LinkedIn is considered to be the most prominent platform for B2B businesses.
Now you must be wondering about how is it any different than Facebook or any other social media platform?
Well, on Facebook, you can create audiences for your B2B business, however, LinkedIn hosts an entire community of professionals.
These people are capable of hiring you or your agency for their business so that you can take care of their marketing vertical.
This clearly means that you get a chance to tap into a beehive of opportunities.
So, how can you create a robust content strategy for such a platform?
You can consider creating a content strategy for LinkedIn, similar to a chance of speaking at industry events, through your keyboard obviously.
So, creating a content strategy here should focus on showcasing your capabilities as a marketer.
So, built accordingly, so that you can increase your visibility in front of your potential clientele and land marketing contracts, freelancing work and whatnot.
Besides this, LinkedIn also provides you with an opportunity to better your personal brand’s awareness, which your pave your path to getting more and better clients, projects and scopes for employment in the foreseeable future.
And this clearly refers to the fact that crafting a robust business strategy for LinkedIn is not just an option, but a necessity.
Creating A Content Marketing Strategy for LinkedIn That Converts
To create the best content marketing strategy for LinkedIn, you need to follow five steps that will turn it all into a mere cakewalk.
All you need to know is,
- Who your audience is?
- What do they care about?
- What your content pillars are?
- What your schedule is?
- What and how your customer value journey is?
Having answers to all of these will help you steer your ship towards the right direction and reach your desired destination in no time.
So, let’s get started to find the best answers to these questions.
1. Who Is Your Target Audience?
Your ideal audience is full of customers. If your LinkedIn audience is full of ecommerce business owners but your agency only works with SaaS brands—you’ve done something wrong. It’s just like marketing your clients’ businesses. You have to start with who before you move on to what.
Who does your business serve?
- Is it ecommerce business owners with less than $100,000 in revenue?
- Is it SaaS businesses with $1 million in MRR?
- Is it online coaches and consultants looking to increase course sales?
Use the Customer Avatar Canvas to write down all the details about who your business serves. We’ll use this in the next step to figure out what your ideal customer cares about so you can create content that interests them on LinkedIn.
2. What Do They Care About?
As you fill out the Customer Avatar Canvas, what your ideal customer cares about starts to become obvious.
The “Haves” in the Before State tell you exactly what they want to avoid in the future. The “Haves” in the After State are the topics, they’re dying to learn about so they can experience the After State. For example, if your ideal customer is an ecommerce business owner in the Before State they probably ‘have’ low customer lifetime value (LTV). In the After State, they have high customer lifetime value.
Knowing what your ideal customer cares about tells you exactly what content interests them. That’s how you build an audience of people who want to hire you.
3. What Are Your Content Pillars?
Every brand need content pillars. These are the topics that you’ll cover on a regular basis. And they’re entirely based on the Customer Avatar Canvas. Using content pillars, you’ll never run out of content ideas because you always know what your audience wants to know about.
Create at least 5 content pillars based on their haves, feelings, average day, status, and the good vs. evil perspective they have in their mind. For example, the marketing agency targeting ecommerce business owners on LinkedIn can create content pillars like:
Have: They have low LTV and they want to have high LTV
→ Content Pillar: LTV
Feelings: They feel like advertising is getting more complicated and expensive and they want to feel like advertising gets them guaranteed ROAS
→ Content Pillar: ROAS
Average Day: They spend their day looking at their sales flop and they want to spend their day focused on the bigger picture for their business
→ Content Pillar: Being a founder/CEO of an ecommerce business
Status: They relate to a newbie entrepreneur, and they want to relate to a successful, established entrepreneur
→ Content Pillar: Entrepreneur lifecycles of ecommerce business owners
Good vs. Evil: The best-case scenario is that they figure this out, but the worst-case scenario is they have to shut down their online store
→ Content Pillar: Ecommerce businesses “must-knows” to avoid shutting down your store
For each of these content pillars, you can create 5+ topics that you can create LinkedIn posts, articles, and videos on. Now, you have 25 topics to fill your calendar!
