In May 2021, LinkedIn launched a new feature that allowed users to get more traffic to their posts: boosting. It grants you the ability to expose your business to a broader audience with just a few clicks. Once a post is boosted, it turns into a paid campaign. This allows you to target users that aren’t following your company in the first place.
So, the answer to the question “can you boost posts on LinkedIn?” is yes, you can.
In this article, we’re going to go through numerous advantages of advertising on LinkedIn by boosting a post, how you can do it, and other alternatives that you can use to increase traffic to your posts and profile.
Benefits of boosting posts on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is currently home to around 800 million members from more than 200 countries, almost half of which are active at least once a month. It’s undoubtedly the largest and most influential professional community on the world wide web. So right off the bat, you can see the potential of having your posts up on LinkedIn, especially if you aim to attract a purely professional audience.
Well, now, imagine sharing your posts on LinkedIn, but also having them boosted so that they would appear on the feeds of users who don’t follow your page in the first place. And this is perhaps the first and most important benefit of giving your post a boost, the ability to instantly expand your audience reach with a click of a button.
Another great thing about boosting posts on LinkedIn is its ease of use. This is in reference to the fact that it requires little to no background knowledge on how paid advertising works or on how to use the campaign manager in the first place.
Then there is targeting, which on a platform such as LinkedIn relies on accurate, member-generated demographic data that allows you to reach whomever you want based on location, industry, job function, seniority within their respective company and much more.
Lastly, boosted posts do act just like regular newsfeed posts in the sense that in addition to reaching a broader audience, they can be interacted with. In other words, likes, comments, and shares are still an option that helps to boost engagement further and reach.
How can you boost posts on LinkedIn?
Before we delve in and answer the question of how you can boost posts on LinkedIn, let’s first get a few points out of the way.
- First off, the post boosting feature is only available for those who have super admin or content admin access on their LinkedIn page. More on that later.
- Second, only events, text posts, single-image posts, or videos can be boosted.
- Lastly, posts that have been boosted cannot be boosted again.
If and when you decide to boost a post, a “campaign” will be created in the ad account associated with your Page. In order words, billing and targeting will happen in your ad account’s Campaign Manager and not on the LinkedIn Page.
Without further ado, let us get into how you can boost posts on LinkedIn:
How to boost posts on LinkedIn
- First off, access the admin view of your LinkedIn page and locate the post that you would like to boost in the Updates section of your page feed.
- Just above the post of interest, you will find a Boost button. Click on it to access the boost post page.
- Choose an objective from a dropdown menu, preferably one that fits your business needs.
- Select the type of audience you would like to target through your boosting:
- Profile-based: Target your audience based on their profile. You can choose anything from industry, job function, job seniority, and more.
- Interests based: You can target your audience based on their interests, and there is plenty to choose from here. Of course, you would want to have a target audience with a shared interest, one that is connected to your industry (or content) in one way or another.
- Saved Audience: You can choose from an audience template you’ve already created and saved.
- If you wish to see more targeting options for whatever audience type you choose, simply click on View audience summary.
- We recommend that you continue to fine-tune your target audience using the following parameters:
- Choose the location or locations of your audience.
- Define the language of your audience.
- Etc.
- Make sure to uncheck the options Include LinkedIn Audience Network and Automatic Audience Expansion. Unless you want to keep it on, that is.
- Set your Lifetime Budget as well as Schedule. LinkedIn recommends a minimum budget of £25 a day to see significant results.
- Select an ad account to bill. Like we have said earlier, you need an ad account to get this working. In case you don’t have one, LinkedIn will automatically create it for you.
- Click on Boost.
Once you have boosted a post, a new campaign will be initiated in your ad account, including the settings you have chosen above. You edit its settings as well as follow its performance from the Campaign Manager.
LinkedIn also allows you to edit the content of the boosted post and its campaign settings from your LinkedIn page.
5 more ways to boost Your LinkedIn engagement
Now that we answered the question of “can you boost boosts on LinkedIn?”, let us discuss some other practical ways that you can rely on to significantly boost your engagement on LinkedIn without paying them a penny (since advertising on this platform is quite expensive).
1. Post a wide variety of content
The first tip to increasing engagement on your LinkedIn company page is to post a variety of relevant, exciting content. In other words, avoid sharing the same kind of content over and over again. You undoubtedly know how quickly people get bored on the Internet.
Your posts should include:
- Content that is interesting to your core audience.
- Photos, graphs, videos, etc.
- Updates and exclusive content about your business.
- Industry news.
- Links to your company’s website, blog posts, and more.
2. Post at appropriate times
Another way of ensuring that you get the most engagement on your content is by posting updates at a time of day when most of your followers are probably active on the platform. The audience on LinkedIn is mostly B2B (Business to Business) in nature, so it should come as no surprise that the most convenient time to post is during weekdays, more specifically, business hours.
Of course, people wouldn’t be casually surfing the platform while working, so what you want to really do is to post between 7 and 8 in the morning and between 5 and 6 in the evening. Professionals tend to use the platform most at the beginning and end of a workday. Still, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t post updates throughout the day or even week, but it’s just more recommended to take our approach.
Think of LinkedIn as any other social media page you have. Your company’s profile and banner images will bring life to your page. The logo, for instance, will be the first element that appears for people when they look you up on the platform. It will also appear on the profiles of all of your employees. So, make sure that it’s the right size and high quality. The same goes for your banner image as well.
- Standard Logo: The formats that are supported are .jpeg, .png, and .gif. The maximum file size is 4MB. And the image size is 300 x 300 pixels, images that are bigger than this will be resized to fit.
- Banner Photo: The same applies for the banner formats wise with the obvious difference being the image size of 1128 x 191 pixels.
4. Showcase pages
Showcase pages are basically extensions of your LinkedIn page, which allow you to spotlight individual brands, business departments and initiatives. You can create a group of pages with each corresponding to a specific aspect(s) of your business. These pages always link back to your company page, meaning it still acts as the centre of interest.
Users can follow one of the showcase pages without having to follow the rest or even the company page itself. And while this might seem counter-productive, it actually isn’t since it allows you to be versatile with your content and cater to the audience in ways you couldn’t before.
LinkedIn gives you the ability to create up to ten different showcase pages for free. To create one, simply click on the Edit menu of your company page, then select “Create a Showcase Page.”
5. Rely on analytics
Company page analytics allow you to closely track engagement, follower growth, and more. That data is highly valuable because it will enable you to fine-tune your future content. The analytics menu is divided into three sub-categories:
- Visitors: This is where you get an idea about the people who have checked out your company page. You can see what type of device they were on (desktop or mobile), spot trends, and more.
- Updates: This is where you find metrics such as impressions, clicks, comments, and social engagement percentage.
- Followers: This section gives you a concrete idea about your current follower base in terms of job function, seniority, location, interests, and more.
Using this data, you can determine which content is performing best and how relevant it is to your current audience. In due time, you can start putting a strategy together about how to improve your content to increase engagement and other important metrics.
Need help with LinkedIn advertising?
Advertising on LinkedIn can be a challenging task for new Internet marketers, but that doesn’t have to be the case for you. Contact us today if you need help with this aspect of Internet marketing.
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