If you’re used to the Meta ecosystem, LinkedIn feels a bit weird. It’s calm. Too calm. There are no arguments about dog poo, and the algorithm isn’t screaming at you to BUY A THING! every two seconds.
All very suspicious for a social media platform, don’t you think? What is LinkedIn up to? Why isn’t it as toxically chaotic as the other platforms that we know and don’t love?
Don’t worry. LinkedIn is just as chaotic and money-grabbing in its way as all the rest. When thinking about LinkedIn vs Meta, it’s still social media – it’s just playing a different game from Meta.
Basically, while the likes of Facebook and Instagram are built around entertainment, socialising, and escapism, LinkedIn is a bit more professional. Don’t get us wrong – people ultimately connect with other people, so relatably personal posts often go down well on LinkedIn – but the social communities you find on LinkedIn are more work-focused than anything else. For example, you won’t find neighbourhood community groups where people can gather to scream at one another about dog poo and parking on LinkedIn. You might find industry groups but – as in any professional situation – people tend to be a bit calmer and more mature in their conversations here than they might be on Facebook.
If it helps, think of LinkedIn as the work canteen and Facebook as the local pub. Both are great for socialising and building connections, but people tend to behave more professionally in one than the other. Most of the time….
Does this mean that LinkedIn has more integrity than the rest? Of course not! Don’t be silly! LinkedIn is still all about the data – it just pulls in and engages its uses in different ways to Meta. Which begs the question: how can you use LinkedIn to bring in customers and promote your own business?
What people actually do on LinkedIn
People set up LinkedIn profiles for a few main reasons:
- Their boss tells them to
- They want to keep an eye on their industry
- They want to find clients
- They want to build their businesses
- They want to make professional connections
In practical terms, this means you need to tailor your LinkedIn content around those motives.
Let’s say, for example, that your company sells cookware. On Facebook or Instagram you might create ads that showcase how your cookware can turn boring culinary tasks into fun and easy family cooking. You might get an influencer to do a demo of your cookware in a cosy kitchen set, or show a beaming family tucking into a beautifully cooked meal.
That approach won’t fly so well on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn has less of a personal, social focus. Instead, you might target small catering businesses, or restaurants, or cookware retailers etc. Instead of leaning heavily on the social, domestic aspects of cooking, you’d instead promise that your cookware will make retailers, caterers, and suppliers really stand out in their industry, that it will elevate their game and bring in glowing customer reviews. Ultimately, on LinkedIn you’re trying to tap into the tricky intersection between professional and personal needs and aspirations.
So, how can you build a brand presence and pull in punters through LinkedIn? Here are some things to bear in mind:
1. Authority beats visibility
If you’re used to Meta marketing, you’ll have spent years working out ways to grab attention fast. You’ll have realised long ago that Facebook and Instagram don’t particularly care about how credible your claims are – as long as what you create is attention grabbing enough, the Meta algorithms are happy.
On LinkedIn, you’ll need to relearn a lot. While being attention-grabbing is still important, authority is what really counts here. LinkedIn’s users want content that’s relevant, engaging, and useful for them. Ideally it’ll be relatable too – as we’ve said, humans engage best with relatable, human content – but you can’t ‘bait’ for engagement like you might on Facebook. Instead, focus on relatable content that really has something worth saying. And then stick with your posts and encourage conversation.
Remember, people rarely scroll LinkedIn for casual entertainment (OK, some do, but they’re a lot rarer than the casual scrollers on Meta platforms). While you may be able to grab eyeballs with Meta-style advertising tactics, you won’t keep them for long unless you have something tangible, engaging, useful, and authoritative to offer the audience.
While Meta is built for entertainment, escapism, and socialising, LinkedIn tends to focus more on professional connections. This is one of the key distinctions of LinkedIn vs Meta.
2. The algorithm adores attention
There is one significant way in which LinkedIn’s algorithm mirrors Meta’s, and that’s the way it treats interaction. Both LinkedIn and Meta love actual human engagement – the more ‘human’ and the more invested the better.
For example, a comment takes longer and requires more thought than a simple like. This implies greater personal ‘investment’, and therefore impresses the algorithm more than a like. A share goes further, as it implies that the viewer found the content so engaging that they were willing to showcase it on their own page. The algorithm adores that, and will respond by pushing highly shared content even further.
