Why is Linkedin important for companies and individuals?
LinkedIn is a powerful tool for professionals to connect and build their personal brand. Even if you're not someone who acquires clients online or is building a personal brand, you'd still want people to be able to find you.
What is content marketing on LinkedIn?
Fast Fact
Key takeaway
“Marketing is no longer about grabbing attention, but rather it’s about creating real connections, building that emotional resonance and spurring action throughout the customer journey."
- Nina Butler, Director of Event Experience for B2B gifting platform Alyce, at the recent MarTech conference
Every engagement matters. Particularly for someone like me who works from home. That is why I spend so much time on my website, started a more intimate blog series, and outreach to my leads personally on social media - including Linkedin. I want my audiences to have a positive experience or at least remember who I am.
Why are Linkedin connections important?
LinkedIn is the perfect platform for building professional connections. The platform has grown into a tool that not only headhunters find useful but also for industry thought leaders and those who wish to become one. It fosters one-on-one conversation professionally, and you can share things that feel too corporate for Instagram or Facebook. I find posting on Linkedin to be the most effective in building my name and driving actions and conversions!
Linkedin - Why use it?
According to ContentCal:
LinkedIn has over 760 million users worldwide
46-55-year-olds make up the biggest portion of LinkedIn's general audience (37%), however, 25-34 year old's dominate when it comes to LinkedIn's advertising audience, likely because of their high purchasing power and early career status
50% of Americans with a college degree use LinkedIn, versus only 9% of members with a high school diploma or less
The Pros and Cons of Linkedin
Source: Altcraft
Branding, content, and authenticity matter. People are quick to dismiss things that don’t interest them. Worse yet, they judge a book by its cover. Unless you utilize every chance you have to present yourself, it becomes difficult to justify your marketing efforts.
3 benefits of using Linkedin
3 ways to use Linkedin to build your presence
3 ways to create content on Linkedin to build your presence
3 personal takeaways about acing Linkedin marketing
Recommended Tools List:
 Scale your Linkedin leads - Cleverly.co | |
 Content Management system - Loomly |
3 benefits of using Linkedin
1. It helps you build free, personal connections
Yes, building offline relationships remains to be super important. And especially for B2B businesses, a good amount of your leads and customers comes from word of mouth or traditional marketing techniques, such as attending conferences and networking at events. So I understand why you want to spend more time on that. But that does not mean you can completely neglect content marketing on Linkedin. Because building professional connections is the core value of Linkedin.
Let me give you an example.
Say you/ your team can charm 10 people each at an offline event:
- Are you/ they going to have to continuously be responsible for nurturing these new leads one-on-one?
- What if the first touch point doesn't even have to be offline?
- What if your business can attract quality leads at scale with a piece value-adding content, and those who are truly interested will then reach out themselves?
What I am trying to say is authentically connecting with people is highly important, but it doesn't mean you're exempt from building relationships online.
With content, you will find yourself saving a lot of time in explaining what you do, rather, starting your conversations straight at how you can help. At the end of the day, all business are really P2P (people to people), and everyone yearns for connection and value adding experiences both online and offline.
2. It's much better than running ads
Some people/ brands are very reluctant to invest in doing consistent, owned channel, always-on organic posts. First of all, it’s a lot of effort. Second of all, they simply don’t see the benefit. As opposed to an ad that gives them metrics, which they believe they can understand and utilise; organic posts to them seems weak and subtle. But a strong collection of, or even just one organic content can be as powerful, if not more, than an ad. Again, an ad cease to exist once the budget runs out, but a piece of organic content is always going to be there.
I try to post on a regular basis, but I self promote and outreach to people every day. When these cold leads who knows nothing about me search for my name online, all of these content comes up. They experience what I am capable of offering before speaking a single word with me. And all of this value comes for free.
Not only do my content do the heavy lifting for me when it comes to building my brand awareness, my first impression, and my services; they also help me gain fast passes a lot of the times.
I’ve recently went into a meeting and the representative started off by saying “I’ve seen you on LinkedIn!” Guess how that conversation went? Short, sweet, and highly effective! (And of course, I got the job too!)
3. It keeps your profile safe
Since I have created my professional profiles across different platforms, I don't worry about potential leads landing on the wrong pages. Even if they do, they will still end up contacting the real me. That is simply because those who steal can't possibly come up with more content than I have created, nor rank higher than me (both as text and as Google image search)! At the end of the day, I am confident that I have left behind enough quality information for people to find the real me.
3 ways to use Linkedin to build your presence
1. Engage before you post
According to Vedika Bhaia, Co-founder of The Growth Square, engagement rates on posts can be increased by actively engaging on the platform right before posting time. And that is because the LinkedIn algorithm gives each post a 1-hour time frame to see if it is worth sharing with the community. In the first hour, it will push the post to a handful of your followers (https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-the-linkedin-algorithm-works-hacks/). If there are a lot of engagements, Linkedin will push it to more people. If not, the organic reach is likely to stop there.
