How to use LinkedIn for Content Marketing?

If you are a small business looking to expand your digital footprint, then LinkedIn is the perfect place to start showcasing your products and services. LinkedIn is a primarily B2B social media platform but all types of content get published and recognized here.

LinkedIn is a business-related social media platform that brings like-minded professionals from different parts of the world together. The number of opportunities is maximum if you can leverage the platform appropriately and generate leads for yourself and your venture.

Posting on LinkedIn opens up huge opportunities for you as a person as well as your business. It has more than 720 million members out of which only a handful are content creators. The moment you start producing and creating content you come into the handful of creators in the LinkedIn world.

Content Marketing on LinkedIn

Before you start doubting your choice of platform to promote your product and not go in favor of Facebook or Instagram, here are some benefits of content marketing on LinkedIn:

With its huge active user base, it gives you a relevant audience which helps in growth and lead generation.

Every 4th person on LinkedIn is a decision maker and they are on the lookout for better collaborations constantly.

The LinkedIn algorithm makes content viral if it has original value. The content can be viewed millions of times due to shares, clicks, and reactions.
It helps in building a brand image and brand recall on LinkedIn, establishing credibility as an expert in your field.

After knowing the incredible benefits of the platform, before jumping the gun and starting posting, there is a process to be followed to attain maximum results through content marketing. 

Here is a step-by-step process to plan for your content marketing strategy on LinkedIn:

Thorough Research: before starting to post and hoping to hit a target in the dark, it is imperative to do a thorough research of the platform and the type of content working on it. Make new connections, network with your desired audience, and visit profiles of your competitors and peers.

Study what your competitors are doing for lead generation and whether they are getting the expected results in the form of engagement from serious buyers. After studying the creator and buyer behavior on Linkedin, start formulating your strategy and develop content based on that.

Breakdown into Smaller parts: The end game for all the businesses is profit but it takes a lot of small steps to achieve this target. Breaking down your goal into smaller and meaningful parts not only makes it an achievable target but also makes it easier for you to analyze any lapses on the way and correct them.

While posting for your brand, decide the post is solving which objective:
Creating Brand Awareness
Creating a Brand Community
Is the post aimed at promoting products and services

After breaking it down into small manageable steps, create your Linkedin strategy and content around these steps. Optimize your profile around these steps regularly and see the difference in inbound leads. After implementing the strategy, there should be a framework to assess the performance of your content in terms of increase in likes, increase in engagement and increase in followers, and a noticeable increase in the conversion rate

Create as per Demand: After establishing a solid content strategy now, it’s time to decide whom to target with your content on LinkedIn. Although it can be very appealing to create content for a diverse audience given the size of the members of the platform, it is always better to create content for a niche. Narrowly focused content is bound to perform better than more generalized content.

It is always to build your niche audience and buyers so that they know you are the best in this segment and can approach you over hundreds of generalized content developers who don’t highlight their specialties. People at different levels of the business are looking for different things. People on the top usually need ideas to take their profits to the next level whereas people at the lower levels usually are on the lookout for solving short-term goals.

Creating content: After identifying the target audience, it is now necessary to create content accordingly. There are various ways to create content on LinkedIn and they are:

LinkedIn articles: These are long-form articles and can be published through its integrated platform. It supports all kinds of content such as video, audio, image, or codes. These are just another form of a blog. If published via LinkedIn pulse and the articles get good engagement, then you have a chance to feature on the LinkedIn news. This is extremely helpful in creating an image for your brand and creating some buzz around it.

LinkedIn Status: These are the most popular and easy to create. The statuses are short and crisp and can reach maximum people as most of the people might not be reading long-form articles. Quirky images or quotes accompanied by your brand products and services and to the point message. The character length is lower so it might inhibit you to showcase fully your brand but has a very wide reach among users on LinkedIn.

Video Content: These have become the most popular choice to promote content on the platform. It can be repurposed and has great storytelling potential.

Now since you know what to create and for whom to create next comes the creation process after the initial research is over. Topics needed to create content can be generated by visiting the target audience profile and also the industry trends. The comment section is also a sea of information and you can get a lot of ideas on what information is needed by the people.

After creating content, if it is not shared widely then the whole purpose of the exercise goes in vain. So it’s necessary to create content that is widely seen and shared and for that, you need to be active on the platform to build a community or audience and engage with them. In this way, they will wait for your posts and increase their reach.

Last but not least is the lead collection part, to cover the leads which come due to the outstanding engaging content that you create after so much research.

To conclude,

If you use LinkedIn according to the established ways and etiquettes, then only your journey can be a successful one. Not spamming your connections with your post and asking for engagement is one such thing that needs to be avoided. Staying regular and creating regular content that represents your brand and content strategy is the key to a successful content marketing strategy on Linkedin.