LinkedIn is the ideal place for connecting with co-workers, influencers, donors, & corporate sponsors.
General Advice
The two most important parts of a good LinkedIn profile are ensuring it’s complete and having your staff, especially executive staff, engage with your nonprofit’s posts.
In terms of having a complete LinkedIn profile, you’ll want to ensure that every section is filled out to your greatest ability. One additional advantage of having a LinkedIn company page is the ability to set up a custom button, including a donate button.
You can also fill out your profile with hashtags of relevant topics that matter to your organization, like education, healthcare, or technology.
To increase engagement, encourage staff to complete their profiles, like and comment on your organization’s posts, discuss issues related to your organization, give skill endorsements and recommendations to colleagues, and send out connect requests to grow your network.
You can also have executive and other high-level staff members engage with your organization’s posts and publish articles on LinkedIn that reinforce them, and by extension your nonprofit, as a known and established thought leader in your field.
Employee Advocacy Analytics< are also available and count a number of metrics, including reactions and comments on posts, reposts, recommendations and comments by other LinkedIn members on employees’ posts.
Posting Advice
Finding a good posting frequency will be specific to your audience and how they use LinkedIn. But a good rule of thumb is to post 2-3 times a week on LinkedIn and make sure to react and reply to comments, as people are more likely to engage on posts that already have engagement.
Plus, this lets your audience know that you’re paying attention to them, and your social media pages as a whole.
Tagging your corporate sponsors and partners is another huge advantage to LinkedIn. In a professional community space like LinkedIn, corporate sponsors will likely be there to engage with you and appreciate the exposure your posts provide. A win-win!
Similar to Facebook and Instagram, an ideal LinkedIn strategy includes having a group or list of content topics that are relevant to your organization, mission, and values. Posting on LinkedIn is also a great opportunity to curate and repost news stories that are relevant to those content topics.
Other Ways to Boost Engagement
Adding a LinkedIn CTA on your site, often in the form of a linked icon, can help grow your following, as those on your site will want to see what you post or engage with on social media.
With Groups, LinkedIn allows you to get involved with the professionals and corporate sponsors in your field through a forum that covers relevant topics.
Groups shouldn’t be named the exact same name as your nonprofit, but rather describe your audience or the content they’d be interested in. Such as ‘SLC Supporters of Accessible Early Education.’
You’ll want to make sure to properly moderate the group and keep discussion relevant, as well as make sure to be proactive in deleting and/or blocking comments and users who are negatively impacting or spamming the group.
Advertising
LinkedIn ads are very expensive to run, though they can have a positive ROI if used right. Hootsuite has written a complete guide on LinkedIn ads that goes over the types, objectives, formats, and best practices.
There is also the Sales Navigator for Nonprofits, which can help strengthen relationships and cultivate donations with a number of features, including direct engagement through InMail and targeted search.
If your budget doesn’t allow for either of these options, boosting posts can be a way to start upping reach and engagement.