LISA D. JENKINS / AUGUST 28, 2021

Want more people to see your LinkedIn content? Have you tried the Boost feature?

In this article, you’ll discover how to identify the most beneficial organic content on your LinkedIn company page and a step-by-step guide for how to boost it.

Why Organic Content Matters on LinkedIn

Many marketers are jumping on the LinkedIn train these days. With approximately 756 million users, it’s a great way to drive high-quality traffic to your website.

Organic content refers to that found naturally on a page instead of appearing as a paid promotion. On LinkedIn, it’s the non-paid content that appears in someone’s feed without them having to search for it. Instead, the platform supplies the content to the user based on their activity and interests. In other words, they’re seeing what’s relevant to them.

While paid posts on LinkedIn have their time and place, consumers tend to lean more toward organic content for several reasons:

  • People trust content from publishers they know and can relate to. If you build an audience of loyal readers, you can generate organic traffic at a much higher rate than if you paid for it.
  • People tend to share organic content more often, and when they do, it helps boost your page’s credibility. That’s because people trust word-of-mouth recommendations, and with online content, that’s the organic sharing of high-quality content.

When it comes to marketing and promoting a small business, organic content is especially important. But it’s not as easy to build a quality audience for a small business compared to major brands with search-optimized websites.

That’s where LinkedIn’s Boost feature comes in.

If you notice that an organic post on your LinkedIn page is starting to garner quite a bit of attention, consider boosting it to reach a wider audience. These can be thoughtful posts and links from your website that are informative and encourage your audience to either “learn” or “read” more.

Note: The Boost feature is not available for personal profiles.

Ready to start boosting your own organic posts? Here’s how to use LinkedIn’s Boost feature to get more visibility for your top-performing organic content.

#1: Choose an Organic Post to Boost on LinkedIn

When you’re looking to boost a post on LinkedIn, choose an organic post that’s already performing well. You’ll notice that the posts with high engagement are usually the ones that:

  • Spark conversation: It’s not just about getting a lot of likes or shares. The more engaged you are with your followers, the better it will translate to your business.
  • Have a purpose: Don’t boost a post just to get more likes or shares. Always choose content that offers value to your followers and helps them grow in some way.
  • Are high-quality: Boost content with substance. It should be informative and add value to your audience’s experience.
  • Include a call to action (CTA): This is an important part of organic content. If you opt to boost a post, you should have some clear purpose to it, which should include a CTA.

So how do you pick that perfect post? One of the first things you want to do is check the analytics for your LinkedIn page. If your LinkedIn page has been active for some time, go straight to your analytics by clicking the Analytics tab near the top.

From here, you’ll be able to look at data about your visitors, followers, updates (your posting activity), and employee advocacy. Go to the Update Engagement section at the bottom to see how well each of your posts is performing.

If your page is rather new, you can simply scroll through your posting activity and choose a post with a high number of impressions and/or engagement (likes and comments). Once you’ve found a post you think is worth boosting, check that post’s metrics by clicking Show Stats at the bottom of the post.

You’ll then get a more detailed breakdown of the post’s activity.

Reviewing your post’s analytics will give you good idea of how your audience is interacting with your content. You want to choose a post that has a high number of impressions and a high engagement rate.

#2: Boost an Organic Post From Your LinkedIn Page

Once you’ve decided which LinkedIn post you want to boost, open it and click on the Boost button in the upper right-hand corner.

This will take you to the campaign page, where you’ll be asked to select your objective, choose your targeting, and set the campaign’s start and end date.

For the objective, you have two options—increase awareness or get engagement on your post.

Next, select your audience. From the drop-down menu, you can choose from these options:

  • Profile Based: Reach members based on their seniority, job function, and industry.
  • Interests Based: Reach members by the group membership.
  • LinkedIn Audience Template: Choose from a list of custom audiences.
  • Saved Audience: Use an audience you’ve created previously as part of another campaign.

After you select your audience, decide who to include/exclude from your targeting. You can choose from attributes such as language, location, company industries, job seniorities, job functions, and even job titles.

If you want to expand your targeting, you can choose two optional advanced settings:

  • Automatic Audience Expansion: Increase the reach of your campaign by showing your ads to audiences with similar attributes to your target audience.
  • Include LinkedIn Audience Network: Increase the reach of your target audience up to 25% by running ads on LinkedIn and partner apps and websites.

