Marketing on LinkedIn as the social media gods intended
Driving reach and impact for our clients on social media
We all use social media, in many cases probably more than we should, in our every day lives.
But it also has a place in your b2b marketing strategy, with the dual objectives of reach, and impact.
Reach: literally reaching a broad audience of people relevant to your business, and making your brand salient in their mind through repeated touchpoints
Impact: engaging that audience directly with that content, and placing ideas and concepts about your brand directly in their front of mind
If you take a quick Google of "b2b social media marketing", many of the first results reduce social media platforms to mere inbound channels where, if a post isn't linking directly to your website, then it's not worth posting.
This is entirely wrong.
Social content should be social-first. It's an opportunity to engage with a vast audience in a more human and emotive context. And frankly, if they've decided to scroll through LinkedIn on their lunch break, why on earth would they want to leave the platform to have a look at your company website?
We deploy carefully considered, sometimes planned, sometimes reactive social content for our clients, always aligned with their core identity and branding, but most importantly user-centric and social first.
And it gets results...
Hope Architects - a tactical blend of content and techniques
Hope Architects has a modest following on LinkedIn, but that presents no barrier to achieving significant reach on the platform.
Hope is fundamentally warm and clever, which gave us plenty of scope for experimental content that highlights their personality and their calibre of expertise.
Since pivoting their social media tactics at the turn of the new year, between 1 January and 27 June 2024 we have been able to dramatically boost their reach and impact compared to the previous period. That means:
1200% increase in impressions to 26,000
2300% increase in engagements to 5,000
80% increase in engagement rate, now 9.3% compared to the sector standard of 1.2%
I’m very pleased with our growth on the platform, it’s fantastic to have people in the sector mention our content to me so positively in conversation, and we really appreciate how Luma has been able to translate our personality into consistently high-performing social content.
Phil Cooper RIBA, Director, Hope Architects
Hope Architect’s account growth in the last 12 months. We began deploying targeted social media campaigns in January 2024
We've achieved this for Hope Architects with a two-fold set of tactics:
Being bolder in content, emphasising Hope's expertise and role in projects.
Using a consistent post format that's unique compared to their on-platform competition.
We've combined these tactics with content reprocessing from their website and other channels, but not merely posting links to the original content: rather we reformat the content with a social-first mindset.
We've also employed a range of LinkedIn-centric methods which you can also use:
Using bullets and emojis to break up long posts
Using carousel and gallery formats to drive engagement
Writing compelling, and sometimes jarring hooks that stop users in their scrolls
Avoiding links to outside of LinkedIn
We look forward to continuing to grow Hope Architects' presence on the platform.
renaissance engineers - social media should be social first
Our impact on Hope Architect's growth on LinkedIn can be chalked up to careful research and considered planning executed with consistency.
However, much of social media marketing is highly responsive, and sometimes it's a case of reacting to content already in the shared media realm.
We translated such an opportunity into doubled reach at an engagement rate of 8.5x the sector average for renaissance, in reference to a project they'd completed work on.
Rather than focus on their brand or their input into the project, we responded more emotively, focusing on how their team felt about the work they achieved, and framing it humorously.
The post itself is typical of average LinkedIn content, with a bit of text, a couple of hashtags and an image. But it worked so well because we:
Timed it perfectly in response to other shared media content
Used a compelling hook with a sense of mystery
Took a side, and wore renaissance's opinions on our sleeve
Wrote in a social-first manner, focusing on collaboration, fun, and emotion
renaissance’s reach and impact over time, with a spike on July 12 following the reaction post. Note a significant decrease in enagement rate due to the massive growth in impressions.
This post is a testament to the fact that content you post on LinkedIn should encourage sharing and interaction. After all, that's what social media's for.
So when you create content that people actually want to comment on and share, that makes it go so much further, and impact people more significantly.
Placemarque - consistency is key
Placemarque is another of our clients with a modest following on LinkedIn, so in our social media strategy for them we quickly identified the importance of consistency.
One means of pushing this was through a single-stream protracted campaign.
Placemarque's work in wayfinding strategy and design places them as perfect storytellers when it comes to placemaking, and we wanted to capitalise on that in a market-oriented way. Not focusing on Placemarque or their 'product', but rather focusing on the places they impact, and demonstrating their genuine care and interest in a given location beyond their work there.
Entitled 'Hidden Stories' we highlighted a range of locations that Placemarque has worked in, picking up fun, interesting and otherwise curious hidden stories about that place.
In terms of packaging, we deployed consistent carousel format posts on a regular fortnightly frequency.
This unique formatting, and utter consistency from post-to-post, has resulted in a campaign that continues to grow in reach and impact with every post.
The trend of impressions and engagement rate actually follows a bell curve of adoption, with an initial spike and resulting drop off, followed by steady, accelerating growth.
Placemarque’s “Hidden Stories” campaign over time
Conclusion
What these recent case studies show is that there's no catch-all solution to growing your reach and impact on social media platforms.
They also indicate that your total followers should not be considered as a success metric, as they have little impact on how far you can actually reach.
Although these represent three differing LinkedIn tactics of:
Careful planning
Reactive content
Consistent execution
All three are carefully aligned with our clients' core identities and branding. It's these foundations that allow us to deploy social content that really has an impact.
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The graphs throughout this blog are taken from our clients’ monthly marketing effectiveness reports, built custom to their objectives. If you struggle to measure the effectiveness of your marketing outputs, and whether they have positive ROI, consider getting in touch to see how we can help.