LinkedIn Marketing For SMEs

LinkedIn dominates the B2B landscape with over one billion professional users worldwide, making it the go-to platform for business networking and marketing. Remarkably, 4 out of 5 LinkedIn users influence business decisions within their oganisation, making LinkedIn an essential marketing platform for engaging industry leaders.

This article explores effective LinkedIn marketing strategies, highlighting how businesses of all sizes can leverage the platform’s features to build networks, engage prospects, and drive growth. Readers will learn practical steps for optimizing their LinkedIn presence, creating impactful content, and utilizing analytics to achieve marketing success.

Why Use LinkedIn for Marketing Your Business

LinkedIn stands head and shoulders above any other B2B platform with over one billion professional users worldwide. That includes over 254 million accounts across North America and 41 million in the UK, with 16.2% of LinkedIn Users actively engaging on the platform daily.

It’s estimated that 4 out of every 5 people on LinkedIn contribute to driving business decisions, with 10% of users holding leadership or senior executive positions. Long story short, if you want your business to be found by the movers and shakers within your industry, then LinkedIn is where you’ll find them.

Native Marketing Opportunities

Within the platform, there are plenty of native (in-built) features to help users find solutions or promote their services. This includes network building, various messaging functions, native advertising, organic post feeds, company and personal profile pages, a newsletter function, a suite of analytics, online events and webinars, along with dozens of other useful marketing tool and features.

It’s just a matter of getting to know what’s available, how it works, and how to use it effectively, and that’s exactly what I’m going to share with you. 

Who Should Use LinkedIn?

I speak to a lot of business owners who are on LinkedIn, but don’t yet appreciate what it can offer. I can’t tell you how many times I hear…

‘nah, I get my clients by word of mouth through local networking events’,

…or,

‘I’m on there, but it’s never worked for me. Maybe it’s not right for my business’.

The reality is LinkedIn is a gold mine of opportunity for every business, provided you know how to use it, and have a clear goal in mind. So lets take a look how businesses can deploy LinkedIn within their marketing and communications strategy.

Consultants and Coaches

With a little bit of focus, time, and effort, you’ll be able to identify your ideal customer profile and send them connection invites. Over time building up a significant network of prospects, all hungry for the type of value and skills you offer.

If you’re short on time or experience, you can use an agency service such as our Network Building package to automate the connecting process and generate over 250 new connections every month for you.

Small Businesses

Smaller companies can leverage LinkedIn to reach a highly targeted audience with a relatively small marketing budget. It’s possible to build a excellent B2B network using connection invites, as well as recruiting new followers by commenting on other people’s posts in groups of feeds where your ideal customer is likely to see them, and consequently find you.

By allocating just one hour each day to this type of engagement, small businesses can build an audience containing thousands of potential customers in under 12 months. Opening the opportunity to raise the profile of your business and services by direct messaging or posting organic content on a regular basis.

SMEs

If you’re an SME, you probably have a slightly larger marketing budget allowing you to experiment with LinkedIn Ad campaigns.

Ads are a great way to scale at pace. A well thought out LinkedIn Ads campaign can hit 100,000 impressions for around £1,000 per month. Sure, it comes with additional costs such as campaign management, Ad creation and so on, but the opportunity to target your ideal customer with a series of complex messages through a set of Ads is highly effective in building trust, raising your profile and converting leads.

Ad variations can also be used to accelerate the growth of your Company Page, or to run high volume outreach messaging direct to key decision makers through InMail campaigns.

Enterprises

For large companies, the ability to invest and scale is significant. A high-quality organic posting campaign is a no brainer, paid Ads can reach a huge audience. But LinkedIn marketing can go much further than just focusing on lead generation.

The opportunities are limitless no matter what size of industry you operate. But if LinkedIn is so effective then why do so many people struggle to get results?

