Making The Most Out Of Social Media: LinkedIn
Posted on 12/06/2016 Evan Swensen
As an author, the social media and social networking world can be mind-boggling. Do you use Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? All of the above? Many argue that LinkedIn better serves business authors, but in reality LinkedIn’s social networking platform can be useful for every author.
Since its 2003 launch, LinkedIn has become the world’s largest online professional network. With a presence in over 200 countries and territories, members of the social networking platform can interact with nearly five hundred million registered users from across the globe. According to LinkedIn, more than four million of those users are businesses that have created LinkedIn Company Pages. A Company Page is often the right option for an author, as they are good way to share book announcements, upcoming events, and quick tips and updates with your audience, and also lend credibility to the new author.
Despite its corporate trimmings, LinkedIn is much like any other social networking platform in that it creates a space for the author to get their message or story out to a broader audience resulting in lead generation within the platform. However, unlike Facebook, the social media site can also help improve search results generally. Links to your booksellers’ sites, personal website, blog, and other social media output on your LinkedIn Company Page and in shared content count toward the Google search algorithm, so sharing links on your LinkedIn page improves your online visibility overall.
Another way to improve visibility and gain credibility is to get involved with one of the many Groups on LinkedIn. There are thousands of public and private LinkedIn Groups, but if a group dedicated to your area of interest doesn’t exist, it’s easy to start a new one! LinkedIn users can join up to 50 LinkedIn Groups, so the only real limitation on participation is your time. Members of LinkedIn Groups tend to be very active, so these online spaces are a good place to get an answer from an expert and to network with like-minded people. Sharing announcements for events and upcoming books with a Group can also be effective. Sometimes you can even solicit reviews and recommendations on LinkedIn Groups, but be sure to adhere to the social policies and rules of the Group.
LinkedIn can help the new author gain credibility, develop an audience, and get connected in the publishing industry, but to use LinkedIn successfully there are a few Best Practices guidelines to remember when getting started:
LinkedIn Best Practices
1) Keep link titles under 70 characters.
Lengthy titles get cut off when posted, so be sure to click into the link title to edit it before posting to your LinkedIn Company Page.
2) Keep link descriptions under 250 characters.
Similar to the link title limitations, the description associated with your status update is limited to 250 characters before being cut off with an ellipsis.
3) Share links for engagement.
According to QuickSprout, including a link in your LinkedIn posts doubles engagement!
4) Share images for comments.
According to QuickSprout, including images in updates results in a 98% higher comment rate.
5) Share videos for shares.
According to QuickSprout, linking to videos on YouTube or other video sharing sites results in a 75% higher share rate.
6) Publish a new status update roughly once a day.
According to LinkedIn, publishing about 20 posts per month allows you to reach 60% of your audience reliably.
7) Convert page fans with offers.
While you have to strike a nice balance between private and public content on all social networks, LinkedIn is a little different. Our data shows that LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn users are more welcoming to promotional content — so long as the content truly is valuable to them.
8) Send LinkedIn Announcements.
LinkedIn announcements can serve as a powerful tool in increasing your LinkedIn lead generation. On the days we send an announcement from a LinkedIn Group, we see a spike in leads for the day. We also see the impact of that send trickle over the next day or two. While creating your own group is an option, you’ll need to nurture a strong following to start generating leads from the announcements. Another option is to engage in a set number of groups and then find a way to use one of the group’s announcements for your own (relevant) marketing.