Leveraging LinkedIn for Hospital Marketing

A colleague recently suggested that if I wasn’t using LinkedIn as part of my marketing mix, I was “missing out.” I understand why data analytics firms, recruiting houses, creative agencies, and more use LinkedIn to get their message across – but hospitals? Obviously, LinkedIn wouldn’t be part of our patient-directed marketing efforts, but which customers should I target (and with what type of content) to use LinkedIn most effectively?

The Importance of LinkedIn in B2B Marketing

Your colleague was right. LinkedIn is definitely the most important social network for companies to use to connect with professionals in general. As such, it’s become one of the major platforms in B2B social media (and increasingly in content marketing). LinkedIn lets you build relationships, establish thought leadership, gain insights, conduct informal market research, enhance your facility’s reputation and build online communities.

1.) Create Awareness and Improve Reputation

LinkedIn is an ideal platform to increase your online presence. More than two professionals sign up on LinkedIn every second, meaning businesses have the opportunity to network with more and more interesting contacts. Companies and the people representing them can improve their visibility and credibility, both as individuals (and, by extension, as a brand) by using the many personal and group features in LinkedIn. It’s especially important to use the “status update” functionality frequently. This particular feature is underutilized, even though with the new design, status updates are more visible on the homepage than ever before.

2.) Establish Thought Leadership and Influencer Marketing

Several LinkedIn features allow you to position yourself as leaders in a particular area. The professional network you build on LinkedIn is fertile ground for thought and practice leaders – and leadership and reputation go hand in hand with influence. As the main purpose of LinkedIn is networking, it also enables you to identify and engage other influencers.

3.) Enhance Your Social CRM Strategy

LinkedIn is ideal as a social media way to enhance your organization’s customer relationship management (CRM) strategy. One benefit of a social CRM tool is that it allows you to see what your contacts are doing on LinkedIn in real-time, offering valuable additional information on their behavior and preferences. When targeting a contact, LinkedIn itself allows you to see this information in its own environment – and to tailor your message accordingly.

4.) Build Traffic Through Content Sharing

One of the strengths of LinkedIn that is not often mentioned is its power in link building and traffic driving. Just as other social networks do, LinkedIn has a social sharing button that enables you to share content in your status updates (visible on the homepage, as we noted previously) and in LinkedIn Groups to which you belong.

5.) Listening and Gaining Insights

LinkedIn is perfect to listen, ask questions and gain insights – all without the consumer focus that most other social media outlets have.

Partnering with Xavier Creative House for Social Media Success

At Xavier Creative House, we have social media experts on staff, and lots of experience crafting marketing strategies that include various forms of social. Give us a call or email us today so we can share our expertise with your organization!

Reference: 1. https://www.i-scoop.eu/top-six-reasons-use-linkedin-b2b-marketer/. Accessed June 6, 2018.

Categories: social media,