LinkedIn Community Manager: Tools and techniques to quickly build a community

Elodie
07/03/2024

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Being a community manager on LinkedIn can quickly become a headache. You have to know who to write to, what to write, how to write it…

Not to mention the audience, which you then have to keep, nurture and turn into satisfied customers. So, let’s take a look together at 11 steps to meet all your goals and succeed in your conversion. 🚀

What is community management on LinkedIn?

The job of the community manager is very varied, it combines a mastery of tools, copywriting, marketing strategy and good analysis of numbers.

Often, he is also asked to have a “design” hat and he will create visuals and infographics, even videos for his posts. Sometimes, he is also the “image of the brand” and produces podcasts and webinars.

In short, we can separate his job into 11 main areas. Upstream :

#1 Know your business.
#2 Know your target on each network.
#3 Know how to do check out what competitors are doing.
#4 Know the LinkedIn social network like the back of your hand. (The same goes for each network used).
#5 Know how to use the right tools.

During:

#6 Plan and be regular.
#7 Have content-marketing and copywriting skills.
#8 Know how to create various content formats.
#9 Know how to manage engagement.

After publications:

#10 Know how to turn your audience into hot prospects and then into customers.
#11 Know how to analyze R.O.I and performance.

What is the role of the community manager?

The role of the community manager is to create, grow and federate a community around the brand for which he works.

In order to do this successfully on LinkedIn, you must be able to meet certain prerequisites.

#1 Know your company

This may sound totally lame, but it’s just the foundation of any good community manager. The more context you have about your company, the more you can play with the company’s storytelling. Write this information down in three categories on a Google doc. Facts and History:

How was the company created?
What was the evolution? Periods of doubt? Changes in location? Management changes?
What were the major pivots? Product changes? Strategy changes? What has the company gained from them?

Products and services:

How many products and services are sold? At what price? Why these prices? Have the prices changed? Why have they changed?
What features and options are sold?

Values and concept:

What values does the company exude? What are the values it wants to put forward? (sometimes there is a gap between the two, which will need to be worked on to re-establish the chosen brand image).
What is the product concept?

#2 Know your target on LinkedIn

Here, we are talking about LinkedIn, but let’s be clear, you need to know the nuances between your targets on each social network. The audience is not the same on LinkedIn and on Facebook. Your way of talking to them will not be the same either.

💡 Super-important:

Bosom your personas based on the social network you’re working on. Develop a strategy by network ✅ not a global social media strategy that will then be rolled out across all social networks. ✖

#3 Know what your competitor is doing

Doing competitive intelligence means going to see what your top 10 competitors are doing, in terms of products and in terms of communication.

What’s interesting about the LinkedIn community manager position is that you’re not just going to write content to boost brand awareness, you’re also going to see what others are doing, what they’re putting out there, if it’s working or not.

Your first test is the test that others are doing.

Copy what works (in your own way, of course) and leave out what doesn’t. You’ll soon see it anyway.😉 For this:

Subscribe to your top 10 competitors,
Comment on their posts so that the LinkedIn algorithm will show them to you more regularly,
Take the topics that work to reshape them and post them,
Get the contacts of people who comment on their posts to contact them in turn 😱 -> Method here!

Communication on LinkedIn has its own codes. It is a B2b social network with millions of members, with :

Decision makers from companies of all sizes.
HR people looking to hire top talent.
Self-employed entrepreneurs and freelancers looking for clients on the network.
Community managers and marketers who want to develop company branding on LinkedIn.

Even if LinkedIn becomes the new Facebook, I do not encourage you to follow the risky path of buzz for buzz’s sake.

You are not on the network to make views, you are on the network to boost the visibility of a brand around a particular target audience. Your guideline is quite simple:

Keep it professional = no insults, no pictures of your dog. (It shows when you try to get views at all costs, and it’s ugly).
Provide value to your audience. That’s how you’ll prove you’re credible.

LinkedIn works with a particular algorithm. The network tries to make sure that every user is on board: connects with the right people, is interested in their news feed and engages on posts. Why? Because that’s how LinkedIn makes money!

The more a user is present and active on the network, the more they will see ads or be led to use a paid version of LinkedIn premium.

Understanding how LinkedIn makes money is understanding how you can make money on LinkedIn.

Similarly, without knowing how the LinkedIn algorithm works, you have no idea how LinkedIn will “facilitate” the visibility of your post. To learn how LinkedIn works read:

The Guide to LinkedIn Ads. Here.
The LinkedIn algorithm. Here.
How LinkedIn makes money. Right here.

Communication strategy on LinkedIn: steps to get started?

To get started with your LinkedIn communication strategy, you’ll need to give your LinkedIn profile a polish. As we realized after several tests, it is more effective to have a strategy with your LinkedIn account than with the company page. What does this mean?

Having an optimized LinkedIn profile

This means that your profile must be fresh and dynamic, because it is the showcase of your communication and therefore of your brand, or the one you work for.

💡 Always embody the brand as a team member, not as an outsider who gets their commission at the end of the month.

Here are 3 examples of optimized profiles: Perfect if you are specialized in content creation. -> See Thibault’s profile.