4. What Is Your Schedule?
When people first consider posting content, they like to go big or go home. They want to post daily, record videos every other day and write 1,000+ articles 3x per week. Let’s start slow and work your way up (unless you have a dedicated team!).
A solid posting schedule to start out with is 3x posts per week. You can follow a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule. Each of your posts covers one of your content pillars (LTV, ROAS, etc.).
Once you and your team get used to posting, you can start to turn some of those posts into videos. Allocate 1-2 hours in your schedule per week to record videos based on your created posts. You can post those videos in your 3x/week cadence, or you can add them in on Tuesday and Thursday so you’re posting daily.
Whichever schedule you choose—make sure to stick to it. If there’s one part of your LinkedIn content marketing strategy that can go array its posting. If you don’t post, people can’t see your content, learn about your expertise, and build a relationship that leads them to hire you.
Have a team member assigned to content creation and posting to make sure it gets done.
5. What and How Is Your Customer Value Journey?
There is no content marketing strategy without a funnel. To finalize your LinkedIn content marketing strategy, we have to figure out what call to action you’re using in 20% of your posts. The other 80% of your posts will be free content, where you’re not asking for anything in return. 20% will have a direct call to action to download a lead magnet, join your newsletter, hop on to a webinar, etc.
Think about the Customer Value Journey. Your LinkedIn audience goes from Stage 1: Awareness to Stage 2: Engagement when they follow you, like your posts, comment, or watch your videos. Now, we want them to go to Stage 3: Subscribe.
This is the stage where they share their first-party data with you (which we all know is very important these days…ahem, Apple).
With that first-party data, your CVJ moves to Stage 4: Convert! This is when your LinkedIn audience becomes profitable. You’re turning audience members into agency clients or your fractional CMO business has more interest than you can keep up with.
Better yet—you can continue mapping this journey so you reach Stage 6: Ascend and can take $1,000/month retainer contracts and turn them into $5,000/month retainer contracts.
That’s how you create a LinkedIn content marketing strategy that works.
Tips That You Should Consider Implementing
Moreover, regardless of what medium you’re using, there are a few tips that will ensure your LinkedIn marketing efforts perform their best.
1. Consider your target audience.
Before you post anything, think about who the content is for and tailor you’re messaging to that particular audience. For example, if your target audience is sales professionals, choose industry topics they care about to hook them in. What problems or obstacles are they trying to solve? Create content that speaks to their needs.
2. Engage with your audience.
It’s easy to create a post and then move on to the next project but using LinkedIn for marketing shouldn’t be a one-way street. If you’re fortunate to have users commenting on your post, interact with them. Respond to questions and comments, ask for feedback, or ask questions that spark discussion.
3. Be genuine, not salesy.
Yes, social media marketing is about promotion, but you can promote yourself and brand without taking a hard sell angle. Producing good content with an authentic voice will perform better than a hollow sales pitch. People are smart and can spot dishonesty quicker than you may think.
4. Use hashtags.
Just like other social media sites, LinkedIn hashtags are used to categorize content. You can use them to help you reach your target audience and those with shared interests. Hashtags are also a great way to reach those who are outside of your network who may be interested in your content based on the hashtags you use. Two to three relevant tags should do the job.
5. Be consistent.
A successful LinkedIn campaign requires consistency. This may be hard at first, but it’s important to develop a regular cadence for publishing. These builds trust with your audience and will help establish yourself as an expert in your field.
6. Offer exclusive content.
It can be tempting to publish the same content across multiple platforms, but that would be a mistake. Provide your LinkedIn audience with exclusive content that they can’t find elsewhere. It’s not uncommon to have the same followers on several platforms, so you don’t want to bombard them with duplicate content.
7. Observe and adjust.
Don’t get discouraged if your posts don’t initially get the level of response you hoped for. Make adjustments and continue to improve with each new post you share.
Distribution Of Your Content
It is also important to distribute your content appropriately.
Follow these to do it like a pro!
1. Publish quick status updates.
One of LinkedIn’s most underutilized features is the “LinkedIn Status Update” (also called your “Network Update”) in your LinkedIn Profile. This is one of the best ways to stay in front of your target audience on a consistent basis. And when used correctly, these little messages pack a big punch.
