What do you do if you want to grow your engagement on LinkedIn for businesses, but you don’t have room in your budget for a lot of paid ad spend on social media? In fact, you may not be sure you could find room in your budget for a taco at the moment, so it’s time to talk about organic connections.
Pursue Connections in Your Area of Expertise
It used to be that LinkedIn favored the “stars” of industries. The CEOs of multi-million-dollar corporations or celebrities making a splash with a new brand. A small business had little to no chance of getting noticed or even showing up in people’s feeds.
Thankfully, this is not the case any longer. LinkedIn for businesses utilizes algorithms that take into account your “real” connections. These are the people you follow, those that make comments on your posts or that you interact with in a group.
That means you’ll need to keep the algorithm in mind with the connections you pursue. Follow other local business owners in your community, comment on or share the posts of people you respect in your industry. Join a group of businesspeople in your field, introduce yourself and join the conversation.
LinkedIn will use these real connections to determine who sees your content.
Publish Valuable Content
The logical next step is to create and post content that is valuable to those seeing your posts. There are countless directions you can go with your posts:
- List your favorite top five books from industry experts and ask your followers to help you get to a “Top 10” by adding in their own suggestions. Plan to publish the final list a couple of days out so that followers are watching and waiting to see if their pick made your final 10.
- Ask a question that doesn’t have a simple yes-or-no question. Spark a conversation on a controversial topic, but make sure you’re well-versed in the topic so that when you weigh in, your contribution demonstrates your expertise.
- Share content from others you respect, with a question or thought that’s likely to get comments rolling.
Analyze and Refine
Every marketing strategy begins and ends with data, so be sure to investigate which posts are sparking the most organic engagement on your feed. Keep an eye on other influencers and your competitors to see how people are responding. You don’t want to engage in a copycat campaign, but it’s good to be aware what’s popping on social media.
Want to know more about navigating LinkedIn for businesses? Our team at SJC Marketing can help you get started making organic connections.