikTok marketing is very new and upcoming and the reach can be insane. You can check out an example here of a local estate agents who’re using TikTok to showcase the homes they have for sale, and average reach is around 20k views with some videos reaching over 900k impressions.

Social media tips - use TikTok

Credit: Social Films

For more social media advice, along with PR and marketing insights too, be sure to keep a close eye on our blog. Or, to keep up with what we’re doing on social – you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.