The Pitfalls of LinkedIn Marketing
LinkedIn has been around for a while, longer than Facebook in-fact. However, the professional social network hasn’t always had the best reputation. User experience hasn’t always been the strong point for LinkedIn, and because of this, some business people feel their efforts are better spent elsewhere. Luckily for us, they are taking action to improve their user experience which is great for us marketers! The better the UX, the more people will be enticed to join the platform, not that we need new people. LinkedIn is taking a stand and aim to compete, or possibly even overtake other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Despite efforts being made to improve their platform, there are still some standout features that may act as pitfalls for some people and business. Please bear in mind that updating a social platform isn’t the fastest process and some of the cons below may be completely irrelevant by the time you are reading this blog.
Specific Audience
As you may already be aware, LinkedIn a business-orientated social media network. This means that the audience you will come across will consist of business people. Don’t get me wrong, this can be a HUGE advantage if you are a B2B company. However, if you’re a B2C business, then LinkedIn may not be your ideal audience. Let’s say that you own a clothing brand, LinkedIn probably won’t be your ideal platform to promote on as your brand is more informal. Now let’s say that you own a marketing agency and your target audience is small-medium businesses. Then LinkedIn would be a very good place for you to market.
Costly
LinkedIn can be quite costly in comparison to other social networks. There are 3 different types of ad pricing. First, we have Cost-Per-Click(CPC) – With CPC you will only pay when people click your ad. The second type is Cost-per-1000-impressions (CPM) – Where you will pay when people see your ad. The last type of ad pricing is Cost-per-send(CPS) – Where you will pay whenever a sponsored InMail is delivered to your audience. Not to mention that there are premium versions of LinkedIn and they range from £49/Month to £96+/month.
Status Limitations
When it comes to sharing updates on your LinkedIn profile, you are quite limited with what you can post. All status updates are limited to 600-characters. This isn’t great! However, you can use it to your advantage. You can post articles to your profile and use the 600-characters to display a snippet from the article and maybe ask a question to spark a debate (Engagement helps a hell of a lot on LinkedIn and can give your post a shelf-life of weeks.
Potential Spam
Networking is a big part of LinkedIn and is one of the things that makes it so great. A lot of people on LinkedIn are respectful of others and know how to approach them. However, the sad truth is that there are people who don’t and will send out mass messages to anyone and everyone hoping to make a sale. If you’re active on LinkedIn, then no doubt you have seen this happen before. When this happens, it isn’t the end of the world, however, it isn’t the best approach.
Conclusion
To conclude, LinkedIn is a great platform for business people and marketers, however, if you do want to start marketing through LinkedIn then there are some things to consider, as mentioned above. Keep all of this in mind, put together a marketing strategy and you’ll be a LinkedIn pro in no time.
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