e to LinkedIn Content Marketing //

LinkedIn is not just for job searching and business networking.

Rethink.

It’s a great place to do both, and it’s also a good place to concentrate at least some content marketing efforts.

Why? LinkedIn has a larger audience than you might imagine. It boasts 66.6 million monthly active members in the U.S., and a global reach of 849.6 millions users.

This includes professionals, yes, but also 14.6% all people 18 and over worldwide. LinkedIn’s largest user base is between 25- and 34-year-olds. They make up almost 60% of the users on the platform.

This means that LinkedIn is a popular platform for your audience. You could reach them by using solid content marketing to nurture them.

Content Marketing, as you will recall, is about creating and publishing useful, relevant, and valuable content to attract a particular audience and maintain their trust over time.

That trust eventually leads to profitable actions: sign-ups and downloads, opt ins, sales, etc.

Let’s continue exploring this.

This guide will show you how to create your LinkedIn content marketing strategy.

LinkedIn content marketing: Why? 4 big benefits

For content marketing, I recommend that you focus on your website first. LinkedIn can be a valuable side channel.

Here are some reasons.

Reach out to more people

You can reach a larger audience by publishing content to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn boasts a large user base, with close to 1 billion users worldwide. To reach more people, tapping into this reach is a great way to go beyond your main organic traffic drivers (i.e. search engines and major social media networks like Facebook or Instagram).

Your network is your best asset

LinkedIn has a large user base and is the social home base of professionals in your industry.

65 million decision-makers, 61,000,000 senior-level influencesrs use this platform. This means that they are people who make the decisions for many businesses.

This means that consistent content will draw more people than you.

Your presence could be noticed by peers and colleagues, who may be looking for opportunities to network and collaborate.

These people may be interested in forming partnerships, particularly if you have audiences that overlap.

Increase traffic to your site

LinkedIn is a great place for sharing blog content. This drives traffic back to you website.

Your audience will be more trustful if you maintain a consistent and valuable presence on LinkedIn.

This will increase their likelihood to interact with your content and click on the links you share. It can even lead them to convert via email sign-ups, straight-up purchases, or direct sales of your products/services.

Keep up with your competitors

Are your competitors using LinkedIn to market?

Most likely. 96% B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content.

LinkedIn is a great way to reach a large portion of your audience. Your competitors might grab it instead.

LinkedIn Content Marketing: How to Build Your Strategy

LinkedIn content is not enough to get results.

Instead, you need to invest in a LinkedIn content marketing strategy that includes goal-setting, targeting a defined audience, and smart content creation/distribution.

Because they can and should work together, this strategy should be directly tied to your blog content strategy and website. As we have already mentioned, LinkedIn allows you to share your blog content and drive traffic back your website.

To get the best results, plan and document your strategy. And be consistent. Here’s how.

1. Set goals for your LinkedIn content marketing

Every content marketing strategy guide begins with goals (or should). Here’s why:

• Marketing activities can be defined by goals.
• Marketing for marketing sake without any direction is not the right approach. Instead, you will actively work to build your brand towards specific goals.
• Setting goals will help you stay accountable and allow you to keep track of your progress, as well as review your wins or losses.
• This will allow you to see the source of your ROI and what strategies can be used to increase it.

LinkedIn content marketing goals are easy to set and can relate to your overall marketing goals.

You might, for example, choose to build brand awareness or increase website traffic as your primary goal.

Once you have set your goals, you can decide how to track them and measure their progress.

You might consider your website traffic as a way to increase brand awareness. This will allow you to determine if your website traffic increases with more people becoming aware of your brand.

You might also look at your reputation after engagement to see how it grows.

2. Research and define your LinkedIn audience

The ultimate goal of defining your audience is to find the people who will buy what you are selling.

You’ve likely done audience research if your brand is already established. If this is the case, you can look at your ideal customers to see which personas are most likely to be on LinkedIn.

It’s possible to post different content for each persona if they all use the platform.

LinkedIn is a professional network. You should also consider the level of employment of your target audience.

Is your audience mainly made up of solopreneurs or independent entrepreneurs?

Are you talking to top managers or heads of companies? Perhaps you are targeting mid-level employees reporting to multiple bosses.

Targeting whomever you are, ensure you get to know them and their needs so that your content can be customized to their needs.

LinkedIn also offers insights about their users, including demographics and behavior, which can be very useful when you are researching your audience.

3. To create topic areas and content types, you can define them.

Next, you need to plan your LinkedIn content strategy. This should include both the content types and the topics you will be focusing on.

Two goals are necessary to find the best topics.

• Find out what your audience is looking for.
• Your brand expertise.

Don’t try to guess what topic you should write about. Always do your research and ask your audience to help you determine what they are looking for.

LinkedIn offers many options for content formats and types. You’ll likely rotate through several to keep your audience interested. Let’s take a look at the most important types.

Status updates

LinkedIn allows you to post status updates (mini-blogs) similar to Facebook. These posts can be as short as 542 words. These posts can also include hashtags or links.

