Social Media Tips for Service Businesses on LinkedIn

Across the world, there are currently 17 social media platforms that have at least 300 million active users. Nowadays, businesses already know they should be posting on social media, but it’s difficult to know which platform you should be posting on.

In this guide, we are sharing LinkedIn tips for service businesses. Marketing services is different than marketing products. What resonates with your ideal consumer? How do you optimize your social media for service-based businesses? Let’s dive in.

LinkedIn: The Perfect Professional Platform

LinkedIn is exactly that: the perfect professional platform. In fact, it’s the largest professional network platform on the internet.

Oftentimes, the first interactions a potential client will have with a business, especially for B2B relationships, is on LinkedIn. Since many service businesses conduct the majority of their operations as B2B, especially when looking at long-term partnerships and those big SaaS & IT purchases, it only makes sense to be active on LinkedIn.

This makes for a simple equation for choosing a social media platform for service-based businesses, much like how 1 + 1 = 2.

Here’s the logic:

Prospective clients that first interact with service businesses on LinkedIn + A service business looking for clients = That service business being active on LinkedIn to meet prospective clients.

In reality, it’s a little more complex than this simple equation, but gaining clients for a service business ultimately boils down awareness, trust, credibility, and relationships, which LinkedIn can help with.

For instance, content shared on LinkedIn can add endless value for a service business, as well as their audience. Posting LinkedIn content can enable you to:

Promote your business

Sharing content consistently is key for growing brand awareness, spreading your brand’s message, showcasing the behind-the-scenes or ‘exclusive’ content that makes people feel involved with your business, and sharing updates about the industry.

Build sustainable relationships

After all, the point of social media is to be social! By interacting with your audience in post comments and messages, your business will appear friendly and involved, which in turn attracts more clients and increases engagement. This is great for showing people what it would be like to work with your business by showing the business’ culture and values through these interactions.

Increase credibility

By sharing regular content, your business will appear more official. Oftentimes, businesses will post information about their respective industries, which can help them act as a free information hub for its audience, which adds value for the reader while simultaneously increasing credibility and leads.

This content can enable your business to become a thought leader that people can turn to when diving into your business’s industry.

Reach new audiences

LinkedIn’s algorithm is a dream for visibility. When someone interacts with a post, whether they like, comment, or reshare, the post will appear on the feed of everyone in their network. This helps businesses reach people that aren't already in their network. This visibility can be even more enhanced if you have room in your budget to purchase LinkedIn ads.

Now that we know LinkedIn is the place to be for a service business, how do we manage the page successfully?

Steps for Managing Your Service-Based Business’ LinkedIn Page

1) Understand your audience

Ask these questions:

• Who is my audience?

• What matters to them?

• What questions do they have?

• What problem are they trying to overcome?

Tailoring your content to their needs is imperative for effective marketing. If you aren’t sharing information that adds value to your audience, they won’t be engaged.

Tip: Create an initial FAQ list and make content that answers those questions. After all, those are the questions they are interested in.

2) Build relationships and trust

People respond best to real, genuine interactions and connections. Not everything is transactional! When authentic relationships are built, trust is established.

When engaging with your audience, remember to listen to what your audience is actually saying, make them feel understood, and show them how you can solve the challenges they’re facing.

3) Create a community and encourage conversation

No one likes to be nagged or talked at. Instead, people prefer engaging in conversations where they feel like they can contribute.

When engaging on LinkedIn, focus on creating a community, not a following. Ask your audience questions, listen to their opinions, encourage conversation in your comment sections, or even open a survey to hear from them.

4) Maintain consistency and post quality content

When you come across a page that hasn’t been active in 3 months, you don’t think of it as a page you’d engage with regularly. By posting and engaging on LinkedIn consistently, your audience will see your business as a credible thought leader in the industry that they can trust and follow long-term.

However, you want to focus on quality as well. Would you trust a business that posts incorrect information that is full of typos? By focusing on the visitor’s experience by providing good quality content, those visitors will be more inclined to convert into customers!

5) Make a call-to-action

Now that you’ve impressed your audience, captured their attention, and added value through your content, what should they do next?

Making a call-to-action is a great reminder for the visitor about what services you offer and how they can stay in touch with you.

A call-to-action doesn’t need to be as intense as agreeing to a long-term partnership. It could be as simple as joining a mailing list, attending an event, following your account, or checking out your website.

Mastering LinkedIn is difficult. Let Third Door take care of social media for you. Interested? Let's connect.