Why LinkedIn is the most underrated and effective marketing strategy

Why LinkedIn is the most underrated and effective marketing strategy

“The professional social networking site.” With a reputation like that, it's only understandable if you have trouble seeing how LinkedIn can help your business grow personal trainer, Nutritionist or Health coach. Isn’t it too formal and “corporate” for your target audience?

Well, the truth is that LinkedIn has undergone massive changes in the last few years.

New features designed to increase engagement (such as LinkedIn Creator Mode) have helped diversify the industries, interests, and demographics represented on the platform.

Meaning? LinkedIn is quickly becoming an essential platform for your business when it comes to marketing. Hard to believe? This can help you convince yourself: 25% of all American adults use LinkedIn – and 22% of them use it every day.

To help you leverage this powerful but often underrated platform to attract new customers, drive traffic to your website, and build an engaged community, this article covers everything you need to know about using LinkedIn as an inbound marketing channel.

Why LinkedIn should be a strategic priority in your marketing plan

LinkedIn has 810 million members in 200 countries and regions worldwide.

It's not the largest of the social networks - Instagram has about it one billion monthly active users while Facebook arrives 2.91 billion monthly active users – The magic of the platform lies in its ability to achieve marketing goals.

Accordingly Sprout Social, companies that market on LinkedIn generate 227% more leads than companies that engage in Facebook marketing alone. Additionally, audiences are exposed to brand and acquisition messages on the platform six times more likely to convert.

But why is LinkedIn so great at conversion? There are two main factors:

The “right” audience and “right” intent: Unlike other social media platforms, users are not looking for fun, entertaining content (e.g. Buzzfeed quizzes, memes, or wedding photos), but instead are looking for valuable posts that educate them when using the platform. Positive consumer perception: The better someone feels about your company, the better more likely they sign up for your coaching services. But the key to improving your brand perception? A presence on LinkedIn, according to a 2017 Custom Nielsen Lab Study for LinkedIn. Brands on LinkedIn are perceived as “higher quality,” “more professional,” “smarter,” and “more respectable.”

And companies are noticing LinkedIn's untapped marketing potential. Examples of brands that have effectively used the platform in their organic social media strategies to attract an audience interested in their products include: Lululemon, Callaway Golf and FabFitFun.

Companies don’t just pump money into paid content either. Content creation on LinkedIn increased 60% in 2020 overall.

Bottom line? Including LinkedIn in yoursMarketing strategyis a good idea.

Two types of customers you can attract on LinkedIn

There are two “types” of customers you can attract on LinkedIn.

The first would be individual customers. These are professionals who want to work with you on a personal basis. And the second would be “corporate clients” who hire you for recurring sessions, such as: B. a monthly fitness workshop if you are a personal trainer.

But wait, can LinkedIn really give you opportunities to land large-scale corporate deals? Consider: four out of five people drive business decisions on the platform.

Present the right content to these decision makers (e.g. CEOs, COOs, and team managers) and you will significantly increase your chances of becoming health and wellness providers for their company.

Ultimately, though, you have to ask yourself: What would you most like to target? While large-scale contracts can be more financially rewarding, they are not suitable for everyone.

When you have a clear idea of ​​who your target audience is (i.e. individual customers or corporate customers), you can fine-tune your marketing message so that everyone you want to reach knows with certainty that you are targeting them.

How to use LinkedIn to market your business

Now it's time for what is probably the most important part of this article: exactly how you can use LinkedIn to increase brand awareness, build engaged communities, and increase your sales as a health and fitness professional.

#1: Optimize your LinkedIn profile page

The audience you want to reach is on LinkedIn.

But with so many other companies (FYI: there are over 57 million companies on LinkedIn (and that doesn't include the profile pages of entrepreneurs like you!) vying for your attention, well, getting noticed could be a challenge.

This is where a strong and consistent profile page can make all the difference. Here are some profile improvements you could make to immediately stand out:

High quality profile picture:A photo on your profile gives you 21 times more profile views. So make sure you upload a great profile picture. Make sure the way you look is new and that your face takes up about 60% of the total space. Set a background photo: The background photo allows you to tell visitors more about you as a person. Here it's not so important that you - or your face - is in the picture, but you still want to make it memorable. For example, if you're a personal trainer, you might opt ​​for an action shot of yourself at the gym.
Create a great headline:A well-crafted headline can help visitors understand what you do and how you can help them, increasing the impact of your profile. Summarize your expertise and achievements in as few words as possible. For example, “A passionate nutritionist who helps people with autoimmune diseases reclaim their lives” might work for a Certified specialist in holistic autoimmune nutrition. Tell your story: You have a story to tell, and you can tell it however you want in your LinkedIn About Us section. The goal here is to provide more information about who you are and why you do what you do. Concrete numbers (e.g., "I've helped more than 3,000 clients live healthier lives") give you credibility, so don't hesitate to provide them when you have the numbers.
Go public:If you want potential customers to find you, you need to make your profile public. To do this, follow the steps here. Get a custom URL: Customizing your URL can make your profile easier to find. When you first join LinkedIn, you are typically assigned a URL that combines parts of your first and last name along with a random string of numbers (e.g. JaimePrit187). If possible, remove the numbers and make your URL your full first and last name, e.g. E.g. “Jaime Pritchett”. Try adding a middle initial or the industry you work in if it is taken.

