Why should you share content on LinkedIn?
Will it make any difference at all?
If you’re a professional with a valuable perspective to share, you have to find the social audience it will resonate with – the audience you can draw into your world and become that thought leader. It’s that perspective that makes you unique – and that ability to spark conversation among your peers that can take you far.
LinkedIn can be a fantastic vehicle to drive business results.
It connects more than 380 million professionals. And it is where business people go. It’s demographic is older and wealthier than the other social media networks. Visitor-to-lead conversation rate that is 3X that of Facebook and Twitter.
So what works to drive results?
POSTING TIMES
What posting times, words and types of content work best for the LinkedIn audience? This infographic by iMarc includes the results of several studies on those topics.
LinkedIn members check their profiles in the morning Monday through Friday.
- The ideal length for LinkedIn post is 500 to 1,200 words.
- Prime times for user engagement are 1pm-3pm and 5pm-6pm.
- Posting 20 status updates a month will reach 60% of your user audience.
As with other social networks, LinkedIn posts that include images, links, or videos get more shares and better engagement.
- 44% of B2B marketers have generated leads via LinkedIn, whereas only 39% have generated leads through Facebook and just 30% through Twitter. (ReachForce)
- 41% of millionaires use LinkedIn
- 13% of LinkedIn users don’t have a Facebook account
- 59% of LinkedIn users don’t visit Twitter
- LinkedIn users spend 26% of their time on LinkedIn using the mobile app
MOST SHAREABLE WORDS
When you’re describing your experience and applying for a job do you let potential employers know that you’re motivated? Nice word—but everyone else uses it, too. “Motivated,” in fact, is the most overused buzzword on LinkedIn profiles, followed up by “passionate” and “creative.”
LinkedIn Top Ten Global Buzzwords for 2014
- Motivated
- Passionate
- Creative
- Driven
- Extensive experience
- Responsible
- Strategic
- Track record
- Organizational
- Expert
Which words seem to drive engagement on LinkedIn? Here’s a list:
- New technology
- Plugins
- Launches
- Jobs
- Won
- Under Budget
- Created
Try to include a positive, business-related word in a headline.
LinkedIn can be an especially fertile social network for B2B companies. Posts the include new information or answer questions that other business people might have are a good way to introduce your ideas or your business.
Hottest skill on LinkedIn in 2014 that got people hired:
- Statistical Analysis and Data Mining
LINKS
In general, anything relevant to your blog topic on LinkedIn or your website is worthy of link consideration. Think of your linking as providing context and supplemental information on the topic to your readers and try not to think much beyond that. Following that principle will keep your links purposed and useful.
The way linking actually promotes and attracts visitors to your LinkedIn blog is that when you link to someone’s blog or website, your blogging software (I don’t know of one that doesn’t do this) sends a pingback, or electronic notification, to the owner of that blog or website saying their content has been linked to.
If they see the notification they’re likely to click through and see the context of how you linked to them.
- Including a link in your post can boost engagement up to 200%.
- Linking to a YouTube video increases sharing up to 75%.
IMAGES
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. On Social Media Photos they are 1,000+.
Is your brand telling visual stories?
Are you empowering your fans to create and share visual content for you?
Brands who create and curate visual content are seeing wider reach, more shares and traffic to their real or virtual doorstep.
- Images result in a 98% higher comment rate.
- Company updates with images have the same 98% comment rate.
- Increase in likelihood that your LinkedIn profile will get viewed if you include a photo – 11X
NUMBER OF CONVERSIONS PER SOCIAL PLATFORM
To put that into real numbers, LinkedIn is responsible for more than 80% of a business’s social media leads! All the other social media platforms put together only amount to 19.67% of leads!
Image from Business2Community.
SURPRISING LINKEDIN STATS
- Increase in profile views for LinkedIn members that list skills on their profiles: 13X
- Most overused word on LinkedIn profiles: MOTIVATED
- Average number of connections CEO’s have on LinkedIn – 930
- 56% of LinkedIn users are Male
- 44% of LinkedIn users are Female
Unsurprisingly for a job-oriented social network, LinkedIn’s most notable demographic skew is based on education.
- Thirty-eight percent of college-educated adult web users are on LinkedIn, compared to only 16% of those with some college education.
The social network’s sweet spot is among 30- to 49-year-olds
- Old enough to have their careers on track — with 27% of U.S. internet users in this age bracket using LinkedIn.
In general, LinkedIn has an older user base
- LinkedIn is also the only top social network to feature higher penetration rates in the 50-to-64 age bracket than in the 18-to-29 age group.
Infographic by iMarc
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About Blair
Blair Evan Ball is a Social Media Coach and founder of Prepare1, a company that works with businesses, individuals and non-profits. He is a former executive with a Fortune 50 company, and his national division did $1Billion+ in sales annually.
Blair has written three e-books: Facebook for Business Made Easy, Facebook Pages for Business Made Easy, and WordPress Blog Setup Made Easy.
Blair also educates, trains entrepreneurs and business professionals how to amplify their brand, increase revenues, and raise more funds.
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