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How LinkedIn Helps Brands Become Thought Leaders & Build Revenue

Most of us know LinkedIn as the world’s most comprehensive professional networking platform. You’ve probably used it to job search or recruit for your department, but the platform has a multitude of unparalleled features built to help brands revenue-driven success.

LinkedIn’s unique focus on professional connections has shaped its evolution towards monetized marketing solutions for its users. Since its inception in 2003, LinkedIn has expanded to become the world’s digital hub for B2B marketing. Because of this, your company’s presence on LinkedIn is no longer optional if you want to maintain credibility and support your website with qualified traffic. In fact, 46% of social media traffic to B2B company sites comes from LinkedIn. It’s a key platform to influence your industry and generate conversions from a network of engaged professionals.

Reach an Audience of Professionals

How LinkedIn Helps Brands Become Thought Leaders & Build Revenue

LinkedIn’s marketing resources offer helpful data-driven advice on how to capitalize on the platform’s marketing features. Some of these are already familiar to seasoned digital marketers, what’s less obvious is exactly what content is impactful to would-be buyers. Especially on a unique business-focused platform like ThumbStopper.

According to LinkedIn, only 20% of content creators believe that thought leadership content helps them close deals. Yet 49% of C-suite executives agree that thought leadership content has led them to do business with a company.

Furthermore, LinkedIn claims to reach over 65 million business decision-makers in over 200 countries and territories. With a large portion of them vetting other businesses for products and services. It’s clear that there is an opportunity to utilize LinkedIn to establish your brand as an industry authority and ultimately build new revenue.

So what exactly does thought leadership mean in the context of a B2B social media platform?

In truth, it’s not radically different from the content most companies are posting on LinkedIn. Much of it already falls under the types of thought leadership, which includes content that shares the business’ perspective on news, explains the company’s vision, or provides information on the type of product. The difference is that quality thought leadership content doesn’t just inform, it also offers guidance to solve a prospect’s problems. 

How LinkedIn Helps Brands Become Thought Leaders & Build Revenue


The great thing about LinkedIn – and why thought leadership is so effective on the platform – is that people come to the platform specifically looking for professional advice or recommendations. If you take advantage of the robust targeting available in LinkedIn’s campaign manager, the right combination of thought leadership content and ad spend can result in a successful lead generation campaign for any brand.

Best Practices

How LinkedIn Helps Brands Become Thought Leaders & Build Revenue

We don’t advise that you dive right into advertising on LinkedIn. There are a few ways you can prepare before you begin to ensure that you’re getting the most out of LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager. First, be sure your company page is completed. That includes your logo, overview, URL, organization info, and an easy-to-access call-to-action button to your primary landing page or products. Having this information and building a sleek call-to-action legitimizes your company to users interested in converting – pages with complete information get 30% more weekly views.

When you’re ready to start posting, be deliberate about content type and length. Concise text-based updates of around 150 characters are ideal. But rich visual media like custom-made images and videos perform even better than text updates.

Exactly how much better do they perform?

Of course, post consistency is important too. LinkedIn suggests posting at least 2x per week to see improvements in engagement.

Brands that have found success building an audience on LinkedIn clearly utilized this advice. For example, the company page for software development company SAP features bright, eye-catching graphics with short captions, brief informational videos, and article links. This large company is closing in on 3 million LinkedIn followers. That’s partially due to the company’s size: with over 125,000 employees globally, even if they only reached their employee’s networks they would garner an impressive follower count. Regardless, they’ve curated a company page that consists of high-quality content to drive new engagement from their target audience – professionals and decision-makers.

Amplify Your Content

How LinkedIn Helps Brands Become Thought Leaders & Build Revenue

Once you’re comfortable on the platform you might look to improve your campaign performance by expanding your organic reach. LinkedIn has some great options for this, like their Audience Network to extend your ads to active users, but these features can only get a brand so far. You can get a better ROI for your content by distributing it straight to your retailer’s pages with a content distribution solution like ThumbStopper.  That’s why LinkedIn support is coming to ThumbStopper in 2022. With LinkedIn’s campaign manager and ThumbStopper amplifying your content, your brand can realize its true potential by leveraging your retailer’s existing social media followers Book a demo to learn more about ThumbStopper and upcoming LinkedIn support.