Ideal if you are consulting oriented or if you have a double cap prospecting. -> See his complete profile.

You are a community management freelancer and want to develop your network? Get inspired by https://blog.waalaxy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Visuel-Article-Blog-69-1.webp’s strategy.

Now, to go further in optimizing your profile according to your target and your brand, you have access to the great guide right here for free. 👇 -> How to optimize my profile step by step (Community manager). 🔥

By using the right tools, I mean those that won’t cost me a fortune and allow me to work in good conditions (planning, analysis of results). In this article, you will find the top 6 best LinkedIn automation tools, in which you find, among others:

Hootsuite.

Podawaa.

Waalaxy.

Tips 💡 Do your own research to find the tools that best suit your strategy. Waalaxy will help you convert your audience, while Podawaa will boost the visibility of your LinkedIn posts.

Your strategy defines which tools you’ll use, not the other way around. 🤓

Define your LinkedIn communication strategy

In order to define a communication strategy, you’re going to need to: know what your company’s goals are, who you’re talking to, how often, with what message, and how you federate your followers.

Shall we get started?

What LinkedIn strategy for your company?

Before you even type your first post on your keyboard, you need to get a few things straight. What are your digital-marketing goals?

Generate more customers?
Increase brand awareness?
Showcase your tools, services, products?
Build a strong community, social presence and develop a sense of belonging?

The tone and message will be different. In any case, you are strongly advised NOT to self-promote and try to write direct sales messages. It’s bad for your brand image. ❌

Okay then, what do we write based on our objective? Read on. 🤓

#6 Schedule and be consistent

The message is dead on, 3 posts a day, in order to create a solid audience for yourself. In order to help you be regular, we have a technique that we implement at Waalaxy.

✍ You write your first 6 posts in one go.
🍲 You let it simmer for 24 hours.
👀 You re-read your posts and remove all the extraneous stuff.
❓ You make sure there are one or more open-ended questions. Remember, what you’re looking for is engagement from your community.
🚀 You always have at least 3 posts ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than writing a “quick and dirty” post because you have to publish.
⏲ You plan all your posts.

To schedule your posts you can use Hootsuite, Podawaa (specialized on LinkedIn) or another tool of your choice.

We have already answered the questions “who do I target” and “why do I publish?”. Now we have to answer to:

What do I want to bring to my audience?

Here are some examples,

- To awaken and educate around a theme.
- To bring advice to the beginners of the sector.
- Give tools to help professionals who are in my target
- Create a community of mutual help around a subject.

You will then identify the themes you want to talk about and select 3 of them, from the broadest to the most precise. For example, you are a community manager for a b2b interior design company.

Broad theme (1 post per week): Beauty, architecture, interior design. (So that everyone can relate to it, you will use a lot of visuals).

(Image: arch.design)

Medium theme (1 post per week): The benefits of a healthy work environment. There you bridge the gap between the broad and targeted audience.

Sample post topic: 3 major benefits to a well thought out workspace,

- Deployment of the employer brand.
- Optimized face-to-face meetings.
- Customer seduction.

Targeted theme (1 post per week): Here, you only talk to your target. In our case, it is the B2b decision makers. You will have a smaller audience, but it will already be qualified leads.

Example of a topic:

- How much does it cost to finance an office remodel?
- How do you turn an internal expense into a long-term investment?
- How to make sure you make the right design decision?
- New premises: How to imagine the space intelligently?

LinkedIn experts will tell you Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would say, it depends on your target, there are no rules. However, what I invite you to do is A/B testing. You post 3 times a week, change one variable each time:

Tuesday-Thursday-Friday over 2 weeks.
Monday-Thursday-Friday over 2 weeks.

And so on, once you’ve done all the combinations, you take the best 2, and retest them over 2 weeks each, add up the scores, and find the winning combo. 🥇

Make the Buzz on LinkedIn

Getting the buzz on LinkedIn can be pretty simple once your audience is built. I’m not telling you anything new by saying that bad news and buzz works best.

However, I invite you to be careful with your image, making the buzz is not necessarily to gain tons of new customers, and even less in the Btob. If your goal is to become an influencer, I invite you to see who is making the buzz and what they are posting,

👑: Toinon with 3,825,124 views on her LinkedIn posts. -> Main topic: entrepreneurship.

🥈: Violette with 2,048,563 views on her post. -> Main topic: human resources.

🥉: Ophelie with 1,753,863 total views. -> Main topic: rants and anecdotes.

👏: https://blog.waalaxy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Capture-décran-2021-05-20-à-16.34.07-1.webp with 1,699,208 views on the network. -> Main theme : Google and SEO.

🤓: Karine with 1,535,968 views, no less! -> Main topic : Customer Support.

LinkedIn Pulse

There are other formats to publish on LinkedIn, such as LinkedIn Pulse articles. I’ve tried to get into it and honestly, it’s complicated. LinkedIn users are used to the short format.

If you want to write articles, it’s better to start a LinkedIn Pulse Newsletter and publish weekly to build an audience. The only rule is regularity.

(Don’t do like me, who gave up after 3 articles 😂).

