Social Media Marketing
September 24, 2024
Imagine you’re in a ball pit trying to find your child. It’s crowded, plastic balls are flying everywhere, and the sound of kids yelling is deafening. Searching for engagement on LinkedIn can feel a lot like digging through a ball pit. With over 67 million companies and a 72% increase in B2B marketer activity on LinkedIn’s platform, cutting through the noise and finding engagement without a content marketing strategy can feel daunting.
But, what happens when you have a content marketing strategy in place and find your organic LinkedIn engagement is still dipping?
A dip in organic LinkedIn engagement can leave you wondering if it’s a “you thing” or a “LinkedIn thing.” Don't let it rattle you — it's part of the platform's ebb and flow, often triggered by a mix of algorithm adjustments and content resonance. Instead, let’s focus on overcoming algorithm shifts and finetuning your content strategy to strengthen your LinkedIn engagement.
Ready to overcome the challenges of maintaining organic reach on LinkedIn?
Let’s get started.
If you’ve noticed a drop in your LinkedIn engagement lately, you’re not alone. Alissa Arford, OBO Group Manager of Marketing, has noticed a drop in engagement along with a shift in LinkedIn’s algorithm, which now favors “knowledge-rich” posts.
Source: Alissa Arford, MBA
But, why the dip in engagement now?
Some blame LinkedIn's algorithm changes while others offer a different explanation like LinkedIn's editor-in-chief, Dan Roth. In an interview with Entrepreneur, Roth explains that instead of aiming for mass reach, LinkedIn focuses on targeted connections by linking users with industry figures who can offer significant opportunities.
However, before you jump to conclusions about why your engagement is dipping, do a quick audit of your analytics. Marketing consultant Corrie Oberdin suggests checking to see if the dip is cyclical or a new concern:
Oberdin also recommends companies find clever ways to present relevant information to get more attention instead of shouting louder.
Before you start cooking up content post strategies, ensure your brand's LinkedIn Page checks all the boxes.
Give it a once-over with this checklist:
Organic engagement begins with a solid company LinkedIn Page. Given that LinkedIn pages often rank well in search results, they can guide more prospective customers your way. Here's how to do it:
Include your logo, an SEO-friendly overview, and organization info.
Add relevant keywords in your business description.
Use LinkedIn’s call-to-action feature to generate leads.
Once you’ve added and optimized your content, you’ll want to invest in some high-quality visuals and multimedia to take your LinkedIn Page from average to wow.
Since visuals can make or break a first impression, use attention-grabbing, high-quality visuals that leave a lasting positive impression. A polished look showcases your brand's credibility and underlines your expertise.
Use your company logo as the profile picture and switch up the banner image — maybe a photo of your offices or a product promo — following image guidelines to avoid cropping mishaps.
If you’re ready to supplement the text already on your page, toss in some of these other formats:
Vibrant infographics.
Candid video interviews.
Informative carousels.
Why? Because our eyes crave variety, and we’re naturally drawn to engaging colorful content. Aim for consistent branding to create a unified, professional, and welcoming page.
To stay relevant on LinkedIn, keep your profile fresh and tailored. The LinkedIn algorithm loves quality content that's specific to a niche audience. Since an audience’s interests change at warp speed, companies must be as dynamic as their industries.
To do this, schedule a quarterly audit to scour the company's LinkedIn profile for outdated content. That old group photo from a company offsite back in 2019? Replace it with a recent one. Are there accolades for former coworkers who have moved on? Best wishes, friends.
While updating, add current insights, new goals, and fresh marketing visuals that paint a picture of your company's culture today. Ultimately, your profile should be a snapshot of what's important to your company and its community right now.
Gaining attention isn't the end game with content. The ultimate goal is quality engagement. Remember the "Must-See TV" era? Some brands mastered the art of creating irresistible content, just like those addictive TV shows like “The Office” and “Friends” that we all used to (and still) watch.
Take Rand Fishkin, CEO of SparkToro. For years, he’s posted explainer videos, like the one below, on social media (even pre-SparkToro). Because of that quality and consistency, people seek them out and engage. These videos have cemented his status as a marketing thought leader.
Source: Rand Fishkin
How does Rand score 153 comments in just one post? He teases his network by asking for a favor. But, you must watch the video to find out what the favor is.