Book a demo to learn more about what ThumbStopper can do for you.

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Key Points:

 

  • Companies should understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure their websites are accessible.
  • Brands that concentrate on accessibility on social media demonstrate care for their customers and build a positive brand reputation.
  • Brands should always consider inclusive design, such as plain, straightforward language, in their social media posts.

 

 

Accessibility may not be a term you usually associate with the internet and social media. You might picture wheelchair ramps, directional signs in braille, or sign language interpreters at live performances. The landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 dictates the legal necessity of these and similar accommodations in public spaces. As we’ve come to rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to buying groceries, it’s become clear that the internet is now also a public space. It must be accessible to everyone. And like other applications of ADA, businesses that do not comply are liable for damages caused by inaccessibility.

 

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are an international set of standards to provide instruction on meeting accessibility needs. It’s important for companies to understand how this applies to their websites, especially if they engage in e-commerce. In terms of social media, the requirements are less concrete. But prioritizing accessibility on your company’s social media is essential to your reputation, even if the legal requirements are uncertain. We’ll look at why it’s important to your customers, how it affects the perception of your brand, and how to make these changes efficiently.

Social Media for All

The cornerstone of accessibility is inclusive design: products or experiences that are accessible for everyone regardless of disability. The most important place where this shows up is on company websites where most users expect to also find links to the brand’s social media profiles. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of websites are not accessible, despite the fact that the application of ADA to the internet is over 20 years old. Making websites accessible is a complex process without the use of specialized software like Accessibe or EqualWeb.

Unlike websites, making sure your social media is accessible is a straightforward, ongoing process. Every social platform has been quick to release optional accessibility features. These features are important to many users even if they don’t rely on them to use social media.

Making your social presence accessible tells users that your brand cares about people, not just profits. It’s the same idea as the push for the representation of different body sizes in fashion or more expansive skin tone ranges in beauty products. Brands that meet the needs of underrepresented groups endear themselves to others as well. And while optimizing your brand website for accessibility might be a larger project you aren’t ready to tackle yet, starting with your social media pages is a great way to show customers that you’re listening to their concerns. 

 

Making Content Accessible

Shifting to accessible content means incorporating inclusive design into your creative process. The practice varies by type of media. For platforms that have graphics or videos with captions, it means not only adjusting each component but also being mindful of how they interact with each other.

For example, YouTube’s automatically generated closed captions and subtitles are often inaccurate. It's one of many examples where the caption generation software has issues picking up strong accents and mumbled words. This could be remedied with handcrafted video transcription services. If that’s not in the budget, the video creator could add their script or transcription to the video description.

None of the technology for accessibility is perfect yet. Teaching computers to digest complex information for human understanding is difficult, and the variations in disabilities further complicate it. The majority of adjustments creators need to make revolve around helping assistive technology better understand their content. Let’s look at how to make different kinds of content accessible. 

Text

  • Use plain language that’s easy to understand 
  • Avoid text in all caps
  • Capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag, like #SocialMediaMarketing, a practice called camel-case

Videos

  • Provide descriptive captions. Instead of just displaying the words people on-screen say, explain background noises and other sounds that are relevant to the scene.
  • Add your own subtitles or enable auto-subtitles on the video platform of your choice
  • Use captioning for live videos when possible

Graphics

Distribute Accessible Content

Many users find their new favorite brand through social media. When disabled people (who make up 26% of the population according to the CDC) can’t access your brand’s social posts, you miss the opportunity to connect with a demographic that’s eager to engage in online communities. On a hyper-local level, that kind of connection goes even further.

That’s why ThumbStopper exists to help brands distribute their social content to their retailer network. Retailers can connect with their local audience - with your accessible, branded content - in a more personal way. And since content goes to their page automatically once they sign up, retailers can effortlessly promote your brand online while focusing on running their business. 