• 
  What to write:
  
  • Share a life lesson, or an inspirational moment.
  • Send us some ideas or tips.
  • Write about a time that has changed your life.
  • Send us a thought-provoking or funny quote.

• 
  What and to write:
  
  • Many pitches for your products/services. People will be turned off if every post is a pitch.
  • Irrelevant updates.
  • Too many updates (hello spammer).

Articles

LinkedIn allows you to publish long-form content just like on your blog.

LinkedIn generally recommends between 1,500 and 2,000 words for these pieces. These pieces should be deep, meaningful, and relevant.

LinkedIn articles are available online for anyone to read, and not only members.

They can also be index in Google, and rank in search result results. To help more people find your content, ensure that you optimize your page with keywords.

Photo posts

LinkedIn isn’t a photo-driven social networking site.

However, photos can be added to any post. This will increase engagement and add variety.

You don’t have to post just one image. You can also post a series of related photos.

Link posts

You can share content from your blog via link posts.

They are also engaging because of another reason. The preview of link posts automatically pulls imagery from the site that you are linking to.

Native videos

Yes, you can upload videos on LinkedIn. (Note: This is not the same as embedding video from YouTube or video ads).

Video engagement has been proven. audiences are 20% more likely to share videos than any other type of content.

Use the same standards for creating and sharing videos as you do for writing content.

• Keep your audience in mind. What are they looking for?
• Be relevant. Don’t post videos that aren’t related to your business, what you sell or who you sell to.
• Tell stories to tell about your brand, company culture, customers, and yourself.

Document posts

Unique to LinkedIn, document posts let you upload documents like PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, Word files, etc.

This means that you can add more detailed content, such as whitepapers, ebooks, case studies and slides from your presentation, research studies, or other relevant information, to a LinkedIn post.

You can also make the PDF files available to your audience.

You can impress document posts with a striking design like this one by Moz.

Dig deep: 10 quick tips from LinkedIn for creators

4. LinkedIn allows you to tailor your content for the platform

LinkedIn is not a platform like Facebook and Instagram.

Although it is a social network, it does not serve the same purpose as other networks.

This means that a different portion of your audience may use LinkedIn and expect to see content that is tailored to LinkedIn.

Don’t copy and paste content from different social networks. Many of the same ideas that work elsewhere won’t work on LinkedIn.

Instead, focus your content on LinkedIn only – especially if this is your primary channel after your blog.

Social listening and some investigation can help you pinpoint what your audience wants to see in their LinkedIn feeds. Next, experiment with different posts until you find the right one for your brand.

Don’t forget hashtags on LinkedIn! They can be included in most of your posts. They’re also useful for reaching a wider audience beyond your network.

5. Establish a publishing schedule

A content strategy must include a publishing schedule, including a reliable content calendar.

You’ll lose your way in the daily grind of posting, forgetting what went out when, and get distracted by the details. You are more likely to miss the right time or post repeated content when you really want to.

You can also use your LinkedIn content calendar if you have one for your blog, which you should.

Many tools offer a tab feature that allows you to color-code posts according to type. This makes it easy for you keep track of all posts in all your content channels.

MeetEdgar, Airtable and Airtable are my favorite calendar tools. Google Sheets is a good option if you have a tight budget.

Consider these factors when you are considering your posting schedule:

• You can make as many posts per week as you like without compromising quality.
• Types of content you will post (status updates and images, articles, etc. ).
• This top times to share on LinkedIn for your audience.
• You can plan ahead for creating and scheduling LinkedIn content so that you don’t have to rush to post.

6. Engage and interact

LinkedIn content marketing isn’t monolithic.

You will get the best results by posting regularly on the platform. However, it is important to engage with others in order to see the best results.

This includes liking, commenting, and sharing other’s content.

Remember the old saying “You get what your give”? This is true here.

Friendly social media presence can help you build brand awareness and reputation as well as high-quality content.

Keep this in mind when you are creating your LinkedIn content marketing strategy. This will keep you accountable.

7. You can measure your results and adjust your strategy as needed

You should measure the results of your LinkedIn content strategy and track your progress towards your goals if you are really investing a lot.

You’ll be able to see if your efforts are paying off and also keep track of whether or not they were worthwhile.

LinkedIn provides a number of useful tools to help you assess how your content is performing. These include analytics such as impressions and engagement per post.

A LinkedIn Page for your business will allow you to view a variety of data such as pageviews, unique visits, follower metrics and many other things. To track your growth, you should regularly check your metrics.

LinkedIn Content Marketing:

LinkedIn is a great option for content marketing.

It’s even better to reach out to professionals and business owners if your audience is diverse.

Don’t post random content. Create a content marketing strategy to maximize your chances of success.

You shouldn’t be solely focused on LinkedIn. Instead, focus on your blog and website first, with LinkedIn second.

You don’t want your brand to be built on rented real property.

LinkedIn is a great channel to reach a larger audience, increase brand awareness and nurture leads. It’s important to do it strategically.

A guide for LinkedIn content marketing was first published on Search Engine Land.