If you’re new to LinkedIn marketing, you might not realise how powerful it can be. 

LinkedIn has the strength of being a unique social media space, combining the professional with the social and digital to create an online platform made for the average worker. Unlike other platforms, it encourages a certain degree of professionalism, whether you’re sharing a personal anecdote, promoting a product or spreading some keen advice, that adds gravitas and more genuine meaning to your message. 

Luckily for you, we’ve pulled together all the need-to-know tips and tricks for LinkedIn marketing for beginners to get you started. 

How do I get started? 

So, you’ve made your LinkedIn account—great! Now is a better time than ever to be active on the platform, because the recent LinkedIn algorithm update is allowing 3-4 posts from the same user to show up in a single scroll. Your content can have more reach and volume than ever. 

If you’re using hashtags, keep it to about 3-5 essentials. The algorithm won’t reward you for clogging up space, says Richard van der Blom, who has conducted some of the most extensive recent research on the LinkedIn algorithm. 

You should also stay engaged right after you post by interacting with other posts on your timeline and replying to the comments on your post. This will maximise your reach and engagement levels as much as possible, boosting your standing on the platform. 

Now for the components—if you’re including a picture, selfies are proven to be some of the most favoured content, increasing your reach by 80-90%. Your ideal post length is between 1200 and 1600 characters—stories are great, but you don’t need a whole novel—and the bulk of the text will be put under the fold after 150 characters, so make your point quickly.

What should I NOT do? 

Firstly, while you might want to post regularly to get the most out of your content, avoid posting too regularly or you’ll see your numbers dip. We’d recommend a minimum of 18 hours between posts, or the algorithm won’t thank you for spamming your community feed. 

You’re going to want to watch the times you’re posting, too—10am is the best time to post on a weekday, and 1pm on Friday – Sunday. Don’t miss out on those windows of peak activity! 

External links also aren’t rewarded on LinkedIn, so if you want to add an external link, we recommend you do so about an hour after posting in a comment. If you’re going to edit your post to add in a link, you can also do so an hour later, but definitely don’t edit the post in the first ten minutes: this can decrease your reach from around 10-40% according to Richard! 

Similarly, don’t be the first to comment on your own post – according to Richard, this will reduce reach by 20%. 

Avoid hashtags like #comment, #like, or #follow which can be flagged by the system as spam, and can come across as bad grammar. 

These are the essentials we’d recommending keeping in mind when it comes to LinkedIn marketing for beginners, allowing you to get in there with a strong start to your marketing strategy. 

Why try LinkedIn marketing for beginners at all? 

Alongside being a strong player in your social media marketing mix, we can name you some good reasons why LinkedIn marketing is worth using. 

LinkedIn audiences have 2x the buying power of the average web user, likely thanks to having a higher number of adult users than some social giants like Snapchat, Twitter and WhatsApp. It also makes LinkedIn users some of the most valuable to market to, as 4 out of 5 LinkedIn members drive business decisions in some form. 

It’s also got some of the best numbers for generating revenue, with 38% of B2B marketers attributing direct revenue to LinkedIn, 3x the amount of any other platform. 

How do I take it further? 

To utilise LinkedIn marketing to its fullest capacity, the best thing you can do is take it to a professional that understands what works best. Talk to us today to learn how we can do that for you.