As such, it’s a very good idea to feed the algorithm as much engagement as you possibly can. You need to give engagement in order to get it. So, craft posts designed to get people talking and respond as deeply and consistently as you can. Some ways to do this include:
- Asking questions
- Tagging relevant people/businesses
- Launching discussions
- Actively responding to people who engage with you. Ideally, hang around your post for at least an hour after making it so you can quickly jump onto any engagement (if you’re busy, get the LinkedIn app on your phone and turn on engagement notifications)
…and don’t just do these on your own posts, do it on other people’s too.
3. LinkedIn is not just for B2B marketing
As you’d expect for a business-focused channel, LinkedIn is fantastic for B2B marketing. But it’s not solely a B2B platform. What it’s best for is reputation-building. A good LinkedIn presence can play a huge part in how people think of your business, even before they try your products or services.
As such, it’s vital to keep your LinkedIn profile alive. You don’t have to post every day, but you do have to be consistent – particularly when it comes to that all-important engagement. It’s vital that people (and the algorithm!) see that you’re active, engaged, and responsive.
By maintaining your LinkedIn page well – even if it’s just to issue the odd update or post some blog content – you show your audience that you’re invested in your business and care about its reputation. You’ll also build familiarity and trust with your LinkedIn network that’s likely to pay dividends in things like recommendations and new connections.
4. Company pages matter less than you might think
As a general rule, personal posts tend to perform better than company pages.
Company pages are great, and you can bring in lots of leads with them – but they work best when they’re attached to recognisable faces. Humans are social creatures, and even when in ‘professional mode’ we respond better to other humans than we do to faceless corporations.
So, while a company page might be a good LinkedIn shopfront, make sure to keep your personal profiles well maintained. When you engage with the company page, either tag it from your personal profile or create company posts that put the human face of the business front and centre. If you head to our own LinkedIn page, you’ll see that the majority of our posts have a human tone, and we often talk about what’s going on in our human lives (as well as some truly TERRIBLE puns).
5. Paid LinkedIn is powerful…and expensive
LinkedIn ads are great, but they’re also expensive. Way more expensive click-for-click than Meta ads. Though paid advertising works differently on each platform, so you could say it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Understanding the nuances of LinkedIn vs Meta can save you money and improve your ad’s targeting.
To be fair to LinkedIn, it does offer a lot with its paid ad service. It will give you access to very specific audiences based on variables like job titles, seniority, industry, sector, company size, and more. You can toggle these variables pretty much infinitely, which means you can get laser-sharp targeting…for a price.
Unless you’ve got loads of money to chuck around, we suggest not opting for paid LinkedIn ads until you’re 100% confident that your content will work. Instead, use it to amplify content that’s already doing well organically.
How LinkedIn fits alongside Meta
Meta and LinkedIn may attract different audiences and operate in different ways, but the best social media strategy will treat them as two branches of the same tree. Together, the Meta platforms and LinkedIn cover your whole marketing funnel, and combine to help you build a credible digital brand presence.
For example, you might pique someone’s professional interest with a Meta post. They might then remember your name next time they’re looking for an industry specialist, and head to your LinkedIn profile to gauge how competent and respected you are among your peers. Both parts of this process are vital to getting a conversion.
The trick is to make sure that your content is platform-suitable as well as maintaining a consistent brand tone and ‘feel’ throughout. If you’re not sure how to do this, we put together a handy table on platforms, audiences, and the kind of content that works best on each in the first part of this series.
Bear in mind that LinkedIn is increasingly becoming a vital part of the networking scene. If you hit it off with someone at a networking event, it’s highly likely (almost certain, in fact) that they’ll head straight for LinkedIn to cement the connection. So make sure that you’re easy to find – add your LinkedIn link to your website, your Meta profiles, and so on.
The boring truth about LinkedIn success
As with any other social media, there’s no magic formula that will help you ‘hack’ LinkedIn (no matter what all the milquetoast LinkedIn bros will tell you). The trick to conquering LinkedIn is simply to consistently engage and to create good, platform-suitable content by:
- Focusing on building brand credibility and authority rather than the hard sell
- Maintaining a professional-but-human persona that’s linked to your brand
- Encouraging engagement
- Actively and consistently engaging with others
- Creating a network
- Joining in with industry discussions
- Using paid LinkedIn when you’re absolutely certain that it’s going to be worth the money