How do I do LinkedIn content marketing?
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How do I do content marketing on LinkedIn?
From being authentic in your content to repurposing evergreen posts, here are 14 answers to the question, “What are some best practices you can share for successful content marketing on LinkedIn?”
- Start by Being Authentic and Genuine
- Add Value Instead of Selling
- Educate the Community, Rather Than Entertain
- Align Your Content With Your Target Audience
- Stay Tuned With New LinkedIn Features and Trends
- Allocate Time to Comment on Other Posts
- Create and Test a Posting Schedule
- Find the Sweet Spot of Posting Frequency
- Use Blog-Type Posts With Insights Relevant to Your Industry
- Be Relevant
- Have Your Own Voice
- Talk With Your Audience Instead of At Your Audience
- Harness the Upside of LinkedIn Content Marketing
- Try to “Content Multiply”
Start by Being Authentic and Genuine
Being authentic doesn’t mean sharing every detail of your life, but it means opening up and sharing parts of it with your followers. I like to use the 80/20 rule: 80% professional and 20% personal.
We all know that people do business with people they know, like, and trust. If all you are posting about is, “ 50% off sale on your mastermind group” or an event where you spoke that isn’t building trust. It’s building awareness of what you do.Building trust starts with being you , sharing your thoughts, and allowing your connections to really get to know you and what’s important to you. So while LinkedIn is a professional platform, you still need to “infuse” who you are into your content marketing strategy.
Add Value Instead of Selling
Many people focus too much on selling and not enough on educating. They treat content creation like an ad and expect to see an immediate ROI.
When it comes to creating content, you won’t see results overnight. Consistently showing up and adding value to your network will position you as the go-to for your area of expertise.
A great content pillar can share considerations your audience should have to guide them through their buying journey. For example: “3 things to consider when doing X”.
Matt Parkin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-parkin/), LinkedIn Personal Branding Coach, Mornings With Matt Consulting (https://mwmconsulting.org/)
The purpose behind LinkedIn Content is not to sell to the audience—but rather to educate and inspire. In essence, it is about becoming a thought leader, and someone with a strong personal brand. This is the best form of marketing that anyone could have; because you are letting the knowledge speak for itself.
Providing value-adding information on a regular and consistent basis is what gets people coming back for more. You know you have built a memorable personal brand when your name immediately springs to mind when people think about experts in the field. It takes time and consistency, so why not start today?
Educate the Community, Rather Than Entertain
Don’t entertain people; rather, educate them by sharing your business vision or rich background.
By sharing personalized content based on your expertise and vision, you create a long-term bond with your followers. People are hungry for success shortcuts and stories that help them level up. The more value they can get at no cost, the higher their interest in becoming your clients for paid consultations or other services.
Align Your Content With Your Target Audience
Make sure you can answer the question “Will my target audience find value in reading this content?” in the affirmative. If you’re not sure who your target audience is, to begin with, start there before you put your time and effort into writing content that appeals to them.If you know your target audience, drill into their needs/wants and challenges to come up with themes that will resonate with them. Do that well, and you’ll build a reputation as a problem-solver that may pay off down the road when they’re ready to buy.
Stay Tuned With New LinkedIn Features and Trends
Explore and experiment with new features, programs, and formats that are being promoted by LinkedIn. LinkedIn came up with LinkedIn Creator’s programs, laughing reaction, link in bio feature, repost feature, and so much more recently!
Earlier, polls were highly promoted. Now, visuals are highly promoted, be it images, videos, or carousels. The key is to stay updated with what’s going on and include that in your content marketing strategy!
Mishka Rana, LinkedIn/Twitter Growth Expert & Personal Branding Coach
Allocate Time to Comment on Other Posts
One of the most missed details for ensuring content marketing success on LinkedIn is to consistently show up, post content, and comment on other people’s content. Why is commenting at least 15 minutes a day, 3 to 5 days a week, on LinkedIn so important? Because the LinkedIn community thrives on conversation for building community and relationships.
The algorithms—your visibility gatekeepers — require commenting on other people’s content as a necessary action to show your content to more people. Pro tip: don’t forget to copy and paste substantial comments into a doc for repurposing into content later.
Create and Test a Posting Schedule
Posting on a regular schedule allows your brand to stay top-of-mind with your audience because of increased touch points. Often the outcome of marketing efforts can simply come down to timing, and you’ll have a better chance of hitting that perfect timing if your fresh posts are coming up in your target demographic’s feed at the exact moment they need your solution to their problem.
Whether you decide to post once a day or twice a week, be sure to create a posting schedule you can commit to—treat that schedule just like any other important business appointment and make sure you stick to it.
Find the Sweet Spot of Posting Frequency
Many creators get excited about posting to LinkedIn, but they either post too frequently or decrease their frequency drastically once they realize they cannot keep up the pace. Smart creators thoughtfully consider their options and choose their posting frequency at the beginning.
The most important factors to posting frequency are how much content you already have, how often your audience uses LinkedIn during the week, and whether you have the time to dedicate to writing (and following up on) that number of posts per week.
I usually recommend experts post once per week on LinkedIn for a month before they decide to increase their frequency. A majority of people only need to post one high-quality piece of content per week to get results, but if you find you can do more (or have an assistant to help you), then go for 2-3 times per week!
Use Blog-Type Posts With Insights Relevant to Your Industry
Newsletters are an example of this. Think of the newsletter as another “micro-platform” within the LinkedIn platform where three million users share content, insights, and tips. The best part about newsletters is that it ranks on the first page of Google, which drives traffic back to your LinkedIn profile.
Be Relevant
Over 95% of LinkedIn users are content consumers. Great content informs, entertains, educates, and offers utility. It should be aimed at building engagement, creating trust, and generating interest toward a possible buying decision. The key is the relevance to its audience!
Have Your Own Voice
It is easier to just go with the flow with a platform like LinkedIn. However, one should always:
- Apply their own thought process and ideas basis their own experience
- Never underestimate yourself thinking if you are a fresher in college or someone who has already worked for 20 years in the industry – they both will bring in their own elements
- When it’s you, always remember that your voice is also a representation of your stories, your experiences, and above all, what matters to YOU
Talk With Your Audience Instead of At Your Audience
It doesn’t matter if you are “pleased to announce” something—your audience doesn’t care!
When you write posts for LinkedIn, talk with people and involve them. A piece, read it out loud to yourself. Can you imagine the piece you have written as a real-life, two-way conversation? If not, start again.
Your audience wants to know that you care about their opinion and LinkedIn wants you to create conversations anyway—remember that and your posts will get in front of a lot more people.
Harness the Upside of LinkedIn Content Marketing
In today’s crowded, hypercompetitive environment, those users who regularly post original content on LinkedIn increase their visibility, which, in turn, builds the brand. The key is to activate.
Once you positively liberate your voice on LinkedIn, you are in the arena. You can increase your impact and the likelihood of making deeper intellectual and emotional connections with the right people. Most importantly, you become more confident and self-aware as a creator.
Try to “Content Multiply”
We spend way too much time on content creation and not enough on repurposing. I call this “content multiplying,” a time-efficient strategy to get more usage out of one piece of content.
This can include “encoring” a post months later, rewriting it with a new twist, converting it to a different format, “slicing and dicing” into smaller media formats, or expanding your post into a LinkedIn article or newsletter. To start, you need to archive and categorize your content. Download your account data (and do so often, it’s yours for the taking) then find a suitable place for content archives like Google Docs, Notion, and Evernote. LinkedIn allows you to access all your content and comments in CSV files.The best payoff is content repurposing gives you back time to spend with your audience: starting conversations, building relationships, and growing community.
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