So, if you actively engage in other's people posts before publishing your post, chances are they'll visit your profile, see your new post, and return the favor. That gives Linkedin the signal that your post is not spam and is worth sharing. Therefore, sandwiching Linkedin posting between sessions of engaging with others can help your posts reach more people.
That is why people with a huge following on Linkedin, such as Justin Welsh, tell their audiences when they will post and encourages them to comment within the first hour. The motivation these creators give their audiences to do so is that the first few comments are easier to be seen by the creator and other visitors, giving the commenter more exposure. But the fact is it helps the creator signal Linkedin the quality of their post and organically reach more people.
2. Reply before you post
Replying to comments on your own posts before you post is essentially striving towards the same goal as engaging before you post. It notifies these people you have responded to, making them navigate to your profile to see what you have said and likely to engage with your latest posts.
Apart from that, replying to your audiences also helps build connections and gain trust, further reinforcing your personal branding. For those using Linkedin to find jobs, it's also a great way to demonstrate your expertise. Adding value and prolonging the conversation on a post through comments can also help that initial post thrive organically.
3. Assess before you post
The key to content marketing on Linkedin and any platform is to base your future content on historic learnings and data.
Spot content patterns to see what content has done well;
Understand what has caused the positive performance and learn to replicate it;
Scale your content and consistently achieve your benchmarks.
However, this is easier said than done. Content patterns can only be spotted by having a content framework at the beginning, where content is created based on specific content pillars tailored to your target audience's persona.
Want to know how you can set up content pillars? Consider this.
3 ways to create content on Linkedin to build your presence
1. Be opinionated
I see many content creators on Linkedin writing intense opinions in their first sentences only to get audiences to click "see more". It gets annoying when it's obvious that the content creator only wrote something absurd because they want you to argue against it and give them the engagement they need. I don't recommend anyone to make a crazy claim just for the sake of engagement.
But then again, the attraction that strong opinions can drive is undebatable. People naturally gravitate to them. Opinions are naturally great at positioning creators to become subject matter experts with their target audiences. That is because opinions can cut noise and help your personal brand differentiate in the sea of Linkedin content. When used properly, it can also lead to interesting discussions and community tags because others want to see what two cents you can offer them.
Here are some hook ideas from Justin Welsh, The Operating System, when you want to share your opinions on Linkedin:
2. Reveal exact details
People on Linkedin seem to love checklists, action steps, and how-to's. They want to see how others have done it, and most importantly, to replicate what has worked for themselves. For traditional marketers, this may seem absurd. Why would anyone want to tell others the exact steps they took to achieve success?
Well, that is because it can create authority for the content creator on Linkedin. And authority can ultimately help drive leads and revenue to products and services. Listicles are also perfect at answering specific pain points, which can easily help you attract the right target audiences.
3. Tug a heart string
These are what we call personal posts. You often see them on Linkedin, celebrating a new role, a new baby, a new company achievement, and so on. They help display a slice of you to your audiences. And since people relate to stories and other people, these posts are great at building connections through emotions and ideas.
For these posts, it is best to talk about your values, personality, or source of inspiration. Many people create book reviews or book lists for this type of post. Apart from suggesting reading material, they use these posts to connect with like-minded individuals and make themselves relatable.
3 personal takeaways about acing Linkedin marketing
Now, you should have a clear understanding as to what is the importance of Linkedin. But to maximize your content marketing efforts on Linkedin, it's not just about creating high quality content. You must also do the following:
Understanding of target audience preferences and behaviours;
Genuine and clear personal branding;
Consistency in posting and subject matter;
Active engagement with others in the community.
So:
Have you put out enough touch points online for people to find you?
Are you sure you're not missing out on opportunities just because you haven't made it easy for people to come across and become interested in you?
Are you providing unique value that helps others remember you?
Even for a content marketer like myself, I constantly engage and learn from others on the platform to see what types of content work:
1. You can copy all the successful posts you want but it's not going to get you anywhere unless you make it your own
We've all see high performing posts on Linkedin. You can breakdown every single post and find the common grounds. But unless you digest them and find the "rhythm" that suits you, you simply can't replicate the success. They are only guiding references to keep you on track.
2. Deep down, we all know what works. The thing we're not doing is change.
We've all seen great posts and said "hey I could have written that!" But the fact is we didn't. And most of the time, in my opinion, it's because we're trapped in our own pattern of writing. It feels "natural" to write this certain way. And that certain way is usually not the "best" way.
3. Staying consistent but being 100% yourself is hard!
I praise the concept of staying authentic. Authentic stories always work well in content marketing. However, it doesn't mean doing everything you can/ sharing everything about yourself. At the end of the day, it's a brand, and not everything about you is going to make the cut as content online (such as my poor rollerskating skills and my adorable dog photos lol). The difficult part is being selective.
What should I share - not what can I share. How should I say is - not how can I say it.
More Resource
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So if you don't want to go through countless courses yourself to ace Linkedin marketing, or if you're struggling to build your own personal brand...