LinkedIn is a very powerful and excellent platform for marketing, networking, or building your business brand. LinkedIn works very well in terms of marketing. Still, many business owners and businesses also make some critical mistakes, which render their marketing completely ineffective and prevent them from achieving the results they are aiming for.
For example, their reach becomes limited, they do not get more leads, and their business is not able to grow, but we will talk about some of these critical marketing mistakes today. In this guide, we will learn about the 10 most common LinkedIn marketing critical mistakes that, if you avoid and then do marketing, you will become a marketing master. Here are those ten mistakes. If you are doing them, start avoiding them.
Incomplete or Weak LinkedIn Profile.
A completely optimized LinkedIn profile is very strong and excellent for marketing, but many marketers fail at this step because they are not able to completely optimize their profile or even fill it out completely, which causes their value to decrease.
Common mistakes include:
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There is no profile picture, no background photo, no banner,
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weak headline that doesn’t tell you anything about who you are or what you’re going to do.
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They don’t even bother typing a summary and type the About section as if they were giving a school paper or messaging a friend.
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They can’t manage their skills and show them off. They can’t even type them in their profile.
How to fix it:
- You have to use a professional profile photo and customize it. You have to create a background from scratch.
- And a strong headline, which is a small line written below your picture, should explain it completely. This means you shouldn’t make it too long. Instead, you should explain in short words who you are and what businesses you help.
- You have to write a clear headline for a banner in which you have to tell about yourself and your work.
- You have to fill the About section with achievement goals. In the About section, you also have to write that you have learned the skills, and how long it has been since you worked on these skills.
- You have to select the skills and type the ones that you have. If you have different skills in one niche, then you have to type them all. But if you work on skills of different niches, then you do not have to tap all of them, but target specific skills of one niche.
Posting Irrelevant or Low-Quality Content
Content is the key to link marketing, and many people make the mistake of posting irrelevant and random content here, resulting in the sharing of low-value content, which can be detrimental to their professional brand.
Mistakes include:
- They share unrelated content,
- They post very little, and there is no consistency
- They copy and paste and do not add any value to the content or add their own touch to it.
How to fix it:
- Do good research and look for content that is related to your niche, then start creating that kind of content
- If you want to post a little, there is no problem, but you have to always keep consistency in mind. That means if you post once a week, you must post once every week.
- Don’t copy anyone’s content. This will not create any value for you, and all your marketing strategies will be destroyed. If you copy someone’s content, you always have to create your own content.
Ignoring Your LinkedIn Network
Many marketers fail to build their connections properly and strengthen their network. Since LinkedIn is a marketing and networking platform, it is not just a posting platform. Therefore, if you want to build a network for marketing, you have to send connections to only those people who are related to your business.
Mistakes include:
- Sending connections to random people and not even creating any strategy to grow your network
- ignoring connection requests
How to fix it:
- Focus on quality connections. Send connection requests to people like clients, mentors, and industry-related people.
- Try to send personalized connection requests; they are much better for you.
Over-Promoting Instead of Adding Value
This is another big mistake that they promote themselves too much, always promoting their skill set, their services, their digital products, that too without any value; that is, they do not tell people what they would get by buying this thing, they just keep promoting themselves. If you keep posting only in this way that you will keep promoting your services and your digital products, then people will start moving away from you.
How to fix it:
You have to use the 80-20 rule, meaning 80 percent of your post should be value-adding and 20 percent should be promotion. How to add value to your post? You can share tips, industry news, success stories, etc., and since you can do this, add your expertise to the post so that clients can see what you can do.
Not Using LinkedIn Analytics
Another mistake that is very subtle but has a huge impact is that people ignore analytics, which causes them to miss a lot of opportunities because many marketers do not analyze their performance, which is why they do not get the best results.
How to fix it:
You need to use the LinkedIn Analytics page and track your engagement, clicks, impressions, and identify which posts are performing well. You should start creating more posts in the same style so that you can see the best results in the future.
Weak or Missing Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
Giving a very weak call to action or forgetting to give one is also a huge mistake of people, especially marketers, who keep sharing their posts and content without a call to action, and they don’t know why no one is buying their services or why no one is buying their products.
How to fix it:
You have to include a call to action, especially if you share some of your tips, download the free guide, or book a consultation somewhere at the end. You have to place the call to action naturally in your post, at the end of your article, or if you think it will work best in the middle or at the beginning, then you have to put it there and test different calls to action to see which one works best for you.
Not Leveraging LinkedIn Groups
Groups are a very powerful way to promote their expertise, but many marketers ignore them, which means their network doesn’t grow very strongly, and they can’t show their expertise to as many people.
How to fix it:
Join relevant LinkedIn groups that are related to your industry and engage, meaning comment below any post that shows you, and if a beginner is posting there, help him/her, avoid spamming, and don’t promote yourself too much. This doesn’t mean that even if you help someone, you end up promoting yourself. You don’t have to do this at all, but you have to treat them like a professional if you want to do successful marketing.
Ignoring LinkedIn SEO
Many people consider SEO to be exclusive to Google, that it is only used to rank on Google or YouTube, but they do not know that LinkedIn profiles are also searchable, and if they do not optimize them, meaning they do not add the proper keywords where they should be added, their profile will not be shown to many people when someone searches on LinkedIn.
How to fix it:
Doing SEO for your profile is not a difficult task. You just have to include industry-related keywords in the industry you are working in, combine them in your headline summary experience and skills, and use those keywords. You have to use terms like LinkedIn marketing or digital marketing strategies if you are a marketer, and optimize your URL, meaning customize it so that your branding can be improved.
Let me give you a pro tip: whenever you are doing SEO for your profile, you always have to look at your profile from the perspective of a viewer. If a viewer comes to your profile, how will your profile look to them? If you do SEO for your profile with this mindset, your profile will be top-notch and become SEO optimized.
Neglecting LinkedIn Messaging and InMail
Many LinkedIn marketers fail because they don’t take advantage of LinkedIn’s messaging tools to build relationships.
Mistakes include:
They send generic connection messages, don’t follow up after connecting, and ignore InMail opportunities.
How to fix it:
Keep every message personal and provide value first before asking for anything, and use InMail strategies to easily reach decision makers.
Failing to Showcase Achievements and Testimonials
People want to see proof of expertise, but many people are unable to provide proof of their expertise properly, and some people are even unable to provide it at all, which is why people lose trust in them. And this mistake is often made by marketers, too.
How to fix it:
You should request recommendations from your clients, colleagues, highlight your achievements in your summary and experience section, and include any matrix awards or certifications that are possible for you. If you do this, you will see that people will start to trust you more and more, and your network will also become much stronger because a network is made up of a community, and if the community does not trust you, you will never be able to build a successful and strong network.
Conclusion
Now that I have shared the LinkedIn marketing mistakes with you, I will give you some tips that you have to follow. First of all, you have to avoid these mistakes and keep each of them in your mind so that you never perform them.
For example, a small mistake like not adding a call to action or adding it in the wrong place. Many marketers do this, due to which they are also seen complaining that the engagement trade on our post is also good, the impressions are also good, but no one is converting, no one is clicking with us. The reason is that they are not able to add the right call to action, or they do not know how to add them.
That is why you have to keep each mistake in mind and avoid them while doing marketing. If you want to know more about how a personal brand is created on LinkedIn, you can check out this article of mine.