LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with 810 Million members spread across 200 countries. Its members include the decision-makers of the organization and influencers across industries. Considering the numbers, there is no doubt that LinkedIn houses all the potential prospects for a B2B SaaS company.

All the professionals hang out on LinkedIn solely to network with people and connect with brands and opportunities unlike other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, where people are more inclined to network with friends and family.

Until now If you’ve just had a LinkedIn profile with zero to low activity, now is the right time for you to be introduced to LinkedIn content marketing.

So, What is LinkedIn content marketing?

Brian Clark, Founder & CEO, of Rainmaker Digital, defines content marketing as “creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.”

And, LinkedIn content marketing is content marketing done on LinkedIn keeping in mind the interests of the audience and features of the platform.

Why is LinkedIn content marketing important?

According to LinkedIn’s Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn, 94% of B2B marketers prefer LinkedIn for content distribution and have seen 80% of social media B2B leads come from the platform.

The above-mentioned statistics confirm the importance of LinkedIn content marketing. But, here are 5 more reasons why LinkedIn content marketing is important.

1. Great exposure

LinkedIn has:

• 61 million senior-level influencers
• 40 million decision-makers
• 10.7 million opinion leaders
• 6.8 million C-level executives
• 3 million MBA graduates

These are people who are there to build meaningful connections and look for valuable content. Thus, getting visibility and chances of getting noticed by potential customers is higher than on any other social media platform.

2. Targeted audience

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network having decision-makers, influencers, and leaders on its platform. Since these are people who are there to learn more from the experience of others in their network or industry, they’re constantly looking for solutions or content that can help them achieve their goals.

This makes them a better target audience for B2B content marketing efforts, as they are in a more ready state of mind to explore the options available to them.

3. Cost-effective

Outbound marketing techniques like ads and email marketing are expensive methods of lead generation. If statistics are to be believed, 53% of marketers spend at least half of their budget on lead generation.

With LinkedIn, you’re reaching out to your target audience organically, relying on their interests.

Once you engage the audience with your content, it gets easier to stay on top of their minds, introduce them to the value you offer and turn them into qualified leads in no time without spending a dime. Hence, LinkedIn is a cost-effective way of lead generation.

4. Long term results

Consistently posting thought leadership content around your industry not only yields short-term results like generating leads but also helps position you as an industry expert leading to building a personal brand for you that works for you in the long run.

Your brand might bring in never-thought-of opportunities and nurture potential leads into buyers even in your absence.

5. Domino effect

The biggest advantage of content marketing on LinkedIn is the domino effect. Meaning, that if someone engages with your content on LinkedIn, the algorithm shows the content piece to their network making visibility and reaching a large target audience easier.

Best practices to know before getting started with LinkedIn content marketing

Now that you know the meaning and importance of LinkedIn content marketing, let’s get down to understand some of the best practices you should be following:

1. Write for your target audience

Before anything, stop and think about your target audience. What is it that they are looking for? What are their pain points?

For example, if your target audience is coaches and OSPs, speak their language and write about the topics they might be interested in.  Create content that solves their pain points. It will position you as a go-to expert in your industry.

2. Engage with your audience

Creating and publishing content and not looking back is an easy but illogical thing to do. Always try to engage with your audience. Drop a valuable comment on their posts, and reply to the comments you’ve received on yours.

Ask for feedback and answer questions. Use storytelling, carousels, polls, etc to engage the audience further. While it’s easier to move on about things, never, we repeat never, post and ghost.

3. Create genuine content without being salesy

Create content that holds value and is true to yourself. Yes, social media marketing means promoting. But genuine content brings far greater results than salesy promotional content.

On LinkedIn, compelling content does a better job of helping you reach your goals than promotional content without any hard selling.

4. Be consistent

Posting content whenever you feel like it, is an absolute no-no. Showing up regularly builds a rapport with your network and positions you as an authority in your field of expertise, whilst establishing what people can expect to hear about from your profile.

Consistently creating content is hard but yields amazing results. The more you pop up on your network’s feeds the more they remember you.

Don’t confuse consistency with frequency here. We’re talking about posting on fixed days a week and not the number of times in a day.

