Should you rethink LinkedIn?

WealthManagement.com asked me to weigh in on how advisors could take advantage of new features being rolled out by LinkedIn, namely their new stories feature. It’s worth reading, since the article covers more perspectives than mine, but I’d like to home in on a couple of key ideas. (And before you ask: yes, it’s home, not hone.)

The first key idea is simple: you should you be paying attention to LinkedIn.

Like most things these days, there’s very little middle ground on LinkedIn. You’re either very pro, or you don’t see the point. But 2020 has also turned most things on their head and caused us to rethink a number of previously held assumptions, and linked in should be no different. LinkedIn is getting more eyeballs than ever thanks to COVID-19. With social distancing looking like it’s here to stay, LinkedIn is finally living up to its mission to “connect the world’s professionals.” Whether it can fulfill the second part of the statement, “to make them more productive and successful,” remains to be seen.

Let’s walk through what you need to know about social media in 2020, so we can focus on how LinkedIn is different, and then look at what that means for you and your firm.

Social media superlatives

If social media platforms were high school, I imagine it would be something like:

• Most likely to succeed: Facebook

• Most attractive: Pinterest

• Most popular: Instagram

• Best dancer: TikTok

• Biggest nerd: LinkedIn

For years, LinkedIn has been just sort of there. According to mega-marketing firm Omnicore, LinkedIn is the best platform for businesses who market their services to other businesses (B2B). Some 80 percent of the B2B leads that come from social come from LinkedIn. What’s more, there are a lot of eyeballs on LinkedIn. We may love to hate it, but if you’re looking for job candidates, or screening new connections, a lot of us head to LinkedIn. And now, after getting purchased by Microsoft, the ugly duckling of social media may finally be growing into its rightful place as the professional networking site.

Should you focus on LinkedIn?

The answer to this depends on your target audience. LinkedIn is the best social media site if you’re targeting other businesses. So if, for example, you’re an RIA that targets small businesses and offers services designed to help business owners grow (like retirement and benefit packages, and so on) then LinkedIn might be a great option for you.

If you’re focusing on wealthy divorcées, then LinkedIn wouldn’t be the first place I’d focus.

There’s a bit of a wild card here, however. With most of the world still social distancing, and with LinkedIn trying to shake the dust off its image, the typical LinkedIn user might change. Consider that right now, 57 percent of LinkedIn users are male, and less than a quarter of those users are Millennials. However, with new features that mimic sites like Facebook or Instagram, you might start to see more engagement form women and Millennials.

LinkedIn could also give you a chance to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. While this could change based on the aforementioned factors, right now, just 3 million LinkedIn users share content on a weekly basis. Compare that to sites like Facebook where a number of users share content every day. It’s no surprise that professional content gets 15x more content impressions than other job postings: There’s less content to sift through. This means if you’re doing content well on LinkedIn, you could step into a bigger spotlight than some of the more saturated sites like Facebook.

Ok… so now what?

If you target businesses, testing new content on LinkedIn is a no brainer.

If you don’t, I’d still suggest testing content on LinkedIn to see if the changing landscape (and increased eyeballs, thanks to the current job market) might improve your traction.

What do I mean by “test”? Try posting the same content that you’d post other places, like Facebook, and maybe update the headline slightly. LinkedIn is getting a bit more casual in tone, but it’s still largely dominated by a professional tone. Make sure your title, images, and summaries target your target audience. (What I mean by that is: if you focus on wealthy divorcées, keep that thread going on LinkedIn.)

Most important: Make sure the content that you post is good. It should either be really interesting, really educational, or both. Keep in mind: Even if people are on LinkedIn to look at industry news or find potential connections, they still have other interests. Good or well-packaged content will catch their eye here as much as anywhere else. So substance can matter more than where you’re posting it.