Once you’ve finalized your audience and campaign settings, set your start and end dates, as well as your lifetime budget.

Keep in mind that the budget you set will affect your results, which will be reflected in your forecasted results. Also, don’t forget that these forecasted results are just an estimate, not a guarantee.

When you’re finished choosing your settings, click Boost to launch your ad. In your LinkedIn ad account, you’ll now see that a new campaign has been set up with the settings and ad you just created.

Once you’ve let your boosted post-run for its designated time, how can you tell if it’s been successful? Ideally, you’ll see an uptick in your engagement rate and off-platform KPIs such as your website traffic, engagement rates, click-through rates, and even sales.

#3: 5 Types of Organic Content to Create and Boost on LinkedIn

As a marketer or business owner, you know that content is king. You’re constantly writing new posts, building brand awareness, and driving traffic to your website. If you’re looking to get the most bang for your buck, you need to choose the right organic content to boost on LinkedIn. Here are five types of organic content worth creating and boosting on LinkedIn.

Organic Content to Attract Ideal Customers

LinkedIn is one of the best places to create content that targets your ideal customer’s needs. This is content that answers commonly asked questions and solves your ideal customer’s pain points.

In the LinkedIn post below, The Mom Project shares information on their latest master class. This post is a good candidate for boosting because it’s designed to attract new customers and let them in on the secrets of returning to work and nailing that next interview—something many stay-at-home moms returning to work may struggle with.

Organic Content to Establish Credibility

To build credibility with your audience on LinkedIn, you want to share content on your page that establishes your expertise, provides value to your audience, and positions your business as an authority in your industry.

That’s exactly what this post from SERVPRO of Downers Grove/Oak Brook does. This would be a good one to boost because it’s easy to understand, educates the reader, and includes a video that shows the process in action. This proof of the process helps the company boost their credibility in their local area.

Organic Content to Nurture Ideal Customers

When someone interacts with your content on LinkedIn, they might be a prospect interested in your business so you want to share content that nurtures, supports, and educates them. This helps you establish credibility and build a longer-term relationship with your audience.

This post by Mindful—a brand that focuses on educating people on the benefits of mindfulness and regular meditation—would be a good candidate to boost. It not only has high engagement but also directs the audience to an educational article on self-care and practices worth trying. The informative anecdote quoted in the post gives readers a reason to want to click through and read more.

Organic Content to Educate Followers and Ideal Customers

When your audience on LinkedIn is searching for content, they want information about something—whether it’s a product or service or the answer to a question that randomly popped into their head.

Educational content, such as an informative article or video tutorial, is an excellent way to keep your followers engaged and help them learn something new.

This post by Cosmetics & Toiletries, an online wellness magazine, includes an image that helps break down common ingredients in the featured product. The CTA directs the audience to a more detailed, informative piece to help them understand why it’s important to read lists of ingredients and be able to identify them.

Organic Content to Prompt Engagement With Your Followers and Ideal Customer

When you’re on LinkedIn, there’s a great chance that you have followers you want to engage with more. You might have already engaged with them and built a relationship but you still want to help them grow and expand their knowledge.

A great way to prompt engagement—and learn your audience’s preferences—is by creating and sharing content that gets them to do something such as vote in a poll. This post from Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care of Rosemont, IL, does an excellent job of engaging their audience by asking for their input on a sensitive topic: trauma-informed care.

This poll gives the company insight into what their audience wants most, and surprisingly, people voted for in-person training, not the standard guides or even videos/webinars.

Conclusion

Organic LinkedIn content that gets likes, comments, and views is very valuable. It shows your audience that you care enough about them to take the time to create and share content that helps them meet their needs and achieve their goals.

LinkedIn is an excellent place to build your business. It’s an opportunity to share your content and connect with your audience on a deeper level than any other platform, and thanks to the new Linkedin Boost feature, you can now take your organic content to new heights.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORLisa D. Jenkins

Lisa D. Jenkins is the director of the editorial at Social Media Examiner. Her expertise in social media comes from years of serving destination organizations and businesses in the travel and tourism industry.Other posts by Lisa D. Jenkins »