Did you know that the number of LinkedIn users got up to 822 million in 2022? That number will only keep increasing over time, and there’s a reason why. LinkedIn has become the leading social networking platform for professionals, and it has helped thousands of businesses grow their followings and communicate their messages with other like-minded people. But LinkedIn isn’t just for networking, and many are missing out on using it to its full potential.
Furthermore, LinkedIn can give you all the tools and data that you need to know what individuals to target and what connects you with other professionals. So, we are here today with a 3-part series that can take your LinkedIn from basic to top-notch, because we believe everyone should know about the tips and tricks hidden within LinkedIn’s seemingly straightforward pages.
In this 3-part series we’ll go over the best advanced LinkedIn strategies you should start taking advantage of ASAP so read on, and once you’re done stay tuned for the next part in the series.
LinkedIn Groups:
We have to start off with the wonder of LinkedIn groups. These groups are basically hubs for professionals in the same industries or that share the same interests. Not only is it in your best interest to join other groups, but you can also make your own. Having your own group can be a great way to promote your business to new customers. Furthermore, groups can help you grow a community of people with the same interests and professions. Here are some ways you can take advantage of groups:
- Engage with others: The main point of being in a group is to meet new people and talk to the ones you already know in a professional setting. Liking, commenting and overall engaging with posts from people in the group will be a great way to form meaningful connections.
- Study your Market: The people in these groups are always potential customers. From being in a group you can gather information about what people are interested in and apply that knowledge to growing your brand. Also, by introducing yourself to these people and letting them get to know you, they will be more likely to trust your brand.
- Do some research: All the knowledge shared in this group can give you ideas on how to grow your brand, or how to grow as a professional, use everything you learn here to your advantage.
- Strengthen your brand: LinkedIn groups can help establish you as an industry expert. By sharing your own knowledge with others and answering their questions you will brand yourself as an expert that is also willing to help.
To find relevant groups to join you should use the search feature at the top of your homepage and search using keywords. You can also select from the suggestions of groups you may like. To create your own group, you can visit the “groups” option to the left of your homepage right below your profile and then go to “create new group”.
LinkedIn Ad Targeting:
We all know that ads are only good if you can get them in front of the right people. Fortunately, LinkedIn has all the right tools to put your brand where it needs to be. With LinkedIn ad targeting tools you can target people based on their professional preferences more than their personal ones as opposed to other apps. Some things you can target include:
- Location: It’s in your best interest to target people in places where your business operates or can reach them. In this field, you can go as broad as country or as specific as state, city and metropolitan area.
- Company: You also have the option of specifying if you’re trying to target individuals from a company based on their connections, followers, industry, name or even company size.
- Demographics: This is where you’ll be able to specify the age and gender of the people you are trying to reach.
- Education: Another way to narrow down your audience is to include what level of education the people you are looking for have, what field of study they specialized in, and you could even include schools.
- Job Experience: Here you can specify things like job function, seniority, job title, skills, and years of experience. Think of it as if you were looking for one specific person.
- Interests: These allow you to target based on a member’s interests, including groups that they may be a part of.
A few more tips for Targeting Ads:
- Don’t get too specific at first, casting a wider net is better when you are getting started, as you can get more specific as you go. The campaign manager will show you an estimate reach and a suggested range while building your audience, and according to LinkedIn themselves, a good target audience to start with is anything over 50,000 for sponsored content and text ads, and over 15,000 for message ads.
- Another tool called Audience Expansion, is LinkedIn’s way to help you reach an even wider audience by showing your ads to audiences with similar attributes to your target audience.
- Audience Insights can help you get to know your audience by showing your audience’s interests, locations, jobs, and companies. You can leverage this information to create content that they will find interesting.
- Going off the last point, remember to make sure that your content is right for your audience.
- Finally, keep track of how your campaign is performing by using the campaign manager tool to see who exactly is engaging with your campaign.
Advanced Search:
Arguably, one of LinkedIn’s most useful tools, advanced search, gives you the option to find people by specific factors instead of their names. This can help you whether you are looking for one person or a group of people with shared characteristics. For example, let’s say you are looking for marketing managers in your area, you can type that into the search bar and then below you’ll find all the filters you can use to narrow down your search. To get people, choose that option from the bar. All the way to the left you’ll find the “all filters” button. The all filters drop down will let you be as specific as you can with your search.
With Advanced Search, you can even find a specific person if you know some information about them but don’t know their name and are looking to connect.
LinkedIn Strategies with GreenStar Marketing
So, there you go, we are all done with Part 1 of our advanced LinkedIn strategies series. Stay tuned for more! And if this blog left you with some questions about LinkedIn strategies, reach out to us today! At GreenStar Marketing, we can help you create the best content to get your LinkedIn to the next level! See you soon.