The secret to this level of engagement is picking two to four content pillars you want to be known for and consistently posting about them. Doing so positions you as a subject matter expert, and people will start turning to you for insights in those areas. Fishkin and his team mix it up with posts about social listening, SEO, and even their foodie adventures.
It’s no surprise that 82% of B2B marketers report more success on LinkedIn than on any other platform, given its professional, decision-maker audience. After all, people don't browse LinkedIn to kill time. They're there to invest time — seeking original, insightful content that helps them meet their professional goals.
Check out these posting tips for earning more engagement:
Timing Matters: Weekday posts from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. see the highest engagement.
Quality Over Quantity: Daily posts are ideal, but don’t sacrifice quality for frequency.
Consistency Is Key: A social media content calendar helps keep a regular posting schedule.
After all, your audience expects valuable content, so make sure to deliver.
Each social media platform has a pulse, and LinkedIn's heartbeat is distinctly different. Instead of posting the exact same X (formerly Twitter) or Facebook content on LinkedIn, tailor the content so it fits LinkedIn's rhythm and resonates with your followers for better engagement.
Source: Eli Weiss
In the post above, Yotpo's VP of Retention Advocacy, Eli Weiss, posted about their company-wide campaign. During The Email Walkaway, customers can win Nike Air Force 1s, custom-designed for Walkaway, by switching their email platform to Yotpo’s e-commerce retention marketing system. And, the posts are scoring a lot of traction on LinkedIn.
Why?
Because LinkedIn is the B2B playground, and fun posts like this are the tire swing everyone clamors for.
To keep your audience engaged, mix up the types of content that you post. By introducing some variety, you can see what works best with your company’s audience. Here are some popular post formats:
Videos: 91% of businesses use video in their marketing. Short-form videos, in particular, are a hit. LinkedIn's video auto-play feature also plays on mute, so adding concise captions can help your engagement.
Carousels: These rank third in engagement after videos and images. They provide a visually appealing burst of quick information — a nice break from text-heavy LinkedIn posts.
Memes: A touch of humor and topical pop culture references, like Leoforce’s example below, make the world seem smaller and the community closer.
Source: Leoforce
If you ever find your brand facing an engagement plateau, shine a spotlight on your audience's positive interactions with your brand to spur engagement, which brings us to...
User-generated content (UGC) can rev up your organic LinkedIn engagement. Here's why:
Trust Factor: 72% of consumers find customer testimonials and reviews more credible than brand-led promotions.
Fan Spotlight: Reposting customer content gives them a shout-out and broadcasts their positive experiences with your product or service.
In a branding win for Cribl, customer Truvis T. posted a photo post inspired by Cribl’s beloved goat mascot. By reposting, Cribl catapulted the joke into a branding win, and Truvis T. earned some Cribl clout, too.
Source: Cribl
Remember, UGC isn't just a trend —- it's a tool to strengthen brand recognition, foster goodwill, and boost organic LinkedIn engagement.
If it takes money to make money, it also takes engagement to get engagement. Another avenue for boosting engagement is posting interactive content that lets your company’s fans play a leading part.
Here are a couple of ways:
The LinkedIn algorithm constantly scans content, searching for three key ranking factors:
Relevance.
Expertise.
Engagement.
To snag its attention, your content needs to do more than exist — it needs to spark meaningful conversations.
Consistency is the lesson Rand Fishkin taught earlier. Regular, reliable content builds familiarity, which in turn builds trust. And trust? That's your golden ticket to engagement.
But, your content shouldn't be a monologue. Instead, invite your audience to join the conversation, whether it’s a compelling question or a call for advice. Involving your followers boosts engagement and makes them feel valued.
In this example, Dane Miller, BDR at Beehiiv, captures his newsfeed’s attention by posting a series of sales posts. Directed at Calm, a potential customer, he shares a sketch with ideas about how Calm can potentially use Beehiiv for marketing newsletters. This fresh sales play (and cute dog) rallies Miller’s connections — and their connections — to engage in the comments.
Source: Dane Miller
Businesspeople flock to LinkedIn for expert content, but they’d also like a dialogue. This is why LinkedIn’s Polls are your friend. They're quick, engaging, and instantly gratifying. Plus, people love to cast their vote, like in UserGems' poll below, to see how their opinion stacks up against the crowd. It's like a quick pulse check on public opinion.