Your status update “block” is a white box located just below your picture on your homepage. Whenever you share an update, your message is then broadcast to all of your network connections.
You can also control the visibility of your posts before sharing. This means that you can pick and choose which posts you want to share with everyone, share with just your connections, or share with both everyone and your Twitter network.
While updates serve as a great place to share your thoughts, linking in a blog post or interesting website will help you to provide an even richer source of insight.
2. Publish and share an article on LinkedIn.
Another powerful way to distribute content on LinkedIn is through the publishing platform. With all members now having access to the platform, it serves as a great opportunity to expand your reach in a major way.
I was first made aware of this feature when a friend of mine posted an update on Facebook mentioning how his article on LinkedIn managed to achieve over 6000 views and 550+ shares in little over 10 hours. I was intrigued, so I decided to conduct an investigation to see how it all worked.
I decided to test it out by publishing one of my articles, “5 Things All Great Leaders Have In Common.” Given that it was my first-time publishing on the platform, I had no idea what to expect. However, what happened next totally blew me away …
Within a matter of minutes, I started receiving invitation requests and messages on LinkedIn from members who had come across my article.
Within a matter of hours, the article had gone viral — achieving over 70K views, 11K+ shares, and close to 500 comments. Over the years, I have written hundreds of business articles but none of them had achieved the exposure and interaction that this one did.
3. Publish video content.
If you’re a video marketer, you can alternatively publish pre-recorded or live video content on the platform. To upload a video, all you have to do is go to your status box and upload a file you’ve created. If you’d prefer to do something a bit more interactive, like a Q&A or a live stream, you can now use LinkedIn Live.
Execution Of Your Content Marketing Strategy
Lastly, here we come to the execution part, which is perhaps one of the most important aspects that you need to keep an eye on.
Let’s see how you can do it the best!
Here are the steps to follow.
Step 1: Plan Your Content in Advance
In order to achieve optimal results, you need to plan the content you are going to share. Here are some tips for how to plan more effectively:
- Start by taking some time to find articles you want to share, status updates you want to post, or infographics that are relevant to your industry.
- Organize the content on a calendar and decide when you want to share them.
- Leverage software — like HubSpot’s Social Publishing App — to schedule your content in advance.
When you have a plan, you not only save time, but you are able to focus your energy on finding the right content for your audience.
Step 2: Determine Your Frequency Strategy
When sharing content, the goal is to identify a frequency that allows you to stay top-of-mind without overwhelming your audience. To help you achieve this balance, here are the publishing guidelines I follow:
- Status Updates: 2-3 times a day.
- Long Form Publishing: 1-2 times a week.
Keep in mind that every industry is different. While this works for me, you may need to modify this schedule as you see fit.
Step 3: Utilize Content Creation Templates
Your content needs to have a purpose and an outline. Are you writing a blog post, or a case study? Will you be promoting content on LinkedIn, or publishing it there?
In this collection of content creation templates, you can pick and utilize the template that most closely aligns with the content you’re creating and promoting on your LinkedIn account.
Step 4: Follow Up with Generated Activity
If your content marketing efforts are working, you’re going to notice a spike in your activity. This could be anything from increased views, connection requests, or even direct messages from viewers.
With that said, now is the time to strike up a conversation. If people are viewing your LinkedIn profile or requesting to connect, consider striking up a dialogue with them. By uncovering what interested them about your profile, you can then begin to uncover potential opportunities for collaboration.
Your First LinkedIn Content Marketing Strategy
LinkedIn is a playground for businesses. It’s like having a local coffee shop where, somehow, business owners from around the world are able to come and chat together. Through your conversations (a.k.a content), you get to filter out who you network with and build connections with people who’ve been waiting to hire someone just like you.
With the right content marketing strategy, your agency, freelancing, or even full-time employment marketing career can show you the abundance of opportunities available to you right now. The key is knowing how to get those opportunities to pop out of the woodwork and show you they exist.
And that’s why you implement this content marketing strategy.
So, more customers, connections, and opportunities come to you.
