4 LinkedIn Best Practices for IaaS, SaaS, and FinTech

LinkedIn is the world’s most popular professional social networking site for B2B-focused companies (including SaaS, FinTech, and IaaS companies). And LinkedIn now has more than 900 million members worldwide, with over 190 million users in the U.S.

In an era where top social media properties face barriers to earning trust, LinkedIn consistently ranks as the most trusted social networking platform, significantly outpacing Facebook in perceived trust and safety.

In recent years, the amount of content shared and live video streaming on LinkedIn have both grown pretty dramatically.

Given this, what key LinkedIn best practices should IaaS, SaaS, and FinTech companies consider when using LinkedIn to grow their reach?

1. Focus on who your ideal customers are and what they care about. While many shortsighted SaaS, FinTech, and IaaS treat their LinkedIn pages and profiles like ads for their products and services, savvy companies use LinkedIn to educate and build trust -- like a 7/24/365 thought leadership or professional development seminar. When in doubt about your content strategy, focus on your most important buyer persona and their biggest goals and challenges.
2. Share helpful content that educates and builds trust over time.  Some look at LinkedIn as a place to aggressively prospect with self-promotional, overzealous commenting and aggressively soliciting sales leads from LinkedIn's messaging system. However, most who do well on LinkedIn play the long game and recognize that you can't extract value before creating value.
3. Use a mix of awareness-building content that offers helpful tips and how-to's, as well as lead generation content, that, for example, promotes a new eBook you've written or a webinar that you're hosting. While some elements of the LinkedIn platform support paid media (LinkedIn Ads) and earned media (when your organic posts go viral), your time investments in LinkedIn should never be confused with owned media. Because of this, you'll want regularly motivate your LinkedIn connections and followers to visit your website and convert on a landing page offer -- so you can further the relationship building off-platform on your own email marketing program.
4. To generate leads, you'll usually want to send visitors to your website's landing page with a form. However, because you're in a position to turn on LinkedIn lead generation, you'll need content valuable enough to motivate your primary or secondary buyer persona to trade who they are for access. And along the same lines, before you start encouraging your LinkedIn connections and followers to visit your website and convert on a landing page, be sure you have an email nurturing or webinar program ready to launch so that you can deliver one-to-many value that educates and builds trust.

I’ve been active on LinkedIn since 2008 and have over 25,000 followers. Since 2014, I’ve been using LinkedIn organically, as well as with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Ads, to attract more of the right leads and sales opportunities in the right places, at the right time, and in the right context.

How do you use LinkedIn for your IaaS, SaaS, or FinTech company? Let me know in the comments below.

And if you're serious about using LinkedIn best practices to power a big part of your growth plans, enroll now in our free 7-day eCourse: Go-to-Market Strategy 101 for B2B SaaS Startups and Scaleups.