LinkedIn Marketing 7 Steps to Better Local Use

Local LinkedIn: 7 Steps to Better Local LinkedIn Marketing!

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Usually, when you hear people talk about social media marketing, the focus is on the vast number of potential prospects: 2 billion people on Facebook, 500 million people on LinkedIn, over 700 million people on Twitter and Instagram.

That being said, businesses are usually successful because they focus on a particular market, niche, or location—not on the vast majority. And this is true for marketing (and selling) with LinkedIn as well. While it’s all well and good to have thousands of connections and millions of people in your network, the most successful business people using LinkedIn do so by creating real relationships with their target markets.  And fortunately, LinkedIn does a great job of targeting by location.

Of course, one of the best ways to create real relationships with your prospects is by getting that face-to-face meeting. In my opinion, there’s no better tool to convert prospects into clients than LinkedIn.

Successful businesses on LinkedIn create real relationships with target markets #LocalMarketing @LinkedInExpertClick To Tweet

7 Steps

Here are 7 things you can do to ensure that you’re getting the best local use out of LinkedIn:

  1. Make sure that your profile is geographically correct.
  2. Make sure that you add all the geographies you target in LinkedIn
  3. Create imagery that focuses on your target geography
  4. Upload media interesting to your geographic target market
  5. Search and segment local prospects
  6. Keep in touch with the locals
  7. Share geographically-based content interesting to your local market

By following the above steps and implementing these strategies, you will create a local presence on LinkedIn that cannot be ignored – guaranteeing more visibility, more engagement, and more business.

Let’s take a deeper look….

Make sure that your profile is geographically correct

Depending on when you created your LinkedIn profile, or where you lived when you created it, your ZIP Code and geographic placement may be incorrect. Make sure to check the location right underneath your name on your profile page, and adjust if necessary.  Since one of the search fields on LinkedIn is a ZIP Code search, you want to make sure yours is correct. 

Make sure your LinkedIn profile correctly represents your location #LinkedInLocal @LinkedInExpertClick To Tweet

Make sure that you add all the geographies you target in LinkedIn

Not only does LinkedIn search by city, it can search by keyword as well. You can only add one ZIP Code, but you might serve many geographies – cities, townships, locations. You want to make sure to add all of the relevant locations you service to your profile. You can do this by adding them in the content itself (in your summary and experience sections). You might also consider adding these local locations to the “Location” field underneath your company name in the Experience section.

Consider adding your location/geography as keywords in your profile. #LinkedInMarketing @LinkedInExpertClick To Tweet

Create imagery that focuses on your target geography

LinkedIn has added a background feature that allows you to add what is essentially a LinkedIn banner on top of your profile. Create an image that is attractive to the local audience you want to draw in. Even people who don’t know you may feel a sense of kinship if they recognize the mountain range, Main Street, or Ocean view you put on your profile.

Upload media interesting to your geographic target market

LinkedIn now makes it simple to upload documents and images, and share links or share native videos and slideshow presentations on your profile. This is independent if you’re using LinkedIn free vs. the LinkedIn Premium version. Upload media that your local market will find interesting and engaging. It doesn’t only make your profile more attractive, it makes sense to share helpful, relevant content to increase the “KLT factor” (know, like and trust ) with your target market.

Keep in touch with the locals

The great thing about first-level connections is that you can easily send them a message. Like… do you want to meet for coffee? 🙂  If you tag these connections (use Dux-Soup or LinkedIn Sales Navigator), you can also sort them and send them the occasional message.  This will help you stay top of mind with them.  They may not need you now, but when they do, if you keep in touch with them, they’ll remember you and might even be more likely to call upon you since you are a local!

Share geographically-based content 

LinkedIn allows you to share content – both as updates and as long-form Publisher posts. So you might as well share content relevant to your local market. Updates are just like Tweets or Facebook updates that you share on your network’s timeline. You can even tag locals in updates so that they’re more likely to see your shared content.

You can also write long-form posts using LinkedIn Publisher. Again, by putting in locations as keywords, your post becomes searchable by those specific geographies and may be more visible to local prospects. Of course, you want to share content relevant to the locals you’re trying to attract.

Write and share content that attracts local prospects #LinkedInLocal @LinkedInExpertClick To Tweet

In conclusion

So there you have it! Seven steps and strategies you can use to market your business locally using LinkedIn. When you start to focus on your local markets using LinkedIn, you’ll be amazed at just how many people you know, and how many opportunities are out there! I know I’m always shocked to realize I know at least one—and sometimes more—gateway people at companies that I want to be working with. Or that the Influencers I want to align with happen to be local. And that I can still do local marketing even if I can’t get to town as often as I used to. 

By implementing even a few of these strategies you will be able to increase your local visibility exponentially and get discovered by potential clients. And all this is for FREE. With a little bit of time investment, you could substantially increase your bottom line! It’s worth a try.

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