Your LinkedIn Performance Review
You did it! Both you and your company are successfully set up on LinkedIn. As your new digital colleague, we firmly shake your hand in congratulations.
Your profiles are set up, your keywords are optimized, and your blank update box is staring back at you on your Company Page, waiting to receive your professional wisdom. The pressure’s on. What should you write? And how do you even know if your updates are reaching your audience?
That's right, Senior Executive Business Puppy. Here are some tips for content that will boost your Company Page:
What types of content should I share?
Place yourself in your target audience’s shoes. When they click on your Company Page, they’re looking to learn more about you and what makes your company worth connecting with, not to be immediately bombarded with sales offers with a mounting pressure to buy, buy, BUY. Put on your best networking hat and make your updates informational and educational, to subtly showcase your awesomeness. Consider the following:
Let’s get to know you: Highlight your best company news. Do you have any recent wins? Groundbreaking projects or partnerships? New staff openings? Invite your audience inside your company to see who you are and what's the latest.
Show them how it’s done: Teach your audience something new, with relevant how-tos or resources. This helps position your company as a helpful and trusted source of knowledge in your industry. This can be anything from a handy cheat sheet for financial planning from a local bank to a instructional video on how to build the perfect birdhouse from a hardware store. Be creative and think about what your audience members would love to learn from you; if you're stumped, think about any recent conversations you've had with friends who "just want to pick your brain." What did you teach them?
Keep up with the latest: Share industry news and trends with your audience to show that you’re on top of recent happenings and updates. Add your own musings as you share the articles to get the wheels turning in your reader's brain, give your page some personality, and demonstrate that you're not just a glorified news feed; you're a critical thinker!
Share your thoughts: Be a thought leader. Use LinkedIn as a place for your own blog and musings to shine. Explain your company’s values and share your thoughts on the state of your industry.
That perfect mix of content will include images and video, too, so don't shy away from the visual stuff. No matter the social channel, your audience will learn more in a shorter amount of time if information is presented visually.
Also, the pressure isn’t on to post quite as often on LinkedIn as on some other channels. (Lookin' at you, Instagram!) The research varies, but most people recommend posting between two and five times per week, usually during business hours. And that includes sharing content from other users too; tap your network and show some love for their expertise, especially if it overlaps with yours.
You’ve hit submit and sent your updates out into the big world of digital business. Are they working?
We may sound like a broken record, but how do you know how your social posts are doing if you don’t take a look at the metrics?
To find LinkedIn Analytics, navigate to your company’s page. Click on “Manage Page” below your company’s name to be transported to the screen where you can post updates and edit your profile. Then click on “Analytics” under the search bar, and you’ll see you’re presented with the choices of “Visitors," “Updates," and “Followers."
Visitors: As you may have guessed from the name of the page (or not, no judgement), Visitors breaks down how many people have visited your page and who those people are. The chart at the top shows you the amount of visitors who used their mobile devices or their desktop computers. Keep an eye on this number to hopefully see a steady increase as you grow your page, but know that it can fluctuate. You can easily change this view from the last 7 days to as far back as the last 12 months to see how your visits are stacking up.
Scroll a little further to see demographics, where you can learn about your visitors' job function, country, seniority, industry, and company size summarized in a handy graph. This is where you can confirm or deny your assumptions about your audience. Are you targeting mid-level marketing executives in Washington, DC? Double check these breakdowns to make sure you’re not reaching entry-level salesmen overseas.
Next up is your “Updates” page. Break out your pen and paper because this section has A LOT of information.
Engagement highlights: Let’s start slow. At the top of your “Updates” page, there’s a quick overview of your likes, comments, shares, and follows over the last 30 days with a percentage increase or decrease. General goal? Keep these numbers up to reflect an engaged audience who is interested enough in what you’re saying to actually click on it and share it with others.
Engagement metrics: This graph breaks down your engagement by desired metric and time frame. Metrics include impressions, unique impressions, clicks, likes, comments, shares, followers acquired, and social engagement rate. What to focus on the most is up to you and your company page’s strategy.Do you want to get people talking? Check out your comments. Are you trying to drive people back to your website? Track your link clicks.
Update engagement: This is where you can see how your individual posts fared. Pay attention to the posts that are engaging your audience, and post more content like that. Are things not performing as well? Take a look at what your audience is ignoring and make a note of it so you can focus on what resonates.
We’re almost done, we promise. The next stop is “Followers.” This page is similar to your page visitors, but these are the people that decided to take your relationship a little further and click the button to follow your page and receive future updates in their newsfeed. The highlights at the top show your total number of followers and your gains, with the chart below decoding when you gained your audience members. The set-up here is almost exactly the same as on your Visitors page, so this should look familiar.
Check on these numbers regularly and encourage your team to do the same. Consider it your self-performance review!