{"id":302,"date":"2022-10-09T21:21:44","date_gmt":"2022-10-09T21:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/how-to-grow-your-linkedin-audience\/"},"modified":"2023-11-10T19:58:54","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T19:58:54","slug":"how-to-grow-your-linkedin-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/how-to-grow-your-linkedin-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"How to grow your LinkedIn audience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LinkedIn has become a very valuable marketing tool for many businesses and individuals. In July 2022, there were over 34 million users\u2026and I\u2019m fairly confident that number would have grown even further now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whereas LinkedIn was once thought of as a stuffy place for suits to interact and network, the B2B social platform has pivoted and evolved. It\u2019s now a place where people are creating strong connections, upskilling and educating themselves and most recently, developing their personal brands.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The segmentation and filtering on LinkedIn is second to none, you can get <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">really<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> granular with details and insights.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How do you grow your LinkedIn audience?\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s pretty easy to grow an audience through LinkedIn but it\u2019s important to build the right kind of audience and connect with the right kind of people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think about your ideal audience persona &#8211; are they Managing Directors, HR Managers, Marketing Execs\u2026or suppliers? Once you\u2019ve narrowed this down, either via company or individual, then send them a connection request. If it\u2019s a totally cold connection then make sure to add a personalised message too. [Tip: Don\u2019t try to pitch to them or that request may never be accepted!]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How do you find the right people on LinkedIn?\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LinkedIn can be a minefield of people, but to drill down and find the ideal ones you can search by:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Location. Are you looking for local contacts, or Worldwide? You can find both in the filters.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Job Titles. Specific positions or seniority level can be selected to narrow down your search.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Industries. Are you looking for people in the manufacturing space, in the education sector or something else? It\u2019s all there to pick through!<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Company. Have a specific company you are trying to reach? Select them there and then go through to their company page where you can look into the contacts who work there. It\u2019s a great way to look through the hierarchy and find more people who work within the chosen business.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Number of employees. Are you looking for one man bands or multi-branch businesses? As my target audience is \u2018owner managed\u2019 businesses, I will generally look for companies who have under 30 employees and have one branch.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Always, always engage<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Social media schedulers are fantastic, I use them for myself and my client work, however you can fall into the trap of scheduling everything and setting the publishing dates and then forgetting. It\u2019s imperative to check in and engage with any comments or reactions to those posts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The \u2018golden hour\u2019 isn\u2019t just about when to take the perfect selfie, it also applies to LinkedIn engagement. It\u2019s recommended to engage with your community within an hour of your post going live\/their comment being received. Keep up the narrative.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Responding to posts gives you more comments, LinkedIn then see you as a \u2018valuable source\u2019 and you may just find that you\u2019re appearing on more and more timelines across the world!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s not all me, me, me though. Take some time out of your day to go through your news feed and respond and react to other peoples posts that you find valuable. Add opinions, viewpoints and discussion and get the conversations going. It not only shows that you\u2019re an active user but your comments will get picked up in their network and you\u2019ll reach a lot more people in the net.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be consistent. It really is key!\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Building an audience is one thing, keeping the conversation and engagement flowing is another.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So what is the secret? Consistency!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Easy to say, a lot harder to put into practice. To keep your audience sky rocketing, it\u2019s important to put out valuable content and let your brand awareness grow. I find spending time at the start of a month planning all of my content out helps with regular posting, instead of scrabbling around each day wondering what to write. Never post just for the sake of it. It. Will. Show.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stick to a schedule that suits you. Once a day, a couple of times a week &#8211; but ideally no more than once a day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Provide value<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think about what you enjoy seeing on other people\u2019s feed. Is it the corporate waffle and sales pitches? Probably not. Create content that adds value, that people can learn from and relate to.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What are your target audiences needs? Keep that in your mind and post content to satisfy them. Providing solutions to their pain point can grasp their attention and get them engaged. And also remember, that everyone is human. At the end of the day, you are talking to another human being &#8211; it\u2019s okay to show your vulnerable side sometimes, share some family posts, share quotes that resonate with you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Human to human connection<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s known that personal profiles have more engagement than company profiles and that\u2019s because people can inject their personality into their own content. There\u2019s been a shift recently of people sharing personal stories, showing vulnerabilities and opening up taboo discussions. Now, it isn\u2019t Facebook and we\u2019re not on an episode of the X-Factor where you need a \u2018rollercoaster, emotional journey\u2019 every post but letting people into the real you can really resonate. After all, we are all human beings just connecting with other human beings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know personally I comment on threads where I can resonate rather than those posts who are just trying to sell me something and providing no value.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be on brand, always\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you post, make sure to be on brand, keep your consistent tone of voice, pepper your personality throughout it and if you use any graphics or illustrations try to thread them in to your marketing output. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Videos are a great way of keeping clients engaged, they help to build rapport and relationship &#8211; even if you haven\u2019t even met them!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Building a strong LinkedIn network does take time, and you will need to be consistent. You can\u2019t post one post and expect to go viral. I go with the 50\/40\/10 method broken down into 50% value, 40% personality and 10% obvious service promotion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not sure you\u2019ll have time to fit consistent posting into your already jam packed day? Check out my <a href=\"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/services\/social-media-management\/\">Social Media Management<\/a>social packages here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LinkedIn has become a very valuable marketing tool for many businesses and individuals. In July 2022, there were over 34 million users\u2026and I\u2019m fairly confident that number would have grown even further now.\u00a0 Whereas LinkedIn was once thought of as a stuffy place for suits to interact and network, the B2B social platform has pivoted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-media-management"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belleandjames.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}