Source: UserGems
But, we shouldn't stop with polls. Questions can be just as powerful.
Whether you're asking for favorite productivity tools or job search tips, questions serve as prompts. They remove friction from engagement so your audience doesn’t feel like a middle schooler clinging to the wall at a school dance.
Reading LinkedIn posts can sometimes feel like listening to a friend's boring dream recap, but it doesn't have to be a snoozefest.
Take a cue from Ramli "RJ" John who wears many hats. As the author of "Product-Led Onboarding," a Fast Track Mentor at First Round, and the Content Director at Appcues, he's got engagement down to a science.
With a "Street Fighter"-themed post, he and a sparring partner battled out a Product-Led versus Sales-Led showdown. The suspense and novelty kept the audience guessing the results until the end. And those results? Neatly laid out in the post caption.
Source: Ramli “RJ” John
So, what's the takeaway? Good content should educate, entertain, engage, and empower. According to these standards, RJ's post was a success.
Savvy HR and marketing teams know the value of leveraging employee advocacy, which boosts engagement. In fact, employee social media posts reach 5x farther than branded posts, get reshared 24x more, and net a 200% higher click-through rate when shared by employees.
It’s a numbers game, too. The more employees who participate, the farther your company’s reach. This helps companies market their products and services and attract new talent. For instance, when Benjamin Robertson, a Senior Medical Device Design Engineer at Accure for Acne, shared his Bike to Work Day experience on LinkedIn, it gave outsiders a peek into the company’s culture.
Source: Benjamin Robertson
LinkedIn also believes employees are vital to increasing followers on your LinkedIn Page. Folks within the company can build audience trust by proudly sharing what’s going on behind the scenes, says Christina Le, Social Media Manager at OpenPhone.
Source: Christina Le
However, getting your employees to engage isn’t always easy. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, here are the top three reasons why your employees are reluctant to post:
They’re too busy.
It’s out of their comfort zone.
They don’t know what to post.
To get your employees onboard (and posting with confidence), implement a content strategy for employee advocacy. Your strategy should include workshops and/or training to teach employees how to update their profiles and include your organization in their work experience.
Using an employee advocacy platform like GaggleAMP can also streamline your employee advocacy efforts and save time by assigning activities and providing pre-written content so employees don’t need to brainstorm topics or feel pressured to craft original content.
GaggleAMP also offers gamification, which makes participation fun and rewarding. Employees can climb the leaderboard, enjoy friendly rivalry, and earn rewards like gift cards and company swag.
Spotlighting your team's wins and milestones, both big and small, can boost morale and knit a collective and inclusive company culture. It also builds a bridge of trust with customers as they get to see the humans behind the brand.
So, celebrate it all: work anniversaries, new hires, promotions, community service champions, day-in-the-life stories, etc. After all, it's the people who make the magic happen.
Here's a quick blueprint for elevating your employees on LinkedIn with GaggleAMP:
Amplify: Re-share your employees' best LinkedIn content.
Notify: Keep employees in the loop about important posts to boost organic reach.
Celebrate: Give kudos to your team or individual employees.
Connect: Build a community of employee advocates to help share stories and thought leadership.
Take a look at Colonial Life's video post, where Senior Implementation Manager Kimberly Brown talks about the importance of community service. Why does it attract engagement?
It's a video. (We all know how much LinkedIn loves video content.)
It celebrates an employee. (People love a success story.)
It showcases the company's core values. (It gives an authentic peek behind the curtain.)
It encourages others to share. (Because who doesn't love a good conversation?)
Source: Colonial Life
The best part: It builds a bridge of goodwill between the company and its customers.
Unique positioning is a surefire way to significantly increase engagement on LinkedIn. Look for niche gaps to fill that your competitors aren’t. Depending on your audience, you can be humorous, kind, or even rebellious with your content.
The key is to be clear, clever, and genuine like Duolingo is in this example. Duolingo’s mascot, Duo, is an owl “hoo’s” not afraid to show some personality (pun intended). The company’s playful approach, like referencing Hulu's hit show “The Bear,” resonates with fans and sets Duolingo apart from the competition. By looking at this post’s engagement, this tactic clearly works with its audience.