I speak to business owners every day, and they appreciate the need to be on LinkedIn, but just can’t seem to get a return on the time and resource they are investing in it. Well, it’s all about the execution, and to get that bit right, you need to understand the algorithm and what makes LinkedIn users tick.  

How the LinkedIn Algorithm Works

Algorithms are complex systems that process content and measure behaviour signals to determine the visibility of content on social media platforms and search engines. It controls what posts appear in your feed, how well your own content performs, and every other variable related to content visibility on LinkedIn. This stuff isn’t happening by chance, it’s all as a result of the calculations made by the platform’s algorithm.

One of the core concepts behind the algorithm is the Social Selling Index, a scoring system that rates the quality of your profile, and consequently influences various aspects related to your performance and experiences on the platform.

Social Selling Index (SSI)

LinkedIn publish four core elements that contribute to making up your social selling score. Each element can contribute up to 25 points of the total 100 points available.  

1. Establish your professional brand
2. Find the right people
3. Engage with insights
4. Build relationships

I’m not going to get into too much detail here, but let’s just say to get the best out of LinkedIn you need to participate across each of the four activities listed above. In summary:

1. Establish your professional brand: Optimise your profile page and produce thoughtful high-quality content
2. Find the right people: Use Sales Navigator or one of the LinkedIn premium tools to find new prospects and contacts
3. Engage with insights: Participate by commenting with insightful thoughts and sharing useful content
4. Build relationships: Build your network by connecting with decision makers and building trust

Having an appreciation of the four different aspects of SSI is helpful, but ultimately if you produce high-quality content and have a strategy to engage with other people and their content, you’ll have the majority of ‘Establishing Your Brand’ and ‘Engage with Insights’ covered.

The other two aspects ‘Find the Right People’ and ‘Build relationships’ can be achieved at a basic level by identifying your ideal customer, and connecting with them on a consistent basis.

Engagement

LinkedIn’s algorithm will prioritise content based on the level of engagement it receives, the time frame in which engagement occurs, and the content’s relevance to your network.

Before I explain how this works in practice, I should explain the concept of LinkedIn’s 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd degree connections.

A 1^st degree connection refers to a person you’re already connected with on LinkedIn. A 2^nd degree connection is someone connected with your 1st degree connection, but not connected with you. A sort of friend of a friend.

A 3^rd degree connection is connected to your 2^nd degree connection, but not connected with you. Try to think of it like an interlinking network of professionals, as that’s exactly what LinkedIn is, a networking platform.

So, hopefully that’s cleared up…let’s get back to how the algorithm works in relation to your network and the distribution of your content.

When you make a post on LinkedIn it gets distributed to a small segment of your 1st-degree connections. LinkedIn uses this to basically gauge the level of interest in your post. If the post received a high level of engagement (likes, comments, shares) LinkedIn will see that as a signal of high interest, triggering the algorithm to extend the post across a broader segment of your network.

If more people engage, LinkedIn will consider pushing it out to your 2^nd degree connections. If they engage with your content, it may even get distributed more broadly across 3rd-degree connections.

But engagement is a two-way street. Your network will hopefully engage with your content, and you will be required to engage with their content. There are many different way to engage on LinkedIn including; likes, comments, share, view, post, message, follow or endorse. Each of these actions will stimulate your SSI score and consequently lead to your content getting better reach and increased visibility.

There are several other factors at play here, such as cadence of engagement, the quality of engagement, and the type of content, which I will talk about in more detail later. But if you want to know more about the practicable application of engagement, and how to use it to improve content performance, check out [LinkedIn Pro Hacks]

Optimise Your LinkedIn Profile

Think about it…

Your profile is a statement of who you are, what you do and how you want the world to perceive you. If it’s half-baked, full of errors, has no header image or profile image, you’re dead in the water before you start.

No matter what action your take to market your business on LinkedIn, the first thing you need to do is optimise your profile. Trust me, people WILL look at it before they engage with you, and if it’s not up to scratch, who could blame them for ignoring you.