#2: Create a content calendar

As with all marketing campaigns, it's important to develop an overarching goal. For example, do you want to increase brand awareness, build a community, or get users to sign large-scale, long-term coaching contracts?

Your marketing goal influences the types of content you create.

Make sure you also set an end date for your campaign. It's best to avoid letting your campaigns run indefinitely so you can evaluate your results to see if you could do things better.

Once all that is done, create a content calendar. This is simply a written schedule of when you plan to publish upcoming content (e.g. once a day, twice a week, or once a week).

I'm wondering how you would find the time to schedule your release asFull-time health and wellness professional?

There is good news:LinkedIn is known for having one of the longest content lifespan among social media platforms. This means you don’t have to hit “publish” every day. Instead, choose a schedule that makes sense for you – and stick to it.

Whether you publish once a week or every two weeks, your network will expect your content regularly, and that builds trust.

Let your content work for you

The following tips will help your content go a long way:

Understanding LinkedIn-appropriate content:An important thing to note is that “sales-promoting” content generally doesn’t perform well on LinkedIn. Instead, platform users are more interested in itmeaningful, informative and educational content, which makes perfect sense for a professional social network when you think about it. Industry trends, how-tos, and thought leadership content types tend to perform best on LinkedIn. So let's say you are a Certified Prenatal and Postnatal Fitness Specialist. You could perhaps write an article describing the connection between physically active pregnant workers and increased work productivity.
Use hashtags:True. Hashtags also work on LinkedIn. In fact, they are the key to opening up new target groups, industries and niches. However, the same rules apply: find a balance between relevant and popular hashtags. You can do this by conducting hashtag research. For example, if you have a Certified Pilates fitness trainer you could start by searching #pilates to see how many people follow the hashtag and how often it is used.
Include rich media content:Don’t think that you’re limited to creating text-only content either. Other content formats could increase your reach and engagement. For example, LinkedIn posts are displayed with images twice as high interaction rates than text-only posts, and users are 20 times more likely to reshare a video post. Aside from changing your content format types, you should also create posts of different lengths. A good mix of quick, catchy posts and long-form stories could help you appeal to a wider range of users (e.g. people with little time). It's not always necessary to create content from scratch: On days when you're suffering from severe writer's block, remember that your content doesn't always have to be created "from scratch." Feel free to recycle content you've already written in the past (e.g. posted on your website). Give it a new spin or make minor changes so you're not literally copying and pasting. Otherwise, you could also share external articles. As long as the content you post has value – and is relevant to your audience – you will succeed.

#3: Collaborate with influencers and experts

Influencer marketing works. And while you may have thought that its application was discontinued on lifestyle-related social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, the truth is this There's a place for this on LinkedIn to.

There are many LinkedIn voices and experts on the platform. Contact them to see if they would collaborate on a blog post or star in a video. You can also work with them to publish content from their accounts and market your health and wellness business to a wider audience.

But how do you find influencers on LinkedIn? The easiest way is to do a content search.

Go to the LinkedIn search bar and set the filter to “Posts.” Then let's say you're looking for LinkedIn influencers who regularly share information about a healthy lifestyle. Type “healthy living” and you’ll see relevant content.

Look for posts with high levels of engagement (e.g. reactions, comments, and views). This suggests the person likely has a large audience and could be an influencer you could work with.

#4: Use analytics

So how do you know if your content strategy is paying off? You need to look at your LinkedIn analytics data; There are two parts to this:

Posts: Every post you publish or share on LinkedIn has its own analytics. You can access the post directly and quickly get a sense of how many users interacted with your content (e.g. number of views and likes). You can even get details about the companies your audience comes from and the location of the accounts that view your posts. Dashboard Analytics: Your dashboard analytics provide valuable insight into the total number of views on your profile over the last 90 days. (Note: The Premium service allows you to see exactly who viewed your profile.) Other data points include post views and search appearances, including where your searchers work, what your searchers do, and what keywords your searchers used. It's a wealth of information.

It's important to track your results. Knowing how effective your marketing campaign is (or where it's falling short) can guide you to next steps.

Take away

LinkedIn can be an invaluable part of yougeneral content marketing strategy. The platform’s ability to help you create a…

... more about that in the next part.
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