Source: Duolingo
Or consider LEGO's X post. Although it’s not LinkedIn, it’s a great example that can be repurposed for the platform. This post is a little cryptic, a little cheeky, and spurs a whole lot of engagement. No matter the social media channel, LEGO is a company that gets its audience, which is made clear by this post’s 2.3 million views and over 2,000 comments.
Source: LEGO
B2B influencer marketing is a relatively untouched opportunity, especially on LinkedIn. While other platforms may be saturated with influencer marketing, LinkedIn's professional sphere offers a unique chance to connect with a more targeted audience as Benjamin Mena here points out.
Source: Benjamin Mena
The key: nano and micro-influencers. While their reach might be smaller, their engagement rates and authentic audience connections are often stronger. As content marketer Erica Schneider explains in her LinkedIn post below, this makes for meaningful collaborations that benefit both parties (so long as you have the right approach).
Source: Erica Schneider
Here are some ways your brand can partner with influencers:
Podcast or video collaborations.
Live stream partnerships.
Co-authored written content like data studies.
Promotional post swaps.
Remember to partner with relevant influencers who complement your brand’s mission, values, and style. Partnering with the wrong influencer can potentially hurt your brand’s reputation and credibility.
Sure, thought leadership sounds like another buzzword, but it’s a status many company executives strive to reach. 61% of decision-makers say it paints a clearer picture of a product's potential than traditional marketing. A great way to become a thought leader is by interacting with other thought leaders.
On LinkedIn, your company’s C-suite can leave comments, host and guest on podcasts, attend events, and run webinars. So, getting them involved in your content amplification efforts is a no-brainer.
To get started, provide your company’s thought leaders with some LinkedIn conversation starters to help them engage in the comments. For inspiration, check out how Jay Acunzo and Marc Thomas engage in the comments.
Source: Jay Acunzo
LinkedIn isn't just a social network — it's a toolbox full of features designed to help businesses drive engagement. The trick is to use those tools well.
Here are a few of our favorite LinkedIn tools and features:
LinkedIn Live isn't just about synchronous broadcasting — it's about building real, meaningful connections beyond the comment section in real time. So, instead of being just a talking head, make your LinkedIn Live interactive like content marketing agency Fenwick does in this example.
To connect with its audience, Fenwick hosts a game show during its live session and invites everyone to play along.
Source: Fenwick
If this tactic appeals to your target audience, round up your team for a good old-fashioned brainstorming session to see what additional novel ideas you can put together.
When your company needs to host and promote webinars, workshops, or other events, you can use LinkedIn Events. Simply create an event, share it with your audience, and track sign-ups — all within LinkedIn.
By crafting a compelling event description and leveraging your network of LinkedIn contacts, you can boost registrations like Global Supply Chain Council and ChainTech do here:
Source: ChainTech Live
The only way to truly know if your efforts are paying off is to track and analyze your engagement metrics. Here are some tips for monitoring your progress and making strategic adjustments for improvement.
If you’re making changes to overcome the dip in your organization’s organic LinkedIn engagement, you’ll need a way to measure what is working and what isn’t.
LinkedIn's Page analytics is a built-in tool that lets you track your company’s page metrics including:
Clicks.
Reposts.
Reactions.
Comments.
Video Views.
Impressions.
Engagement Rates.
Digging into these analytics can help you see what’s working and what isn’t so you can adjust your engagement strategy.
Successful organic LinkedIn engagement results from smart, not scattered, efforts. When you need to overcome a dip in your company’s organic LinkedIn engagement, try these tips:
Polish your company page and profile.
Post fresh and novel multimedia content consistently.
Spotlight customers by sharing user-generated content.
Collaborate with your employees, partner with influencers and engage with thought leaders.
Use LinkedIn's built-in engagement tools for visibility.
Keep an eye on your metrics and adjust your strategy as needed.
Want to knock over company silos and make it fun for everyone in your company to take part in brand advocacy efforts? GaggleAMP can help you expand and analyze your brand reach. Our employee advocacy platform helps you track your campaigns and employee engagement so you can accurately connect revenue to your advocacy efforts. Schedule a demo today to get started.
Ready to learn more about how organic engagement on LinkedIn can help exceed company goals? Download these LinkedIn Stats today.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing
