Entries by Darren Stevens

How to make the best use of Linkedin in 2025

With over one billion users worldwide and continuous updates to its core features, LinkedIn remains the go-to platform for professionals looking to connect, learn, and grow their businesses. Long gone are the days when it was just a platform to find your next job. But with ever-evolving algorithm updates and shifts in user behaviour, making the best use of LinkedIn in 2025 means more than simply posting an update.

Whether you are a business, brand, or individual, knowing how the platform works – and how to work with it – is key to standing out. This guide breaks down how LinkedIn ranks content in 2025, what it rewards, and how you can tailor your strategy to grow visibility, connections, and authority.

How the LinkedIn algorithm works in 2025

LinkedIn’s algorithm has one mission: deliver the most relevant professional content to each user’s feed. To make that happen, it follows a three-step process:

  1. Quality Filtering

    When a post is published, LinkedIn immediately classifies it as spam, low quality, or high quality. Posts that violate platform rules – clickbait, misleading engagement bait, overuse of emojis, or chain-letter-style prompts – are flagged early and deprioritised.

  2. Engagement Testing

    Once your post passes the quality filter, it enters the engagement testing phase. Here, LinkedIn tests the post on a small sample of your audience to measure how well it performs. If it receives strong engagement (likes, comments, shares) within the first hour, the post will be shown to a broader range of users, expanding beyond your first-degree connections.

  3. Network and Relevance Ranking

    Finally, LinkedIn assesses who should see the post next based on relevance. This includes prior engagement, shared interests, job titles, industries, and the strength of the user’s connection to the author.

What is the Algorithm Looking For?

To successfully navigate the LinkedIn algorithm in 2025, you need to create content that meets its priorities. This means substance, not sensationalism.

LinkedIn now favours posts that spark meaningful discussions and rewards those that spark genuine conversations – not just ones flooded with emojis or single-word replies. While it is still important to encourage interaction, the depth of those interactions matters more.

Posts that demonstrate subject matter expertise will be particularly favoured. Sharing your professional insights, tips, and advice will add value that your audience engages with. Posts that captivate attention for longer periods, even without immediate engagement, will be prioritised by the algorithm.

How to Craft a Quality LinkedIn Post

Creating content that performs well on LinkedIn is not just about what you write – it is also about how you write it and how you optimise it for visibility. These tips will help you create posts that not only engage your pre-existing connections but also draw traction to your page.

● Targeted Posts: Tailor your posts to the audience you want to reach. Speak directly to industry peers, clients, or niche communities rather than trying to appeal to everyone.

● Keyword Optimisation: Like any content strategy, search engine optimisation (SEO) is key on LinkedIn. Conduct keyword research to identify the terms your target audience is searching for and include them strategically in your posts. But beware of not keyword-stuffing, as this can diminish your content’s credibility.

● Original Content: Repurposing is useful, but original posts—especially those rooted in your expertise—build credibility and outperform reshared links. Share insights, case studies, and tops that show the depth of your knowledge and experience.

● Planning Posts: Consistency is key. Use a content calendar to plan your posts ahead of time, ensuring that you are publishing regularly and at strategic times when typically posts have performed best for you.

● Mobile Optimisation: Structure your posts with line breaks and concise paragraphs to improve legibility on mobile.

Resonating with your Audience

The best content on LinkedIn in 2025 goes beyond just being informative. It captures your audience’s attention, engaging them visually, emotionally, and intellectually.

What types of LinkedIn posts perform best?

Some of the top-performing posts include thought leadership pieces, carousels, and short-form videos. Video content, in particular, continues to dominate on LinkedIn. Uploading videos directly to the platform, whether they’re quick tutorials, interviews, or company updates can increase engagement and visibility. Using these visual storytelling devices to address common pain points in your industry or share unique insights will allow your posts to capture users’ attention for long and spark some meaningful discussions.

Another tried-and-tested strategy to diversify the posts on your page is to make use of LinkedIn-specific features, such as LinkedIn Newsletters, LinkedIn Live, and LinkedIn Events. These tools help you engage your audience more effectively and increase the visibility of your content. Looking further afield, keep your content relevant by utilising Google News Alerts to share topical third-party news stories.

