The use of social media – and particularly, LinkedIn – should be an integral part of your marketing efforts. Social media, with little cost and modest effort, helps you achieve so many objectives: it builds awareness for you and your firm, it helps to cement your reputation around the topics you post about, and it helps potential buyers to get to know you a little bit better, especially if you sometimes post personal or fun content.
But here’s the problem… A single post has a shelf life of just a few seconds. It doesn’t take long for a post – even a really interesting one – to end up so far down on someone’s feed that they never get to see it. ☹ So, the question is… how do you increase the reach of a single post?
Here are 6 ways to help you do that…
#1. When appropriate, you can post it on your company’s LinkedIn profile. You likely have company ‘followers’ that are not your connections… so, give them a chance to see it, too.
#2. Unless what you’re posting about is very timely, you can post the same thing on multiple days and at different times. Let’s say that you’re putting up a post to promote a recent blog post that you published. That blog post is good today, next week and likely still good in six months. So, why not use LinkedIn to continuously promote it over that entire time? In addition to all of the benefits you get by using social, you’ll be maximizing eyeballs on your blog, as well.
- Note: I probably would not post about ‘curated content’ for six months, but I certainly would post about it a few times over a few weeks.
- Note: to help with scheduling and posting over a longer period of time, you’ll need a tool like HootSuite or Buffer.
#3. Leverage your coworkers. Do the math! Even with lots of overlap in connections, the total number of connections between you and your coworkers will be many times that of just you alone. So, get them to share your posts with their connections. And there are two different ways to do that:
- Have them ‘like it,’ using the thumbs up icon
- Have them ‘re-post it with comments’
In both cases, their engagement shows up in the Notifications section of all of their connections. Talk about a multiplier effect!
#4. Post it in the appropriate LinkedIn groups. Posting something relevant in a LinkedIn group provides two key benefits:
- It’s in alignment with the interests of that group. For example, post something about ‘qualitative research’ in a group centered on ‘qualitative research’ and you’re right in their sweet spot.
- Posting here gives you exposure to thousands of relevant professionals who aren’t yet connections.
Again… A great multiplier.
#5. Use the right symbols. There are two symbols on your keyboard that can help your post be found and seen:
- The ‘hashtag’ (#) allows your post to be searched for and found by people with an interest in whatever that phrase is. For example, if your post is about online survey research, insert ‘#onlinesurveys’ anywhere in your post, then, anyone who searches on that term will find that post.
- The ‘at symbol’ (@) allows you to ‘tag’ specific people so your post automatically shows up in their Notifications feed. So, if you wanted me to see one of your posts, just insert @SteveHenke at the bottom of your post.
#6. Lastly… keep connecting! Getting broader exposure of your posts is truly a ‘numbers game.’ More coworkers liking it, more groups to post it in and – most importantly – more connections in your network. The easiest way to do this is to block off a chunk of time every week, put it on your calendar and don’t skip it. Commit to spending that time inviting people to connect. This really is a case of ‘more is better.’
Bottom Line
As I stated at the beginning of this article, social media – and especially LinkedIn – should be a cornerstone piece of your marketing efforts. And the key to increased LinkedIn effectiveness is spending a little extra effort sharing your posts with a significantly broader audience. I promise you, it will absolutely be worth it! Good luck.