With over 760 million users as of 2021, you’d imagine that more people would appreciate the visibility-boosting potentials of LinkedIn for business purposes. However, these days, people are just focused on growing business pages entirely on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Business psychoanalysts have often attributed this to the human tendency to shy away from things that appear too serious or formal. Instagram is casual, Facebook is friendly, and Twitter is energetic. However, on LinkedIn, the energy is always professionally elite on every corner of the app.
Founded in 2003, LinkedIn is a business and employment-oriented online service used for professional networking. Millions of people find jobs, gain clients, and recruit employees on LinkedIn every year. The application is regarded as the world’s number one professional social network for building the most strategic relationships.
However, while LinkedIn is one of the leading social apps in the world, many entrepreneurs do not understand the vast extent of the platform’s reach.
According to American entrepreneur and LinkedIn growth expert, Grant Golestan-Parast, LinkedIn is an essential platform for every serious business brand to build an audience on.
“LinkedIn is quite important since the algorithm on the platform is very sensitive,” Grant explained. “It’s easy to make a post go viral on the platform, leading to lots of impressions for your page and profile.”
Grant is the founder and CEO of GGPMedia, a social media marketing company that helps businesses increase their digital presence and boost profits by growing brand pages across LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. Grant affirms that the LinkedIn ads platform is an underrated tool for excellent advertising.
“The network also has a great advertising platform for reaching your ideal audience, but since not many people use LinkedIn ads, there is a bit of a blue ocean strategy here,” Grant says. “LinkedIn ads are significantly more expensive than Facebook or IG ads, but they are super effective at driving potentially fruitful connections and making the most targeted matches due to the platform’s fluid connection algorithms.”
Taking advantage of the difference in setting
The major reason why most people seem to focus more on Instagram and Facebook is the relational setting these apps have. From the UI’s to the features and functions, these apps make it simpler for brands and businesses to connect directly with customers. However, on LinkedIn, the mindset is usually geared toward enabling B2B connections.
“One core distinguishing feature is that Instagram and Facebook are more of casual and friendly platforms for keeping up with your friends and family, and this makes them great platforms for B2C connections,” says Grant, whose viral marketing agency boasts of over 300 million connections on social media and a 95% success rate. “LinkedIn, on the other hand, is simply all business, and as such, it’s for B2B. The other major difference I’ve noticed is that LinkedIn is catching on more while FB & IG seem to be capped at growth.”
With LinkedIn’s targeted ad platform, the network generates a nearly equal division of B2B and B2C opportunities, an advantage it has over the other apps. Connecting and transacting with other businesses is an excellent way to build your reputation and credibility, drive up your level on the influencer scale, boost your digital presence, and most importantly, gain overlapping customers.
Working your way up
The growth strategies on LinkedIn are quite different from the usual tactics on Instagram and Facebook. When people open their LinkedIn app, they are usually expectant to consume valuable and meaningful content. The most reliable strategy for building a great reputation on the app would be to work your way into the system’s algorithm.
According to Grant, the best way to boost your visibility and chances of gaining connections on the app would be to put out quality content every day.
“You’ll eventually start getting fed into the LinkedIn home page algorithm,” Grant says. “Try to make the content educational towards the audience you would like to attract. Once you’ve done this, you’ll observe your audience growing more every day. Make sure to respond to their comments on your posts and engage with your audience’s content as well. If you find a good prospect that has been engaging with your content, then reach out to them and establish an offline relationship.”
Other excellent strategies:
– Get personal with your connection requests. Don’t just hit the “connect” button. Write a short but impressive message to boost your chances of linking up with the person.
– Use excellent pictures in your articles. Visual aids are always a great way of spicing up written content.
– Within and beyond the platform, engage with your connections. Network, learn, converse, and grow.
– Share your LinkedIn profile URL on other social networks. You could create exports and have them promoted on pages related to your brand.
– Use targeted keywords in your profile and articles. SEO always comes through in the long run.
– Hire a professional LinkedIn growth company to streamline the entire process for you.
In conclusion, LinkedIn is the number one global application for professional connections, but it has a strong potential to become a viral marketing platform in the future.
“I believe LinkedIn has the potential to influence entrepreneurship a lot more than it currently does,” Grant says. “People are actually growing their business solely on LinkedIn. The crowd that’s leveraging LinkedIn now is extremely early and smart for that.”
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