In the age of the Internet, social media has become increasingly prevalent in the lives of the everyday consumer. People not only rely on social media for social connectivity but also for marketing purposes, shopping, news, and entertainment. One social media platform, in particular, LinkedIn, has grown to be one of the most prevalent tools for business professionals across the world with over 760 million users as of 2021. One of the reasons it is so popular is because of its unique approach to the LinkedIn newsfeed.
Millions of B2B marketers use the platform every year to promote their brands. Unlike the algorithms of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that focus primarily on recency in filling a newsfeed, the LinkedIn newsfeed focuses on engagement. This means that posts have the potential to live in peoples’ LinkedIn news feeds for weeks at a time.
If you are a business professional looking to make use of this amazing platform without relying on paid promotion, you’ve come to the right place. Here, we will break down some of the pros and cons of LinkedIn organic posting and give you some tips to increase your following!
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What is Organic Posting Online?
How can the word “organic” can be used to describe anything other than produce, let alone social media posting?
“Organic” social media include posts that appear on your profile and can be seen by your audience without the use of paid promotion. Whenever you post, updates can be seen by the followers of your page and followers of your followers in the case that your post is shared. Finally, it can also be seen by people following any hashtags that you included in your post.
Organic posting is totally free and is utilized by the majority of consumers across all social media platforms. People and brands use organic posting to establish their personality and voice and build relationships by sharing informative, entertaining, or inspiring content. They also use it to engage with their followers and offer customer service and support. It’s a great way for smaller businesses and brands with smaller marketing budgets to get their brand out to potential consumers and compete with some of the bigger players in their respective industries.
What Shows Up in the LinkedIn Newsfeed?
Now, let’s dive into how it plays into LinkedIn’s algorithm. The LinkedIn newsfeed displays content from people in your network, groups that you are a part of, companies and hashtags that you follow, and content that people in your network engaged with. In this way, the organic reach of the LinkedIn newsfeed has the potential to be much higher than other social media platforms. However, this all depends on the number of connections you have.
Still, LinkedIn’s algorithm differs from other social media platform algorithms because it focuses on engagement rather than recency. Generally, the LinkedIn algorithm focuses on the value that your posts or content bring to its users. It measures this value through the overall engagement that the content receives. The more likes, comments, and shares that your post has, the more the LinkedIn algorithm will prioritize it over other posts. The tricky part of the algorithm is that if your post does not perform well in terms of its overall engagement early on, LinkedIn will pretty quickly dismiss your content as poor and stop promoting it. Ultimately, you want to do your best to push the algorithm in your favor.
What are Some of the Pros of LinkedIn Organic Posting?
Your LinkedIn strategy should include some organic posting. It can be one of the best tools for growing your brand’s page on LinkedIn if done correctly. Here are some of the biggest pros to organic posting on LinkedIn.
B2B Thrives on LinkedIn
A big advantage of organic posting on LinkedIn is that the users of the platform are a concentrated group of professionals. This means that your target audience is most likely people specifically looking to interact with different companies and brands. This makes it much easier to market your brand because the platform is made of people doing the same thing. Make use of LinkedIn’s newsfeed by posting relevant and quality content that business professionals will want to share.
The LinkedIn Newsfeed Has a Long Lifespan
As previously mentioned, unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn’s algorithm focuses primarily on engagement , rather than recency. So, as long as your posts continue to generate likes, comments, and shares, LinkedIn will continue to promote your posts to other users. This could go on for weeks at a time. Keeping your posts relevant for that long will undoubtedly lead to a larger organic reach. Ultimately, this leaves more potential for growth. The key however is to make sure that the content you post is quality and will spark engagement quickly. Otherwise, your posts may fade much more quickly than you want.
Organic Posting Saves Money
One of the biggest pros of organic marketing is that it is entirely free to do and anyone with access to the Internet can do it. Many small and up-and-coming businesses do not have the capital to spend millions of dollars on digital marketing campaigns. Thus, organic posting has become an excellent way to continue to promote their brand and products to the masses without spending much money at all. Organic posting helps to level the playing field a little bit for small businesses against corporations. Millions of businesses have shown that it can be extremely effective.
Sustain and Retain Existing Customers
Organic posting can do an excellent job of promoting your business. But, it is also important in maintaining relationships with your current customers. Paid promotional posts typically work to bring potential customers to your page. But if they have questions regarding some of your products or services, organic posting is what allows you to directly engage with these people and actually close the deal.
Additionally, posting content consistently reminds your followers of your particular product or service. However, no one wants to follow a page that consists of only advertisements. Instead, they want to see organic content that is relevant to their interests and demographics, so provide it! This content can be inspiring, informative, or even funny, depending on your brand’s voice.
What Are Some of the Cons of LinkedIn Organic Posting?
Despite the fact that organic posting can be an excellent tool for marketing, it has some disadvantages as well. A paid social media strategy is a tactic that every large corporation does and it has also proven to be extremely effective.
Paid Posts Help You Reach Your Goals Quicker
Having a paid marketing strategy generally helps you reach a larger number of people at a faster rate than an organic marketing strategy. The is that when you pay for an advertisement, it is guaranteed that your reach will be significantly higher than if you did not. That’s the power of money. LinkedIn ads, for example, guarantee 2 times higher engagement and 3.5 times higher conversion rate (CVR) than a typical organic post. Ultimately, the goal of marketing is to reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible and the best way to do that is through paid posts, not organic posts.
Organic Reach on Social Media is Down in General
Organic reach on most social media platforms has been plummeting as of late. This means that when you post something to your LinkedIn newsfeed, only a small percentage of your followers actually see your post. This number has been steadily declining in recent years.
It has become increasingly difficult to get your organic posts seen by people that follow you and people that don’t follow you. This is a significant problem for a small, up-and-coming business. This is especially bad on LinkedIn, whose algorithm focuses primarily on engagement. Even if the content that you are creating is quality and meaningful, it has to quickly have engagement. If it doesn’t receive much engagement in a short amount of time, the algorithm will not continue to promote it. That’s where the value of paid promotion comes in, as a paid promotional strategy guarantees engagement on your content , which is exactly what a company or brand needs to grow.
A Combination of Both Organic and Paid LinkedIn Marketing Strategies is Key
Organic posting has a variety of benefits, including an extremely vital one in helping to maintain customer relationships. Still, actually driving a lot of traffic to your brand is a difficult task using an only organic approach. Thus, having a combination of LinkedIn ads , which can guarantee traffic and engagement with your brand’s content, and organic posting, to help secure your audience’s decision to become and remain a customer is the best course of action when deciding upon a LinkedIn strategy.
FAQs about Pros and Cons of LinkedIn Organic Posting:
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