Building a LinkedIn Network

LinkedIn is a networking platform at its core – using it that way will let you expand your network and build your brand. The first step to building any network is to make sure you are connected with your customers, current and future so that they can remain updated with any big announcements you are making. Here are some more ways to construct a foundational network and grow your platform:

● Engage your Employees: Make use of the pre-existing network you have already created and encourage employees to be active on LinkedIn. By having your team like, share, and comment on your posts, you increase your visibility and credibility.

● Connect with Intent: Instead of sending generic connection requests, personalise your messages. Mentioning shared interests, mutual connections, or specific reasons why you want to connect will make your outreach more genuine.

● Comment Strategically: Engaging with others’ content, especially with thoughtful, well-crafted comments—helps you build visibility and establish your voice.

● Join Groups: LinkedIn groups that relate to your industry are a great medium for connection building. They provide an opportunity to share expertise, interact with like-minded professionals, and broaden your reach.

Your LinkedIn company page is often the first touchpoint for potential clients, partners, or employees – so it needs to be strong. Start by ensuring the page is fully optimised: include a clear, keyword-rich “About” section, relevant industry tags, and up-to-date contact details. A polished logo and banner add credibility, while consistent, engaging content—shared in a mix of formats—keeps your audience informed and coming back for more.

Measuring Success: Analytics and Iteration

Posting is just the beginning – refining your strategy through data is where the real growth happens.

Tracking key metrics including likes, comments, shares profile views, and follower growth will allow you to evaluate the performance of your content. This is not only helpful to see what is working, but also to inspire your future posts.
Using tools like Google Analytics will show you how much traffic comes from LinkedIn and whether it leads to high-quality engagement with your site. Once you know which posts are doing the work for you, replicate these formats and topics to maintain the momentum.

Whether your goals are lead generation, personal branding, or community building – tracking your progress and adapting accordingly is key to refining your content strategy.

Remember to ring the bell and ask people to ring yours

There was a time when if you were connected with a person or followed a company you would see everything they posted. This is no longer the case – to see everything that a connection posts or see everything that a company you follow posts, you need to visit their profile and click on the bell. A pop up menu will then appear with all as an option that you need to click. What was a single bell now becomes two and you will see all their content in your timeline. This also means that you need to ask your connections and company followers to do the same.

Winning on LinkedIn in 2025 isn’t about chasing trends—it’s about aligning your content with the algorithm’s deeper priorities: relevance, expertise, and authentic engagement. When your strategy focuses on value, consistency, and connection, LinkedIn becomes more than just a professional network—it becomes a growth engine for your brand.

And if you are looking for a little extra help with your LinkedIn strategy, then why not get us to manage your profile for you. For more tips on how to build a social media presence and branding, contact Prestbury Marketing & Consulting.

/by

The Challenges of Managing a Marketer When You Are Not a Marketer – And How to Overcome Them

Running a successful business requires bringing in diverse talent with expertise in various fields, and marketing is definitely no exception. For many business owners or managers, however, managing a marketer can be daunting, especially when marketing isn’t your forte. From understanding technical jargon to setting realistic expectations, navigating this relationship can be tricky. In this […]

/by
,

Why Your Google Business Listing is an Essential Marketing Tool

In today’s digital age, where your online presence is absolutely crucial, your Google Business listing is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal. It’s more than just a simple directory listing—it’s a gateway for potential customers to find, learn about, and engage with your business. Here’s why maintaining an optimised Google Business profile is essential, what you can do to enhance your profile and how it can significantly impact your business’s growth.

1. Be Easily Found by Your Target Audience

One of the biggest advantages of having a Google Business listing is its ability to make your business easily discoverable. When someone searches for products or services related to your business on Google, your listing can appear in the search results and on Google Maps. This visibility is particularly important for local businesses, as most consumers tend to search for businesses “near me” when they’re ready to make a purchase. By appearing in these local searches, your business is put directly in front of potential customers who are in your area and actively seeking what you offer.

2. Boosting Local SEO

Google Business listings are integral to local search engine optimization (SEO). Google uses the information in your profile—such as your business name, location, and category—to determine when and where your business should appear in local search results. The more complete and accurate your profile, the better your chances of ranking higher in these searches. This is especially important for small businesses that rely on local customers.

3. Stand Out from the Competition

In a crowded marketplace, standing out is key. Your Google Business listing allows you to differentiate your business from competitors. A complete and well-maintained profile presents a professional image and builds trust with potential customers. It provides essential information at a glance, including your business hours, contact details, and customer reviews.

4. Showcasing Your Unique Offerings

Google Business listings also let you highlight what makes your business unique. Through the description, attributes, updates, and categories, you can showcase your specialities and the value you bring to your customers. This is where you can make a compelling case for why someone should choose your business over others.

5. Drive Traffic to Your Website

Your Google Business listing is a powerful tool for driving traffic to your website. The listing includes a direct link to your site, making it easy for potential customers to learn more about your business and what you offer (and the insights will tell you how many people are clicking on this link). The more information you provide in your Google Business profile, the more likely users are to click through to your website.

6. Trackable Insights

Google provides analytics for your business listing, showing how many people viewed your profile, visited your website, requested directions, or called your business. These insights allow you to understand how well your listing is performing and where there may be opportunities for improvement. These shouldn’t be confused with the analytics for your website itself.

7. Make It Easy for Customers to Contact You

Your Google Business listing makes it easy for customers to contact you. With just one click, they can call your business, visit your website, or get directions to your location. This ease of access is crucial, especially in the age of mobile devices, where users expect quick and easy ways to connect with businesses.

8. Increase Engagement with Messaging

Google Business also offers a messaging feature that allows customers to send you messages directly from your listing. This feature is a great way to engage with potential customers in real-time, answer their questions, and guide them toward making a purchase.

9. The Importance of a Complete Profile

A complete Google Business profile is more likely to rank higher in search results and attract more customers. Google favours profiles that are fully completed, with accurate and up-to-date information. Ensure your profile includes more than just your business name, address, phone number, website, business hours, and a detailed description of your services. The more information you provide, the easier it is for customers to find and trust your business. Helpfully Google will tell you what percentage your profile is complete.

10. Enhance Your Profile with Photos

Photos are a crucial element of your Google Business listing. They allow you to visually showcase your business, products, and services, giving potential customers a better understanding of what to expect. Listings with photos receive more clicks, calls, and requests for directions than those without. Regularly update your photos to keep your profile fresh and engaging. Should anybody from Google be reading this can we please have added the functionality to sort the photos into the order we want them.

11. Types of Photos to Add

Exterior and Interior Shots: Show customers what your business looks like from the outside and inside. This helps them feel more comfortable when visiting.

Product Photos: Highlight your best-selling or unique products.

Team Photos: Introduce the people behind your business to build a personal connection.

Customer Photos: Share images of happy customers (with their permission) to build social proof.

12. Utilise Google Posts to Keep Your Audience Engaged

Google Posts is a feature that allows you to share updates, promotions, events, and news directly on your Google Business listing. These posts appear prominently on your profile, providing a great way to communicate with potential customers and keep them informed about what’s happening at your business. They also rather helpfully push further down the page, suggestions of businesses that might be competitors. If you only do one thing today – with your profile – check that you have updates visible on your profile as should you not have posted one for a while it may have expired.

13. How to Use Google Posts Effectively

Share Promotions and Offers: Highlight special deals and discounts to attract more customers.

Announce Events: Promote upcoming events to increase attendance. Remember that post updates will automatically expire after the event, freeing up space for another update.

Highlight New Products or Services: Keep your audience informed about new offerings.

Share Blog Posts or Articles: Drive traffic to your website by sharing your latest blog posts or articles.

Your Google Business listing is an essential marketing tool that can significantly impact your business’s visibility, customer engagement, and growth. By ensuring your profile is complete, adding high-quality photos, and utilizing features like Google Posts, you can stand out from the competition, attract more customers, and drive traffic to your website. Don’t overlook this powerful tool—optimize your Google Business listing today and watch your business thrive.