Visual Appeal in Search Results: Your profile photo and headline appear in search results or recommendations. You know the section where LinkedIn might say ‘People You Might Know’ or ‘Who’s Viewed Your Profile’. Your photo and headline are like a one sentence sales pitch.

Keywords for Algorithm and Contextual Placement: Carefully selected keywords across each section of your profile influence where and when LinkedIn shows your profile. It uses relevance to match your profile with other Users activity. Get this part right, and you can significantly increase your visibility.

Compelling Content on Profile page: When someone looks at your profile page, the use of media and copywriting will determine how professional, and accessible you are. What you do and more importantly what you can do for them. In other words, is it worth connecting with you of following you.

LinkedIn Network Fundamentals

You’ve committed the morning to write a beautiful LinkedIn post, not too long, not too short, spell-checked and looking great…only for it to fall on deaf ears. A measly 50 impressions and zero engagement, not even 1 like ffs…

Let me explain what’s going on here. LinkedIn’s algorithm will push your content out to just 10-15% of your network. Yep, you read that right, 10-15%. So, if you network has 500 connections, your post may only reach 50 people.

If you use the rule of 10 engagements required to trigger the LinkedIn algorithm, you can see why your content posts disappear into a vacuum of isolation.

Start Building Your Network

LinkedIn Rule 101 prioritise building a network of highly targeted prospects before scaling your content marketing. This means engaging with relevant industry groups, consistently connecting with potential clients, and participating in discussions and leaving comments to grow your network.

Sure, make a few high-quality posts per month, so potential connections see your feed is active and get a feel for what you’re about. But focus on your network as a matter of priority…as the saying goes, your network is your net worth.

There are two primary ways to expand your network:

1. Connection Invites are can be sent out with a short message. If the recipient accepts, you are free to message one another and you will see a selection of one another’s content. LinkedIn limits a person to having a maximum 30,000 connections.
2. Followers are people who have chosen to follow you. This is not a reciprocal arrangement, meaning you cannot message a follower in the same way you can message a connection. Instead the follower has opted to follow your content, so they will receive a selection of your posts into their content feed.

There’s no doubt that connecting with people is by far the easiest and most direct method of growing your network. Gaining followers requires a consistent and sustained approach to publishing content, in the hope that people see it and find it useful enough to follow you, with the aim of getting more of the same.

Connecting with the Right People

It’s worth checking how many good LinkedIn connections you have? Let me rephrase that, …how many of your connections are potential customers, who would be willing and able to pay for your products or services? My point being do you know what your Ideal Customer looks like, and if you do, are you connecting with them like your business depends on it?

Are you aware that LinkedIn limits your connection requests to 100 per week for standard users? Users with a high SSI score can get away around 120. This means that every single connection needs to be used to connect with decision makers working within companies that are likely use the services or products that you offer.

This is where tools such as Sales Navigator can be worth their weight in gold, helping you find and connect with your ideal customer. Use it to search and filter by job title, company size, industry, number of employees…allowing you to really get the best out of your weekly connection allocation.

Talking To Your Network

Here at Switch Jam Digital, we attract most of our clients through LinkedIn Outreach, a form of outbound messaging. Okay, I must admit, depending on your approach outreach can come across a little bit intrusive, or even spammy when it’s too heavy handed. But it doesn’t have to be heavy handed, you can keep things really natural and simple.  

If you have done your homework and built up a network of connections that are relevant and interested in what your business offers, you’re already sitting on a short-term win. So tap into it and start building relationships, so people get to know who your are and what value you offer.

It can be as simple as just reaching out to say hi, asking how business is going, asking them what challenges they’re facing. Maybe encourage them to tell you what they’re interested in and want to talk about or learn, and during this process you can subtly demonstrate your expertise by helping them out.