5. Use hashtags

Just like any other social media platform, LinkedIn uses hashtags to categorize the content. It is advised to use 2-3 specific hashtags. As it will make it easy for your content to reach your target audience who isn’t in your network.

6. Get creative with content

Sharing the same audience on different socials is not unusual. So, stop posting the same content around all social media platforms. It is easy to do so but hurts your engagement rate. Instead, get creative and provide your audience with never-seen-before content that stops the scroll.

Use videos, polls, quizzes, carousels, etc instead of sticking to 1 to 2 formats of content. Using different formats to put out content will spice things up and keep your audience engaged.

7. Tweak your ways

Create content consistently and check the insights. It’s absolutely fine if your content doesn’t perform well in the beginning. You can always analyze the data and tweak your ways accordingly to create better content each time.

How to create a LinkedIn content strategy

Showing up, whenever you feel like it is not the right way to go about LinkedIn and it hampers your growth.

Just like any other channel, LinkedIn also has to be used strategically for it to work in your favor. Here’s how you can create a LinkedIn content marketing strategy so that you can make the best use of it.

1. Identify your target audience

Identifying your target audience is the first step in creating a strategy. You should be knowing your target audience, their pain points, the kind of solution they are looking for, etc. This helps you create valuable content around topics of their interest.

Click here to learn more on how to find your target audience.

2. Shortlist topics you can truly add value to

Now that you have a target audience, their problems, and interests in mind, it’s time to shortlist the topics YOU can add value to.

For example: if you’re a social media marketing tool, your target audience would be social media marketers/managers, and hence you need to address their goals like increasing account reach, engagement rate, etc on different channels.

The go-to platforms for generating topic ideas to create content on are answerthepublic.com and google trends.

3. Content distribution

There are 3 formats in which you can share content on LinkedIn.

• Publish status updates:

  Also, called ‘Network updates’, it is the least used feature of Linkedin but, if used strategically, it will keep you on top of your target audience’s mind and help you stay consistent with your content creation process.
  

• Publish and share an article on LinkedIn:

  Publishing long-form content is another way of content distribution on LinkedIn. This boosts your reach and you can write articles of your choice and add value to your network.
  

• Publish video content:

  Video content is booming in the social media industry and posting pre-recorded videos, doing a live interactive Q&A session, etc, on Linkedin life will create a great impact on your audience. Videos appeal to individuals more than text-based content and helps reach a wider audience.
  

5. Determine Frequency

Posting content consistently is the key to growing on the platform. Publishing long-form content 2x a month is advisable and network updates depend upon your industry.

You need to figure out the sweet spot between posting content to stay on top of your network’s minds and overwhelming them.

6. Create a content calendar

The content calendar takes away the doubt about what to post and helps plan what type of content to post and when. Having a social media calendar helps you with planning and strategizing content ahead of time making the workflow effective, and efficient.

Click here for step-by-step guidance on how to create a content calendar.

7.  Schedule your content

The next step is to schedule the posts planned in the calendar. Most of the time posting manually on specific dates and times is such a hassle. And, scheduling apps like Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, etc, come to the rescue. Schedule the content ahead of time and do other tasks without worry.

8. Follow up with generated activity

Now your work of engaging with the audience starts here. Replying to the questions and comments and leaving thoughtful comments on others’ posts, etc.

If your strategy is working, then you might see an increase in likes, comments, or even getting connection requests. You can start a conversation with them and ask what brought them to your profile and it’ll help you understand what part of the strategy worked for you.

9. Measure and learn

Analyze the data obtained from each post and check what’s working and what’s not. Double down on the content appreciated by the audience and tweak your strategy accordingly.

Conclusion

Including LinkedIn in your content marketing strategy will prove to be beneficial for your brand. Publishing timely and relevant content on LinkedIn will not only establish you as an authority in your industry but also bring in opportunities and generate leads.

LinkedIn content marketing is simple but, without a strategic approach it won’t bring in results. The LinkedIn content marketing we explained in this article will help you start your journey on the platform but, if you need expert-level guidance or far better to have someone look after your LinkedIn content marketing, then you need to reach out to Contensify today!