Getting started with the LinkedIn Newsletter has several major advantages:

It’s super easy to get started -> Tutorial.
It’s totally free.
You know a lot about your subscribers (since you have access to their LinkedIn profile).

You can get your subscribers’ data and write to them directly on LinkedIn or by email.

Work on your copywriting

We have identified the target, the message, the type of content, the frequency… But we have not yet talked about the copywriting of the message. So, this is the 3rd and last major part of this article.

#7 Have content marketing and copywriting skills

“Having copywriting skills” are usually scary words on a job posting. It’s pretty complicated to know if you can write well, without trying to be Edgar Allan Poe.

Yet it’s not that rocket science. 🧙

You just need to know the basics of copywrting and trust yourself. In this guide to copywriting, I recommend, among other things, a few books that have helped me a lot in finding my writing.

🥇 Steal like an artist, Austin Kleon. > Creativity.
🥈 Big Magic, Elisabeth Gilbert. > Creativity.
🥉Copywriting Secrets, Jim Edwards. > Techniques.

Of course, the list is not exhaustive. What I would advise you to do is to go write to your favorite copywriters on LinkedIn and ask them what they have read and what Newsletters they subscribe to.

Adapt your communication to your audience

There is nothing more difficult than having an audience that has very different codes from ours. I don’t know if I would be able to write to CAC 404 accountants.

I don’t have the codes. So I would have to do a lot of research, and get into the skin of another character 👔.

There are a thousand and one ways to talk about a product by changing your angle.

To do this, you need to define a targeted audience. Otherwise, you will get lost in the transmission of the message. If your audience is based with B2b decision-makers, then your targeted theme must concern them directly. That’s how you recognize a good copywriter too. 😉

LinkedIn Live

LinkedIn has a multitude of resources to offer. The network has the ambition to be in Media B2b, and my goodness, it’s doing pretty well at it. So LinkedIn is developing various content formats, the event, the section, the articles, the Newsletter, the webinar and now the audio.

#8 Knowing how to create various content formats

Here are the types of content that can be found on LinkedIn:

LinkedIn event.
LinkedIn Pulse.
LinkedIn Webinar.
LinkedIn Audio.

LinkedIn Webinar

Video has become the most effective communication medium for brands.

In 2019, videos already account for 80% of all internet traffic.

It makes sense when you think about it, you can squeeze so many more words into a minute of video than you can into a minute of reading, it’s more compelling, more engaging and more stimulating for your audience.

So it’s only natural that LinkedIn has released a webinar version and an event option to promote your lives. If you’re looking to embark on a 360-degree LinkedIn strategy, then I recommend you start with LinkedIn Live.

To find participants for your lives, you can launch LinkedIn campaigns and use LinkedIn Events.

LinkedIn Audio

LinkedIn Audio is in development as I write this, the network is developing a podcasting system integrated into the platform. 🙀

Turning your LinkedIn audience into customers

The last step of the community manager’s job is the one that many forget about. The community manager is there to federate and grow an audience, but also to bring new customers to the company through digital communication. And if it’s a multi-hat job, he must also know how to move his followers towards purchase. 💰

#9 Know how to manage engagement

The first thing to do is not to lose your audience along the way. You have to make sure that the people who comment and like your posts feel heard and valued. It is therefore very important to take the time to answer all the people who write to you. This way, they will want to answer you again. Best practice:

🕒 Reply within 3 hours of your posts (This is when the LinkedIn algorithm decides if your post is relevant or not).
👍 Like or put a smiley face on every comment.
🕵️ Go to the commenter’s profile to comment back on their latest post to boost the sense of reciprocity.
💌 Send a private message to the top 3 commenters thanking them for their relevance (a little ego boost always feels good).
👄 Comment regularly on relevant posts in your news feed to network.

#10 Know how to turn your audience into warm leads and then into customers

How do you get your entire audience to send them free automated LinkedIn messages and marketing campaigns ?

How do you get their emails to write cold email campaigns that convert?

How do you take that audience and put it into a CRM that does the work for you?

Waalaxy is the most efficient marketing tool, and you can use the freemium offer for $0 !

#11 Know how to analyze ROI and performance

How do you know if you’re doing better and better if you don’t keep an updated one first? For that, you have several options:

Scheduling tools like Podawaa tell you how many views you’re getting per post.

Integrated CRMs like Waalaxy keep track of how many people responded to your posts and how many people in your audience.

You converted into a lead and/or customer.

You can have your own Excel document where you record your performance and link your post to it each time. If you’re doing A/B testing, this can be great for isolating certain tests.

Conclusion of the article

Now you know what the 11 tips are for being a successful LinkedIn Community Manager. I wish you all the best in your task, feel free to share your successes on the network with us. 😘

Faq of the article

What days should you post on LinkedIn?

There is no best day to post on the network in my opinion. Everything will depend on your target. Nevertheless mounirdigital gives some basic advice according to their study:

What are the best formats on LinkedIn?

In 2022, survey formats are starting to fall by the wayside. They have been overused. They should be used sparingly from time to time. Carousels, GIFs, HD videos, short text are the most interesting formats. It’s up to you to see which format is your favorite and why.

Pauline, for example, who works in design, only uses carousels.