Ready to see how ThumbStopper can help your brand improve its reach? Check out our brand reach calculator or book a demo.

 

 

accessibility
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Key Points:

 

  • Companies should understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure their websites are accessible.
  • Brands that concentrate on accessibility on social media demonstrate care for their customers and build a positive brand reputation.
  • Brands should always consider inclusive design, such as plain, straightforward language, in their social media posts.

 

 

Accessibility may not be a term you usually associate with the internet and social media. You might picture wheelchair ramps, directional signs in braille, or sign language interpreters at live performances. The landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 dictates the legal necessity of these and similar accommodations in public spaces. As we’ve come to rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to buying groceries, it’s become clear that the internet is now also a public space. It must be accessible to everyone. And like other applications of ADA, businesses that do not comply are liable for damages caused by inaccessibility.

 

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are an international set of standards to provide instruction on meeting accessibility needs. It’s important for companies to understand how this applies to their websites, especially if they engage in e-commerce. In terms of social media, the requirements are less concrete. But prioritizing accessibility on your company’s social media is essential to your reputation, even if the legal requirements are uncertain. We’ll look at why it’s important to your customers, how it affects the perception of your brand, and how to make these changes efficiently.

Social Media for All

The cornerstone of accessibility is inclusive design: products or experiences that are accessible for everyone regardless of disability. The most important place where this shows up is on company websites where most users expect to also find links to the brand’s social media profiles. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of websites are not accessible, despite the fact that the application of ADA to the internet is over 20 years old. Making websites accessible is a complex process without the use of specialized software like Accessibe or EqualWeb.

Unlike websites, making sure your social media is accessible is a straightforward, ongoing process. Every social platform has been quick to release optional accessibility features. These features are important to many users even if they don’t rely on them to use social media.

Making your social presence accessible tells users that your brand cares about people, not just profits. It’s the same idea as the push for the representation of different body sizes in fashion or more expansive skin tone ranges in beauty products. Brands that meet the needs of underrepresented groups endear themselves to others as well. And while optimizing your brand website for accessibility might be a larger project you aren’t ready to tackle yet, starting with your social media pages is a great way to show customers that you’re listening to their concerns. 

 

Making Content Accessible

Shifting to accessible content means incorporating inclusive design into your creative process. The practice varies by type of media. For platforms that have graphics or videos with captions, it means not only adjusting each component but also being mindful of how they interact with each other.

For example, YouTube’s automatically generated closed captions and subtitles are often inaccurate. It’s one of many examples where the caption generation software has issues picking up strong accents and mumbled words. This could be remedied with handcrafted video transcription services. If that’s not in the budget, the video creator could add their script or transcription to the video description.

None of the technology for accessibility is perfect yet. Teaching computers to digest complex information for human understanding is difficult, and the variations in disabilities further complicate it. The majority of adjustments creators need to make revolve around helping assistive technology better understand their content. Let’s look at how to make different kinds of content accessible. 

Text

  • Use plain language that’s easy to understand 
  • Avoid text in all caps
  • Capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag, like #SocialMediaMarketing, a practice called camel-case

Videos

  • Provide descriptive captions. Instead of just displaying the words people on-screen say, explain background noises and other sounds that are relevant to the scene.
  • Add your own subtitles or enable auto-subtitles on the video platform of your choice
  • Use captioning for live videos when possible

Graphics

Distribute Accessible Content

Many users find their new favorite brand through social media. When disabled people (who make up 26% of the population according to the CDC) can’t access your brand’s social posts, you miss the opportunity to connect with a demographic that’s eager to engage in online communities. On a hyper-local level, that kind of connection goes even further.

That’s why ThumbStopper exists to help brands distribute their social content to their retailer network. Retailers can connect with their local audience – with your accessible, branded content – in a more personal way. And since content goes to their page automatically once they sign up, retailers can effortlessly promote your brand online while focusing on running their business. 

Ready to see how ThumbStopper can help your brand improve its reach? Check out our brand reach calculator or book a demo.

 

 

accessibility
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