As a small business owner, the holidays months are an essential time to market your brand. The ability to successfully engage the consumer crafts a distinctive and strong relationship with your network, generating business that will extend well past the end of the holidays. That said, here are 5 tips to help you successfully utilize LinkedIn around the holidays:
1. Be Thankful
Once you have established your presence and connected with your audience on LinkedIn, you want to continuously engage them with fresh content. For the Holidays season, you want to be “Thankful”. Being thankful will allow you to stay top of mind in your network by reaching out to current and past clients and referral partners. You can take a few minute to send them a personal message of gratitude for doing business with you throughout the year or even make an introduction for them to someone in your network.
2. Differentiate Yourself from the Crowd
As content marketing increases throughout the holiday season, the amount of competition for the viewer’s attention intensifies, so you want to differentiate yourself from the masses. Make your company seem unique in comparison by taking your engagement a step further and creating custom holiday images to go with your updates, you can use a Canva to make these distinct posts, which will allow your content to resonate in the mind of the reader.
3. Target Specific Audiences
When publishing holiday updates, LinkedIn Company Page provides you the handy option of directing your post towards a specific audience. As long as there are at least 100 people in each target group, you can promote your post specifically towards that type of connection. Use the holiday season as a hook for these posts. You can also use the advanced search option to identify and reach out to past clients in your first-degree connection group that you have not been in contact with for an extended period of time. Targeted announcements or messages sent directly to the specific group make the post relevant, timely and more likely to catch the eye of your reader.
4. Use Sponsor Update Advertising Content
LinkedIn’s Sponsor Updates feature allows company pages to publish relevant material straight to the LinkedIn feed of any member on the site, not just the page’s followers! Not only does the Sponsor Update option enable you to broaden the scope of your piece, it delivers relevant content right onto the screen of a wide target audience. Company pages can choose the type of LinkedIn account that they would like to view their post, and pay to have it boosted on that specific type of LinkedIn users feed. Sponsor Update Advertising is a useful and guaranteed way to have your company’s content gain viewership in one of the busiest seasons of the year.
5. Show Appreciation With Giveaways
Depending on the nature of your business, promotions and giveaways land especially well during the holiday season. Reward your loyal followers with early access to sales, special discounts and a first look at new products by posting exclusive deals onto your LinkedIn page. Special promotions for your LinkedIn network not only make them feel valued- it shows them that they were not forgotten in your pursuit of new business during the holiday season.
The holiday season is a great time to grow your company’s LinkedIn presence. Using the proper marketing strategies, your business will successfully create lasting bonds with your network. LinkedIn allows business owners to promote relevant content and develop various beneficial connections on multiple levels during the holidays. Follow these 5 easy tips to help your business stand out on LinkedIn during this festive time of year.
For more information about LinkedIn lead generation to reach out to your target audience during the Holidays and in 2017, you are welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn or email me at: [email protected]
This post was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.
By: Julbert A. and Meghan S.
