Today, social media marketing advice mostly consists of techniques and strategies designed to help you identify and attract your target market, get them to engage with you, and then guide them toward making a purchase. These strategies can be extremely effective, but they’re only half the equation. You also need to know the right place to execute your strategies, and that doesn’t always include Facebook.
Here are two marketing strategies best suited for LinkedIn:
Strategy #1: Capturing people’s genuine attention and holding it
One important tool in every marketer’s toolbox should be the ability to capture attention. A good marketer knows how to get people to turn their heads; a great marketer knows how to get people hungry for more. This is the difference between capturing attention and sustaining attention, and you need to do both if you’re going to generate sales.
It could be argued that when the skill of capturing attention is mastered, it can be applied to any social media platform. In theory, that sounds logical, but not all online platforms are conducive to sustaining attention due to their inherent nature of facilitating quick bits of casual, fleeting social activity.
Where you cast your net matters more than how you cast it
Social media marketing is like going fishing. If you sail your boat out onto a small lake, no matter how good you are at casting your net – even if you’re a world champion – you’re not going to catch a swordfish. If you cast your net in the ocean, even if you’re a beginner, you’ll have a chance at catching a swordfish because you’re casting your net in the right place.
Choose the right environment to cast your marketing net
When you target prospects in an environment where they are already distracted and multi-tasking (like Facebook and Twitter), it takes intense effort to sustain their attention. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible or that you shouldn’t do it – it just means you’ll be working harder for minimal results. People on these platforms are looking for entertainment. People using LinkedIn are looking for career growth.
That’s why many businesses use LinkedIn to market their services. It’s a platform structured differently than Facebook, and instead of encouraging people to share what they ate for dinner, it encourages people to share high-quality content about their business. Since LinkedIn is built for businesses, that’s where your standard marketing strategies will be more effective.
Don’t try to capture attention where it doesn’t exist
If you share your content on Twitter or Facebook, you’re going to be reaching people who are most likely on mobile devices and preoccupied with something more important (like their relationship, their cats, or dinner).
Microsoft conducted a study to find out how pocket sized devices, like tablets and smartphones, affect everyday life. The study measured people’s attention spans and found that participants “with more digital lifestyles struggle to focus in environments where prolonged attention is needed.”
It’s easy to understand why attention is lacking when you look at the nature of social media on mobile devices. Using social media on mobile devices actually trains people to be impulsive and eliminates the need for sustained attention.
It trains people to jump from one post to the next, from one app to another app, to jump at the sound of an incoming text message, to scroll quickly and click impulsively, and to pick up the device to check notifications at the sound of a bell, sometimes hundreds of times per day. It’s no wonder why many social media marketing plans fail.
Strategy #2: Actively educating people
When it comes to educating people as a marketing strategy, LinkedIn is built for it. Not only can you publish educational blogs directly on LinkedIn, but you can also communicate with your network to send them links to your business blog.
Publishing educational content on your business blog is a necessary component for every social media marketing campaign, but how well you reach your target market depends on what you share and where you share it. That’s where LinkedIn becomes extremely useful.
To get the most benefit from marketing your business blog on LinkedIn, you want to have articles on your blog full of meaty content that benefits your visitors, like this article that discusses the difference between credit card debt and installment loan debt. This is a subject many consumers don’t understand, and providing this information will help create a connection of trust with readers.
This type of content would not do well on Facebook or Twitter because it requires more attention than people are willing to give while on these two platforms.
Fish where the fish are
When you use LinkedIn to market your business, your profile and your articles are the main attraction – not photos of your cats wearing sweaters or what you ate for dessert last night. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t market on Facebook, but if you do you’ll need to use different strategies than the ones outlined in this article.
People on LinkedIn are already in business mode, and when you take advantage of that, you’ll find yourself doing much less work to generate prospects.
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