GUIDE

Organic and Paid

Social Marketing
Playbook
Integrate your organic and paid
social strategy to unlock your
brand’s potential on LinkedIn
 Achieving social
2

The content and data in performance

this guide were originally
produced by LinkedIn THE DIGITAL AD ECOSYSTEM is a dynamic and exciting place.

Marketing Solutions According to eMarketer, for the first time ever, digital will pass TV as the
in The Organic + Paid leading advertising medium in the United States with 33.9% of market
Playbook. share) this year—and in the next two years, that figure will swell to 47.9%.

Naturally, social media is at the forefront of this seismic shift. But with
abundant opportunities come significant challenges for B2B brands. As
organic reach on social media continues to decline, brands are feeling
the pressure to deliver concrete ROI—and this pressure is resulting in

2x rapid changes to the role of the social marketer.

In a survey of 3,110 marketers for Hootsuite’s Social Media Trends 2020

Members are liking, report, 44% of senior marketers cited “driving conversions” as a top
commenting and outcome for social media, right behind brand awareness. To achieve this
sharing at record objective and meet their business goals, organizations need to diversify
rates—nearly twice their social media strategy and experiment with a combination of organic
the rate from last year. and paid content in different formats across their social channels.

So how do you reach the right professionals, the right way with your
social media strategy, all while maintaining brand safety?

With member engagement rates nearly doubling year-over-year,

LinkedIn is uniquely positioned to help businesses of all sizes build a
compelling organic social presence, increase reach and engagement
with paid advertising, and measure and optimize campaigns to
maximize impact. By boosting your brand’s organic page posts with
Hootsuite, you can deliver these results while managing ad spend and
social media activity across all your social channels and campaigns.

In this playbook, you’ll discover how LinkedIn sponsored content

can complement your organic social content. It’s time to unlock your
brand’s potential on LinkedIn.

Let’s get started.

 3

Cultivate an integrated organic and

paid strategy on LinkedIn in 3 steps

3 stEps
Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

Build a compelling Boost your reach and Measure, learn

organic presence engagement via paid and optimize

Organic reach Invest in the best

amplifies paid organic content

The greater your paid reach, the more it can amplify your organic efforts.
By testing and optimizing with organic content, you ensure you’re investing in your highest-
performing content for paid campaigns.

Continue your focus on organic to drive even more followers and increase engagement.

Engagement on
LinkedIn is booming
Now is the time to reach your ideal
customers on the world’s largest
online professional network.
50% 130K 60%
Members engaging with Millions of professionals Views in the LinkedIn
the Feed is growing more create over 130K articles Feed are up 60% from
than 50% year over year. per week. last year.
Step 4

Build a compelling
organic presence

tell your brand’s story by posting great content

regularly.

First, make sure your LinkedIn Company Page is an

optimal place to showcase your content.

Have a great description, name, cover images, and links to

make it clear to prospects and customers what your Company
Page is about.

We see LinkedIn customers gaining successful and consistent engage-

ment when they post on their Company Page at least once a day.
Brands can share their story on their LinkedIn Company Page by
repurposing infographics, blog posts, videos, links to events, ebooks,
and webinars.

Companies that are engaged on social media are

40% more likely to be perceived as competitive compared to
those who are not.
Company Page
5

All-Stars

BUILD
Visual is the new headline
Ensure your imagery matches the messaging.

Schneider Electric posts move beyond stock

photos to post eye-catching branded imagery.

Links drive engagement

Company updates including links can have up to
a 45% higher follower engagement than updates
without links.

Hotmart’s company updates almost always include

a call to action.

With links
45%
Without links

Know your audience

Seek to be genuinely helpful by understanding
what’s important to your audience.

Hays positions itself as an industry thought leader

by continually adding value and offering tips to job
seekers.
Expand your reach 6

to drive brand awareness

Broadening the exposure of your content not only raises awareness

BUILD
and grows your followers, but it also helps you to identify the content
that resonates best with your audiences.

Here are some tips to boost your reach:

• Tap into industry trends and news.

• @ mention people who are affiliated with a specific piece of

content to gain exposure to their network.

• Add hashtags to your post to join trending conversations.

• Keep an eye on the storylines that LinkedIn curates each day—

they are a great resource to see timely stories that are gaining
momentum on LinkedIn.

How Hootsuite Helps

Employees are 14x more likely to share content from their employers than
other types of content on LinkedIn. To make the most of your content
marketing efforts, use an employee advocacy solution like Hootsuite
Amplify to make it easy for your employees to find and share your top
thought leadership articles and content. This can be a cost-effective
channel to build your community and generate highly qualified leads at a
fraction of the cost you’d spend elsewhere.
 Empower your top employee voices 7

to flex their industry expertise

These often are members of your C-suite or key individuals with

BUILD
expertise within your organization. GE, for example, has a fleet of
top voices sharing strong authentic posts and publishing long-form
articles regularly. And when they cross promote each other and the
company announcements, they’re growing their follower base to tens
of thousands.

Promote their best content from your Company Page to build both
your brand’s and your influencers’ followership.

Identify 3-5 top voices inside your company to reinforce

your marketing messages.

Top publishers have seen an average of 120% growth in Company Page followers.
Best practices for your top voices
8

BUILD
Long-form articles showcase how your
top voices analyze a trending topic in
depth.
Be authentic. Members want to hear your voice,
not a press release. Be sure the articles sound like
they came from you.

Join in existing topics. Pay attention to what’s

trending in the news and your industry.

Headlines matter. Ask yourself: “In the course of a

busy day, would I click on that?”

Go long—but not too long. The sweet spot for

article length is about 600-1,000 words.

Short-form posts are an easy way

to respond quickly to major events
and to help curate the world for your
followers.
share consistently. The more they share, the more
opportunities for your content to be discovered.

start a conversation. Engage readers. The more

interaction, the more a post gets shared and seen.