You would be surprised how many clients we have won by doing exactly that. Sure, I’ve spent hundreds of hours on Zoom calls, some of which amounted to nothing, but it was still time well invested. These businesses now know about my marketing agency, and my expertise, and most importantly, they got a feel for who I am and whether they would enjoy working with me on a human level.

Content Strategy: Quality Over Quantity

I’ll kick off this section saying what we’re all thinking. Treating LinkedIn like a personal social media platform is a big mistakes. “Hey look here’s the team out for dinner after another great month” …erm what! Literally no one cares. In fact, the last post of the office dog asleep on the sofa probably got more engagement. Seriously, that dog was sooo cute though xx.

Produce Engaging Content

The reality is, this type of generic post lacks relevance, and so inevitably fails to produce a tangible outcome or drive a response. Instead pumping out this kind of drivel, focus on creating content that delivers value for your audience, and solves their problems.

Publish thought provoking content to get people clattering on their keyboards. Or deliver helpful educational content, or industry insights, that might give your audience an edge, or help them resolve a pain point.

Another way to look at it is to ask yourself why you follow people on YouTube or other social media platforms. Is it because their content is predictable, boring, and useless? No of course not, it’s because they have what you want. So it makes sense to try and do the same for your audience. But how do you come up with a content plan that works?

Develop a Content Strategy

Let’s assume you’ve been on LinkedIn a while now and you already have a few thousand connections. If you’re in this position, you should be posting content regularly and reaping the rewards, right?

Well yes, but it’s worth investing in a well thought out content strategy. One that’s designed to produce the outcome you need. Most of our agency clients, come to us with a back catalogue of posts that produce little to no outcome as they haven’t had the time or got the resource to considered what type of outcome they actually need.

Ask yourself, are you looking to gain followers, build trust with your audience, send traffic to your website, or maybe you’re just trying to keep your brand top of mind and get eyeballs on it. Perhaps it’s all these things, but each piece of content needs to be produced with a desired outcome in mind.

So how do you come up with a content strategy for LinkedIn? As a top level summary on what to include in your thought process, you’ll need to consider the following:

1. Profile Your Ideal Customer so that you’re clear on who you’re targeting and what type of message they will respond to.
2. Establish Their Pain Points if you know the problems your customer wants to solve, you can scratch their itch.
3. Develop a Content Plan containing different angles and perspectives. How to do this…Did you know…How I helped…
4. Different Content Formats Some people like to read, others prefer images, while some prefer videos or webinars.
5. Establish the Best Time To Post by monitoring the engagement of posts made in the morning, lunchtime or evening.
6. Quality Over Quantity if your post is well thought out, it will get the right response. So take the time to think about it.
7. Be Consistent infrequent posting will lose your audience, and fail to trigger the algorithm to boost your SSI.

Once you understand how to adopt a more strategic approach, it becomes easier to maximise LinkedIn’s potential and grow your network, engage with prospects, and achieve your marketing objectives.

Misunderstanding LinkedIn

Based on my experience, I would estimate over 70% of business owners misunderstand how LinkedIn works, and consequently waste time and resource. Ultimately this leads to failure, disappointment and in some cases, business owners turning their back on the platform…which is a big mistake!

Hopefully this article has given you an overview of the areas that matter and some guidance of how to approach them. If you’re looking for more, or looking for actional advice on how to implement more advanced strategies, then download our [LinkedIn Hacks] or contact us and talk to one of our LinkedIn Marketing experts.

A Final Word. FFS… Don’t Get Political!

Okay, I can’t let you go without stating the blindingly obvious…but obviously some people need reminding. LinkedIn is not the place to be venting your frustration about the far right or woke-ism, neither is it the place to be debating the latest sectarian tension developing across the UK or sharing your pollical views on the middle east, nor pushing the concept of toxic masculinity, or diminishing the latest pronouns or environmental activism.

I think you get the idea. If you want to talk about that stuff, I hear it’s all fair game on X (formerly known as Twitter lol).