14. Make sure that you have claimed you profile

Even if you never set up a Google Business profile, Google may well have set up one for your business. If you don’t claim it however you will not be able to edit it or post updates.

15. Make sure that you have more than one person with admin rights to the Profile

If you only have one person as an admin to your page and that person leaves the business you could lose access to your page. Having more than one admin spreads the workload and also means that potential customers interacting are likely to get a fast response.

We hope that you find these tips useful. If it all sounds just too much hassle (and in most cases it shouldn’t be), then why not get us to manage your profile for you. For more tips on how to leverage digital marketing tools like Google Business, feel free to contact Prestbury Marketing & Consulting. We’re here to help!

/by
,

Prestbury Marketing to take part in Seminar for start-up businesses

Darren Stevens from Prestbury Marketing is taking part in a free online Seminar on 23rd June organised by Eagle Tower titled “How to make your New Business soar”. It is specifically aimed at people who are thinking about starting a new business or have recently done so,

Starting a new business can be a very exciting time. But it can also be daunting, with so much to think about and do. Eagle Tower have put together a line up of experts that will cover all the basics you need to know from a legal, financial, marketing and sales perspective.

Darren’s session “The ten Marketing things your business should be doing” acknowledges that one of the daunting things when you start a new business is the seemingly endless list of things on your marketing “to do list”. Some of these can appear quite technical and with others you can spend endless hours trying to craft the perfect message. The sheer choice of marketing options can be bewildering and often one of the hardest questions facing you will be – “how much marketing is enough”.

With over 30 years’ marketing experience, Darren will in this highly practical session provide clarity on what he considers are the 10 most important marketing things any start up or early stage business should be doing.

The pandemic has caused people to re-evaluate what they are doing with their lives and this is expected to lead to an increase in people deciding to set up their own business.

The event also features speakers from Eagle Tower, Hazlewoods, JV Consultancy and Hughes Paddison.

Anyone wishing to reserve a space can do so here.

/by
, ,

Clean Air Cheltenham seeking a volunteer to be their Publicity Co-ordinator

We are helping Clean Air Cheltenham spread the word about a volunteer position to become their Publicity Co-ordinator. The position would obviously be ideal for anybody who can share the organisation’s passion for the subject. The opportunity would enable somebody to gain practical experience in this field and demonstrate a track record of achievement. More […]

/by
, ,

Thinking of starting a business? Here are some of the things that you need to do.

At this time of year and after this year of all years, now is the time when many are reviewing what they currently doing and considering taking the plunge and starting their own business. This is not a decision to take lightly though, so we thought we would shares some tips on what you need to do.

Things to do before you make the decision

Ask yourself why you want to do this? Phrases like being your own boss are often quoted and we understand that motivation. Many start up businesses quickly find though that their customers start to feel like “bosses” because of their expectations and demands. Others decide to go it alone to do what they love. That is fine but ask yourself is this the only way you can achieve this? It is not that we are against starting up businesses (after all we did that ourselves nearly 11 years ago), but we do find that most start up businesses underestimate how much hard work it will be.

Work out how much you want/need to earn. Then estimate what your fixed and variable costs will be and you will soon have an idea of how much you will need to turnover to realise your aspirations. Break this down into months and how many sales you need to do (or if you are offering services the number of hours you need to work) and remember the need to consider the fact that not all enquiries or expressions of interest will turn into sales. You have some of the elements of a business plan now and something to gauge your progress against.

Try and assess the level of demand for what you intend to offer. Ask potential customers would they be interested in what you intend to offer, what price they would expect to pay and where if they were looking for it, would they look. Wrong assumptions at this stage can be crucial. For example if you plan to sell an item for £25 and people expect to pay £18, you need to justify that premium and anticipate that some people, even those that want what you are selling may be put off. Also look out for competitors. If they are there – ask yourself how you will compare and standout? If they are not there, then just maybe that indicates there are not enough people looking for what you intend to offer/do in that area.

After the decision to go-ahead.

This is where the hard work really starts. This is not an exhaustive list but some of the key things you need to do.