Get personal. Share content that interests you

even if not directly related to your business.

Mix it up. Mix insights with business updates to

provide value to followers. 38%
Posts with rich media, like
photos or video, have 38% higher
engagement than link shares.
Leverage the influence 9

of your employees
Research from Edelman indicates that only 45% of Americans trust

BUILD
institutions. At the same time, 63% do trust people like themselves.
And you have access to these “people like themselves”—they are your
employees.

The most effective marketers are putting marketing messages into

the hands of their employees for distribution on social media, in
person, and during customer service calls.

And not only do employees deliver a message that’s more trusted,

they also have more reach: A typical company’s employee base has
10x the social reach of the company itself.

2x
How Hootsuite Helps Content shared by
Hootsuite Amplify makes it easy for your employees to safely employees has 2x
share your content—extending your social reach. higher engagement
Learn more at hootsuite.com/amplify than when it’s shared
by a company.
Step 10

Boost your reach

and engagement
via paid advertising
Look to your organic content to determine
your investment in paid
Now that you’ve successfully built an always-on approach to your
company page, you’ve empowered your employees to share your
messages and you’ve used strategies to grow your followers, it’s time
to invest in paid opportunities to reach the right people on LinkedIn
and engage them at scale.

What you’ve been building organically will help you identify which
content resonates best with your audience. You’ll see content that
gets shared relentlessly or spawns numerous comments.

And sometimes you’ll see content fall flat.

Experimenting with content organically allows you to regularly take

the pulse of what your audience wants to engage with. Understanding
what performs best at an organic level helps you confidently choose
which content to invest in with LinkedIn’s paid advertising.

How Hootsuite Helps

Post and promote new LinkedIn Page content immediately in
Hootsuite—right from Composer—or schedule and promote it in the
future. Scheduled promoted posts appear in Planner with detailed
ad budget settings, giving you a holistic view of your organic and paid
calendar across all your social channels.
 11
Reach and engage with the right people at scale

You’ve identified the content and messages that resonate best with
your audience. Now it’s time to implement a paid strategy that

Boost
connects your brand with your ideal customers at scale. Focusing on
LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content will jumpstart your paid strategy.

Sponsored Content delivers your content directly to your target

audience in the LinkedIn feed, allowing you to capture people’s
attention where they’re most engaged—while consuming information
shared with them by their professional network.

You can design your program to serve upper-funnel branding and

awareness objectives or lower-funnel direct-response lead goals,
depending on your content approach.

Sponsored Content supports static and video formats—and

people stay to engage with video ads almost 3x longer than a
static Sponsored Content ad.

Promote LinkedIn posts directly from Hootsuite Composer

Drive higher engagement with 12

these tips for Sponsored Content

Boost
Get visual. Opt for rich, eye-catching imagery that matches the
messaging of your content, keeping the text on your imagery to a
minimum. Keep in mind that 75% of Sponsored Content engagement
happens on mobile devices, so make sure your content looks great on
small screens.

Keep it short and sweet. Shorter updates—meaning 150 characters

or fewer—tend to perform best. Within that short update, focus on
how your target audience would benefit by clicking on the link.

snackable stats work wonders. Lifting short stats and quotes from
larger content assets makes for really engaging posts. Numbered lists
and surprising stats both grab attention effectively. And everyone is
more likely to share content that makes them look smarter.

How Hootsuite Helps

With Hootsuite, you can run sponsored campaigns alongside
your organic social media campaigns from a single dashboard.
Learn more at hootsuite.com/platform/promote
Step 13

Measure, learn

MEasUrE
and optimize

LINKEDIN’S ENGAGEMENT INSIGHTS MAKE IT EASY to discover the

professional traits of your website visitors—and to see and under-
stand what your audience is engaging with most.

By analyzing details about the audiences that are reading and sharing
content on a specific topic, you can discover additional audiences that
would be good segments to target using Sponsored Content—giving
you additional opportunities to broaden your reach with content that
will have a high impact.

LinkedIn Engagement Insights

Understand your audience better. 14
Gain valuable audience insights—like job titles, company names, and
industries—using accurate professional data exclusive to LinkedIn.

MEasUrE
Create tailored content.
Compare different pages to learn which kinds of content resonate with
different audiences. Customize content to your strongest prospects.

reach your ideal prospects.

Use what you learn about your website visitors to target the people
who are most likely to become qualified leads and customers.

And with LinkedIn’s conversion tracking, you can review and optimize
campaigns in real time. Having the metrics that matter to you most at
your fingertips is critical for managing campaign spend and informing
your content roadmap.

How Hootsuite Helps

Hootsuite Impact makes it easier for enterprise organizations to clearly prove business
ROI from organic and paid social media.
• Set benchmarks and create unique goals
• Connect your social media activity to specific business outcomes such as conversions,
lift in brand awareness, customer experience, and security and risk mitigation
• Understand the revenue and marketing results generated by social media
Learn more at hootsuite.com/impact
Achieving social performance
15

on LinkedIn in 3 steps

3 stEps
Step 1
Build a compelling social presence

• Tell your band’s story by posting great content regularly

• Expand your reach to drive brand awareness

• Empower your top voices to flex their industry expertise

• Leverage the influence of your employees

Step 2
Boost your reach and engagement with paid advertising

• Look to your organic content to determine your investment in paid

• Reach and engage with the right people at scale with LinkedIn
Sponsored Content

Step 3
Measure, learn, and optimize

• Use engagements insights to understand what your audience is engaging

with most

• Discover the professional traits of your website visitors with website

demographics

• Understand your advertising ROI with LinkedIn conversion tracking

The content and data in this guide were originally producedby

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions in The Organic + Paid Playbook.
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