How to increase brand awareness and drive website traffic without sending a single message

In today’s virtual world, brand presence and user engagement is a key driver for business growth. With the rise of social media, traditional marketing methods are making way for a digital marketing revolution.

One needs to clearly understand the effectiveness of each social media platform for deriving better results. In most cases, popular social media platforms are used for leisure and not for serious business.On the other hand, LinkedIn offers a unique platform for professional networking, lead generation and brand management.

LinkedIn marketing is emerging as a powerful alternative to traditional marketing approaches of B2B companies. The sheer magnitude of networking offered by LinkedIn marketing is free of cost and has high impact. Let us delve deep into the aspects of LinkedIn marketing that can increase your brand awareness. 

Driving brand awareness through LinkedIn content marketing

More than 450 million professionals across the world connect through LinkedIn platform. Unlike other social media platforms, people consume business related content on LinkedIn. This is a great opportunity for businesses to focus on creating brand awareness through it. For B2B companies, this offers a much-needed niche population that are more likely to be their customers. Instead of diverting focus on mass appeal, LinkedIn marketing becomes a tool for business growth through brand awareness.

According to recent statistics, LinkedIn marketing drives about 80% social media leads for any given business. From a B2B marketer’s perspective, approximately 93% of them consider it to be a very effective place for generating leads. In this context, it is not surprising that more than half of business website traffic originate from LinkedIn. Understanding various features of LinkedIn is necessary for maximising its potential as an effective marketing tool.

LinkedIn Posts V/s Messages- What’s more effective for your brand?

Unless you are a newbie, as you will be aware, similar to the popular social media platforms, LinkedIn also has features such as connections (friends), groups, content creation and sharing options. The content usually appears as a post that has features for incorporating text, video and images. Additionally, there is private messaging option allowing direct contact with your connection.

For creating a proper impact for your brand what is the best option available? Public posts or private messages? Let us understand this scenario better. The power of vast networks is the main strength of LinkedIn. Brand visibility can be achieved only by reaching out to a mass audience. In this context a relevant, trendy and short content is always better than private messages. With multiple posts and messages flashing on people’s timeline, a message can always go unnoticed but a powerful post with a compelling CTA (Call to Action) can create quick results.

Check out some of the features that can render your content a better LinkedIn marketing tool than even a private message.

Multiplier effect

Brand awareness and marketing is all about getting large number of impressions in a short time span. The content generates multiple viewership simultaneously and impacts visibility. In private messages, it takes longer time for people to respond. Sometimes users discard messages from unfamiliar sources as spam.

• User Engagement : A public content post can engage multiple users effectively. Users can like, share and comment on these posts. More user engagement means increased visibility for the brand. The content sharing by different people ensure that it can reach people beyond your direct connection list. User engagement through comments section is an effective tool for prompting people to talk about your brand. Posting website links through them can direct a lot of traffic.  
• The power of Hashtags: Hashtags are a powerful tool for grabbing attention in the world of social media. The use of trendy and relevant hashtags that resonate with your brand can work wonders. Content posts are the best place for placing these hashtags. The algorithms of LinkedIn ensure that your posts reach the right set of people while using appropriate hashtags. Private message being a one-on-one conversation doesn’t fit the use of hashtags. Moreover, develop your own proprietary hashtag eg. #Trevisan / #TrevisanTips. Whe people type this into the search bar, they can see all your posts with this in and follow this hashtag to see your posts in their feed. Try it!! Type #motivation into the search bar and just see how may followers that one has!
• Effective place for CTAs (Call to Action): CTAs in a public post is a very effective mechanism to engage your prospective clients. Towards the end of your exciting post you can convert the viewer’s enthusiasm to drive traffic to your website. Inserting CTAs such as ‘visit our website’ or ‘contact us for more details’ makes sure that the user engages with your brand instantly. In private messages people might be hesitant to click the links from an unknown sender.
• Dynamic Brand identity: Content marketing on LinkedIn can incorporate all the dynamic aspects of your brand. Rather than a direct sales mode, on LinkedIn the content grab attention through subjects that are trendy and useful. Posting aspects on thought leadership or expressing views on industry trends are major ways in which you can drive viewership. Adding industry relevant images and videos increase the visibility of the posts multi fold grabbing immediate attention and response. The private message can’t incorporate many details and requires several follow-ups.
• Complete Your Profile: Your LinkedIn Profile is your first impression on the site. Make it a good one. Create a branded company profile. Make your company page personal, professional, and memorable. One of the best ways to do this is through your banner image - keep it branded but personalised. Include your logo for brand recognition on the site, and to further develop trust with your market. Tell a brief story about your company’s history in your “about” section. Complete your personal profile. As a content marketer, small business owner, sales manager or CEO, you are the one who’s likely going to be using LinkedIn to network. People are people and we relate better to an actual person than to a business. Complete your personal profile, with a personalise yet professional summary. Upload a professional, yet friendly headshot.
• Creating a group of loyal followers: Consistent posts and fresh ideas can create the ultimate virtual brand personality for your business. Usually brands that consistently post new content is always perceived as a credible entity. This gets converted into a group of loyal followers who constantly share the post in their network. This expands the realm of brand awareness and automatically converts to website traffic.

3. Be consistently active:

If you want to drive traffic to your website from LinkedIn, then you need to be active, and post frequently on the site.

Post status updates a few times a week. This ensures that your friendly face and/or company logo is seen often by your business network. The more you’re seen by your connections, the more trust you build, and the more likely they will click through to your blog. Additionally, this trust can develop into potential clients or partners.

Don’t spam your network. Use your judgement (or analytics) to determine how many times a week you should be posting.

Post article links to your blog. Use LinkedIn to nurture relationships further, by inviting your contacts to connect with on your business blog too.  

Post links to other articles. If you don’t have two or three articles in a week to post, post links to other articles too. For example, post articles about news in your industry, or from well known industry leaders.

In short, creating engaging posts are essential to communicating your brand identity. The reach and speed offered by a public post is higher than that of an individual message.

Conclusion

LinkedIn content marketing is a strong tool in your digital marketing arsenal. It can be used effectively to drive brand awareness among people especially the prospective clients. If you are a B2B marketer, this is the best opportunity to reach out to clients. Regularly create engaging posts about your company, products and services. It will surely bring in a lot of traction for your brand.

If you would like to a regular feed of content for your personal or business profile but don't know where to start, schedule an initial phone consultation here:

https://calendly.com/melaniegoodmantrevisan/linkedin-diagnostic-call

#finances #business #entrepreneurship #LinkedIntraining #Leadgeneration #TrevisanTips #Trevisan