Create a “to do list” and start to plot these in some sort of calendar or plan. This will help you put things into the right order, determine your priorities and highlight interdependencies. It also will help you drive your activity and help maintain momentum – “what I need to get done this week”. Beware the temptation to keep delaying things to get “all your ducks in a row”. Try and categorise things, maybe into “must haves” and “nice to haves”.

Finalise what you are going to offer (your products or services) and how and where you are going to offer this. In part this is about where you intend to operate but it is equally about your routes to market.

Settle on a business name. Remember to check Companies House to see if somebody is already using it and for similar reason google the name you are considering. Check the Government website for trademarks (remember that even if there is a clash if they operate in a different field or class this may not a be a show stopper) and that there is a domain name that matches or is very close to your name. We use 123 reg but there are other providers. If you are planning to operate internationally check on how your name translates and what its meaning is in different languages.

Create a logo for your name. This will be the visual representation of your name and will feature on everything you produce and you will also need it for your website, business cards, social media etc. You can try and do this yourself, but we usually find using the services of a professional designer is better in the long run.

Remember the practicalities. If you are going to be limited company register the business with Companies House. Set up a business bank account, take on an accountant and consider what premises, equipment or software you need from day one. Think about what insurances you need, what laws and regulations you must comply with and whether you will register your trademark at the outset. The latter of these is usually advisable if you have aspirations to grow your business. Think about what services and suppliers you need or in the short term what skills gaps you have if you are going to “insource” elements e.g. bookkeeping. Organisations like the Growth Hub which supports Gloucestershire businesses can be a great help. If you are outside Gloucestershire you will probably have your own equivalent.

Consider whether (or when) you will have a website. Determine how you are going to get it produced e.g. do it yourself or via a web company (we can help you find one). Create a brief of what the site will contain and make sure to look at lots of competitors. A common preference is for a light or uncluttered site but remember you are designing it for Google as much as you are the end user and a site with too few pages or words can struggle to rank. Remember you will need copy and photographs for your site (very often a stumbling block) and that you will need to pay for a domain name and to host your website. Make sure you set up your Google My Business profile and when your site is live make sure it has Google Analytics installed.

Decide what social media platforms you are going to use and set up your profiles. Remember to think what social media platforms your potential customers use and look at what your competitors are using. If you do not know how to do this organisations such as ourselves can do this for you. We also offer training and advice on how to make the best use of social media and also offer an outsourced service if required. You can find information on our social media services here.

Decide what if any local business groups you might want to join. We are members of the Cheltenham Chamber of Commerce and Circle 2 Success (we are happy to share why we have chosen these two if you want to get in touch) but we have been members of the Institute of Directors and Gloucestershire Chamber of Commerce in the past and many small businesses choose to join the Federation of Small Businesses.

Decide on how you are going to promote your business. We come across far too many businesses who have inadvertently become the best kept secret. A great first step is to identify your target customers and make a list of the different ways that you can reach them. Some marketing will jump straight to generating a sale, but more often than not you will find you will need to take them through a process. For most businesses the steps in this will be making them aware of you and what you do, creating a positive impression and then creating enough desire for what you offer for them to get in touch. It is a good idea at the outset to set a budget for how much you are going to spend on marketing in the first year. This provides a great framework for decision making and will greatly minimise the chances of costs running away. Remember the importance of repetition and reinforcement to guide your potential customers through your process. Also don’t forget to make the most of free sources e.g. social media, recommendations and referrals.

We hope that this list isn’t too daunting and that you will find it useful. Running your own business is very hard work, but it is also very rewarding. For us for example we get a great buzz out of the progress we see our clients making with our help. If you do think that you would benefit from some professional help with your marketing please get in touch.

/by
, ,

Marketing in uncertain times

We are most definitely living and working in a period of unprecedented change, where almost everything that we have accepted to be normal is changed for the forseeable future, “thanks” to Coronavirus. Here at Prestbury Marketing we come into daily “virtual” contact with many businesses and it has been both heartening and quite remarkable the […]

/by

How do you know your website is working?

This is one of the most common questions we are asked. To be clear this is not usually in the context of whether or not the site is down, but more a matter of, is it being found as well as it should be and is it making the most of the visitors it does […]

/by