Is your consultancy using LinkedIn to its full potential?

There’s no other social media platform quite like it for building valuable networks and establishing fruitful business relationships. Which is why it should be a key part of your digital marketing strategy.

The pandemic has pressed this point home even more. Face-to-face networking hasn’t been possible, so instead we’ve turned to connecting online. In fact, early in the crisis LinkedIn reported a surge in interactions and it now has more than 740 million users worldwide.

As Covid-19 comes under control there may be a drift back to conference halls and coffee meetings, but this trend to digital working and networking is here to stay.

Why focus on LinkedIn?

In a nutshell, LinkedIn does business networking better than almost any other B2B marketing channel. It gives you direct access to potential clients and their key decision makers.

And they’ll be using it to talk about business, as opposed to, say, Facebook where they’re more likely to be sharing holiday snaps (remember those days!). You can become a part of their professional conversations, tapping into their concerns and demonstrating your expertise.

As your presence on the site grows, you’re likely to find them joining in with your conversations in return.  

Building your LinkedIn presence  

But here comes the tricky part. How can you make yourself heard? After all LinkedIn is a noisy place with lots of people posting content all the time.

There’s no magic bullet. What you need to do is really commit to posting valuable content and interacting with your network on a regular and long-term basis. One piece of content, no matter how brilliant, is unlikely to get much traction if you haven’t built an audience.

That’s why LinkedIn needs to be a pillar of your marketing strategy, not just left for someone to pick up when they have time. A drumbeat of content that addresses the latest talking points and your clients’ specific challenges will show that your consultancy knows its stuff.

Just as you wouldn’t begin a conversation with a potential client at a networking event by reeling off the top three benefits of your service, you shouldn’t on LinkedIn. A hard sell will have them scrolling on by.

They’re more likely to remember you if leave them thinking, ‘wow they really understand the challenges I’m facing, I’d love to talk more!’.

Putting the social into social media

Recognising that LinkedIn is a social space is another important element in making yourself heard.

Once you’ve created a post, amplifying its reach to as many people as possible is key. Here are a few things you can try:

  • Tag people in your posts that you believe will genuinely interest them. You’ll be drawing them into the conversation and encouraging them to interact with your post, which could open the door to new opportunities.
  • Add relevant hashtags. LinkedIn will suggest some as you post and a search will show you how they are being used and if they have any followers. For instance, #consultancyservices has 2,158 followers.  
  • Ask everyone in your team to engage with posts from your company page. Sharing the post to their own personal network or adding a comment will encourage their connections to engage with the post too.
  • When building an audience for your company page, you can use the Invite To Follow tool to send invitations to your own network to follow the page. You could add other members of the team as page Admins and ask them to invite their contacts too. You have up to 100 invite credits per month which you can use.

Widening your reach in this way will generate more likes, shares and comments. And the more engagements a post has, the more LinkedIn will promote it in people’s feeds.

Tip of the iceberg

Of course, LinkedIn isn’t the only platform out there and we know it can be hard to keep up with the ever-growing list of ways to market your business. That’s why it’s important to focus on the ones that really generate results for consultancies. And when it comes to social media, that’s LinkedIn.

If you need support to put a LinkedIn strategy in place that’ll connect your consultancy with the right people and opportunities, we’d be happy to chat about how we can help.