Are you utilising LinkedIn to its full potential?
Among the 774 million professionals on the platform, there are two groups:
- Those with profiles that gather dust.
- Those avoiding another social network.
Yet, LinkedIn offers more than socialising. It’s an excellent platform for connecting with potential clients and securing lucrative opportunities.
Let’s dive right in, shall we? Here are ten winning LinkedIn tips to increase engagement, build your network, and generate new business for your accounting firm.
Set up and enhance your business page
Begin by establishing a good company page on LinkedIn. Take the time to refine your profile, articulating key skills and noteworthy accomplishments, ensuring an appeal to potential clients.
Encourage your team members to update their LinkedIn profiles to reflect their employment at your firm. This strengthens their professional network and creates valuable connections to your company page.
Make sure essential contact info, like email addresses and phone numbers, is easy to find. This allows for smooth communication with interested contacts and people who follow the page.
Pay close attention to the Summary section. As visitors scroll through your company page, they look for a clear understanding of your identity and offerings by skimming through your summary. Craft a concise yet compelling summary that showcases your ability to assist clients and highlights your specialised areas.
Although the About Us section on a LinkedIn Company Page appears further down the page, don’t neglect its significance. Take the time to complete this section, employing relevant keywords to enhance the discoverability of your company page in relevant searches. (Yep, SEO is also important for LinkedIn pages).
Invite connections to follow your company page. As a Super or Content Admin managing your LinkedIn Page, you can foster the growth of your followers by extending invitations to your 1st-degree connections.
To send an invitation to your connections, follow these steps:
- Navigate to your Super or Content Admin View.
- Locate the Admin tools dropdown at the top of the Page and choose “Invite connections.”
- From the displayed list, select the desired connections or utilise the “Search for connections” field to find specific individuals.
- The system will automatically filter out connections who have already been successfully invited or are already following your Page.
- Click on “Invite connection(s).” Your connections will promptly receive a notification inviting them to join. Should an error arise, you may have reached your invitation limit.
Use distinctive assets
Stock photos don’t cut it anymore.
Why?
Because most of the time, the stock image consists of the same person we’ve seen over and over again.
Plus, people have grown weary of stock images and typically scroll straight past them without a second thought.
These are posts that simply don’t cut it:
The visual assets you use for your posts should be distinctive and unique to your firm.
Think beyond stock images, and consider what visual asset will complement your post content.
Here are some great examples of posts from firms that use their distinctive assets consistently:
Post Selfies
When it comes to personal posts, using selfies can significantly boost your engagement levels, delivering up to three times more interactions and an expanded reach of up to 2.5 times.
Unlike generic stock images, selfies have unique appeal and authenticity that resonates with your audience.
Ben from Bounce Financial does this consistently, multiple times a week:
Engage with other people
Once you’ve published a post, remain on LinkedIn for 5 minutes and engage with at least three posts from your network.
By actively participating, LinkedIn rewards your profile and posts with an additional 20% reach, allowing you to expand your audience and enhance your online presence.
Do not edit or comment first.
Avoid making edits to your post in the first 10 minutes after posting it. This could result in a reduction of reach ranging from 10% to 40%.
Refrain from being the first to comment on your post, as doing so may decrease reach by up to 20%. This will affect the performance of your post.
Instead, focus on responding to all comments within the first hour after publishing, which can yield an additional 20% growth.
Every comment you receive can boost your post’s reach by 4% within your own network and 3% within the network of the commenter.
As an author, introducing multiple comments (2-4) after 24 hours will rekindle the post’s visibility among all contributors in their feeds, resulting in an extra 25% growth.
Posting frequency
“How often should I post on LinkedIn?”
We get asked this question all the time. We won’t give you the consultant’s answer and say, “Well, that depends”. Let’s be real and straightforward.
Posting at least two times per week is the optimal frequency on LinkedIn. To benefit from LinkedIn’s algorithm, be sure to post once per 18 hours.
If you post at least twice a week and stop posting for over a month, the first 4-5 posts you do after your hiatus will receive about 30% less reach than before. So never stop!
Post length
LinkedIn has a character limit of 3000, approximately 500-600 words—an extensive range for a regular status update.
However, posts are truncated after 140 characters, and users must click the “See More” button to read the full post content. Hence, crafting a captivating opening sentence is paramount!
So, what is the ideal length for a LinkedIn post?
Aim to compose posts containing 1200-1600 characters whenever possible. This range has been found to generate optimal engagement and maximise reach, ensuring your message resonates effectively with your audience.
What formats to post
Funnily enough, according to LinkedIn’s algorithm, video content doesn’t perform as well as many “experts” say they do. However, videos with yourself as the hero will perform better than any animated or text animation.
When it comes to comments, text-based posts perform well. Each comment received has the potential to amplify a post’s reach by 4% within your network and 3% within the commenter’s network.
Remember, aim for text posts with 1200-1600 characters, and don’t shy away from using emojis. Emojis inject personality and visual appeal into your otherwise lengthy text, capturing attention effectively.
Document Posts reign supreme to achieve maximum reach and engagement on LinkedIn, boasting an average of 3.4 times greater reach than other formats. LinkedIn Documents stand out in the newsfeed, capturing the attention of a larger audience.
If you’ve previously created content, you can repurpose it by leveraging LinkedIn Documents. Transform your blog posts, articles, PowerPoint presentations, Google docs, or infographics into visually captivating and easily digestible formats.
Remember to save them as PDFs since all LinkedIn Documents are posted in this format.
Build a winning LinkedIn strategy.
LinkedIn offers untapped potential for firms and individuals looking to expand their network, enhance their profiles, and generate new business opportunities.
Focussing on just a few key tactics and tricks, you can effectively beat the LinkedIn algorithm and build a winning LinkedIn strategy for your firm.
But do you struggle to find the time to engage and post on LinkedIn consistently? Does client work keep getting in the way? Or is LinkedIn (or social media in general) uninteresting for you, but you know you must do it? We can help.
Practice + Pixels are an extension of your team, providing a “done for you” marketing support service. You can access a full team for a fraction of the cost of a full-time marketing person to drive your marketing efforts, including your social media marketing!
Contact us today to discuss our marketing team packages.
