There is a saying in marketing: “If you want to piss off half of your audience, post about politics, religion, or sex (men vs. women).” You can be assured that certain social media platforms actively promote content that creates division or anger to get the clicks, comments, and engagement that keep people engaged.
I am not here to judge people, their posts, or marketing methodologies, but I am here to help people use clear marketing communications to help promote growing business sales.
If you promote a political message, a specific religion or ideology, or make jokes or disparage views on men or women, you are sure to get attention, engagement, and street cred with a certain audience, but you are also running the risk of a client, vendor, or prospect defining you as a less than optimal business partner. There is also the risk if you comment, like or share someone else's posts. It has the same effect.
Polarization
In today's business climate, people will form opinions based on your content, but the platform also promotes a bilateral bias. Computer algorithms are working hard to place you, your content, and your friends into buckets, and they are working in the background of most social media platforms. These buckets are generally “this or that”. Pro or Anti, Left or Right, and other polarizations are used on you and your friends and connections to create engagement. The platform has one goal. They want to keep you on their platform as long as possible so they can serve you up more ads.
If you look at a Facebook feed, it has three main components: posts from friends, Reels (meant to mimic TikTok and take you down a video rabbit hole), and ads. Many of the ads may look informational, like a person to follow, but another ad is embedded. If you pay attention, you will see that ads and follows make up half to two-thirds of all content on the platform.
The friends who show up are the ones you engage with the most. The more you comment, like, and share, the more they appear in your feed. Often, we may engage with posts we feel are controversial to show our support or to contradict their premise. That is what the algorithm does: it finds and serves up what you engage with the most to keep you on their platform.
It's Just Business
That is how most social media platforms make their money. The goal is to sell advertising; you are the fuel that powers their financial engine. Those ads are prioritized by ads that keep you on their platform instead of taking you off it to a website, but the main goal is to sell ads.
There is one exception. LinkedIn does sell ads, but they make up a smaller percentage of its income. LinkedIn's revenue comes from three, primarily equal, streams: premium subscriptions (Sales Navigator), job postings, and advertising. The ads generally promote content from your company's business pages.
People go to LinkedIn to make business connections, learn from industry experts, and promote their business. I had a friend tell me that his feed is seeing more and more political and religious posts. I have not seen as much as he has, but I can guarantee that if someone does that, I immediately revoke the connection. LinkedIn is and should stay about business. There are other places to share and argue about your personal beliefs.
Optimizing LinkedIn For Business
If you feel you could or should be doing more on LinkedIn with your business, I'd like to offer some basic steps, especially if you are a business owner.
Optimize You
Your profile is the place to start. Make a header (or have a graphic artist do it) that clarifies who you work for and what that business does. In other words, you want your logo, your tagline, and an image that catches people's eyes so they read it.
Make sure your contact info is up to date and professional. Ensure your headline is concise and mentions what you do, who you do it for, and what benefits you deliver. Mine is “Helping Mid-Sized B2b Business Generate Impressive Sales – Fractional CMO/CRO (Marketing/Relationship) & EIEIO (Engaging/Inspired/Enthusiastic/Interest/Optimizer) – Blending Traditional & Innovative Marketing for Sales.” Creative beats “CEO of X-Corp” any day!
Finally, make sure your About (overview) starts strong with a mission statement or business benefits.
Optimize Your Business Page
Your business page does not get visited as much as a profile, but it links back to you and every employee and their current position. Again, the header should be clear about what your company does. It could be the same as your profile. You and your logo need to be current. It shows in profiles. Again, you have a headline and an overview that can be updated to show your strengths.
Optimize Your Team
Go and look at the people under your company page. When we do audits for companies, we find that key employees are not connected to the page. That happens when they link to your business page under their current position in Experience in their personal profile. Also, we find a lot of LinkedIn Members (blank profiles) and even people who have left the company. Occasionally, we also find people not associated with your business who connect to your page by mistake (or on purpose to direct business to them).
Optimize Connections
You and your employees should prioritize connecting to current and past customers over trying to find new leads. This helps to make sure that when you post something in a profile or your business page, it shows up in their news feed. This reminds them that you are there and solidifies why they are doing business with you over your competition. Simply find them on LinkedIn and send them a simple (non-sales) connection request. You will be successful around 50% of the time.
Optimize Your Content
Create and add content to LinkedIn that shows you and your business are innovators and thought leaders. The optimal way to do this is to create blogs or articles on your website and then create teaser posts that link back to that website content. That way, you control the narrative and have a better chance of people picking up the phone or filling out your contact form. Make sure the content is educational and avoid sales or news. People want to learn and build a more solid relationship with you and your business.
If you can, get your staff to post the same content to their profiles. This will increase the number of current and past clients who see your content.
Closing Thought
It's up to you to monitor and verify that your company is being represented as a professional organization that solves problems for other businesses. If your employees aren't active, it's in your best interest to ensure they align with you and your company values, and maintain that professional profile as they represent you.
If you don't have the staff, time, or bandwidth to do all we outline here, you can contact B2b Interactive Marketing, and we can consult on how to make it possible, or even do it all with and for you. But doing nothing can become disastrous if an employee is engaging in a way that affects your business, and the perception can become an ugly reality of lost business and crisis management.
Optimizing your online presence is becoming not just an activity but a necessity as the internet, AI, and online marketing evolve and change daily. I have spoken with many business owners who have no clue how their entire company is represented on social media, especially LinkedIn.
If you don't take control, you can only guess about how your competition will do everything possible to gain a competitive advantage.
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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?
To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.
