7 Steps to Building a LinkedIn Content Strategy That Works

The 21st century has brought about many changes to how we market our brands and businesses, and social networking sites are one such invention that has made waves in the business world. LinkedIn is a useful platform for many individuals to communicate with coworkers and industry leaders and share their thoughts with like-minded forerunners in their niches. 

It is also a good platform for businesses to attract potential leads and lucrative sales opportunities. However, one cannot simply make a LinkedIn account and post content to position themselves successfully. Instead, it would help if you start by determining your target audiences and business objectives. This article will dive deep into the steps you need to follow to establish your online presence on Linkedin and gain momentum as a thought leader in your industry.

The following steps are:

1. Define Your Marketing Goals

Your first step as a brand should be figuring out what you want to achieve by marketing your business on LinkedIn. A famous saying goes along the lines of, you can’t measure that which you can’t manage, and you can’t manage that which you can’t measure. Another good tip to remember is to ensure your goals are scalable and achievable in the time frame you have given yourself. 

Some marketing goals you can have for your business on LinkedIn are:

• Aiming to introduce your business to potential customers
• Improving your brand awareness by utilizing company resources
• Establishing brand trust and loyalty amongst users to gain more customers
• Acquiring more quality leads to add to your sales funnel
• Persuading more users to subscribe to your trials or demos
• Building a community of satisfied consumers

These goals can vary from industry to industry but would apply in general. Once you know your marketing goals, you can start crafting your content to fit your niche. 

2. LinkedIn Audience 

The content you publish is not only for your benefit but for the benefit of your audience. The idea is to use keywords that will spark the interest of LinkedIn users. Depending on your industry, you need to choose the best keywords to craft your content. It would be worth researching what kind of content your audience likes and what they respond best to. 

LinkedIn gives you access to these insights on the platform itself. These are called LinkedIn Audience Analytics. To view this data, you need first open up your LinkedIn company page. Once you’re there, select the Analytics drop-down menu and click the Followers option. Then, scroll down and view the demographics available to you. These could be metrics like industry, job, function, seniority and location. You can also view the demographics for the page visitors and see the kind of consumers that visit your page. Once you can figure out who your audience is and what they respond to, creating quality content becomes more manageable.

3. Build Authority

One way to establish authority as a LinkedIn business is through long-form written content. Some experts say you should publish this kind of content thrice a week or every business day. 

If you are considering long-form posts, here are the different kinds you can try:

• LinkedIn Document Posts

You might have a lot of information you wish to share with your audience. What you can use is a PDF file that your followers can view. This would be an alternative to writing a lengthy LinkedIn post and possibly could be harder to read. A PDF is handy because it can be downloaded and read later. The platform allows you to upload documents with an upper limit of 300 pages, but if you want to follow what established companies do, it is probably best to stick to 100 pages. 

Experts suggest that this format of posts tends to complement three types of information content. The first being information connects to a complex concept that requires an in-depth explanation. The second is a guide followers could follow to complete a specific task or achieve a goal. Lastly, sharing a report that consists of key findings or results. If your content comes under these parameters, give this format a try. 

• LinkedIn Articles

Blogs have been known to be an excellent way to reach your target audiences. It can be used not only to keep your followers informed but for you to share your constructive opinion. On LinkedIn, you can publish articles on your LinkedIn business page. You have the choice of using upto 15,000 words. What is great about this format is you don’t have to be pressured into always putting out original blog posts; instead, LinkedIn would act as a medium by which you repost blog articles from your website. You could see a climb in views and cherry-pick the best content to post on a new platform. 

• LinkedIn Newsletter

We’ve spoken about what you should do if you want to publish every other day, but what if it’s weekly or monthly? Well, the answer is that you could incorporate all your content for your audience in the form of a newsletter. This format works because your followers subscribe to your newsletter and receive notifications on the platform whenever you post. 

4. Observing Your Competition

As crucial as focusing on the content you are putting out, you should also keep an eye on the content your competitors publish. Whether you are starting out or well established, there is always scope to learn. For example, your competitors might have a different approach to content than you that benefits them. You shouldn’t need to copy them exactly, but you can identify key takeaways from their content and apply them to your strategy. 

You can also observe the reactions and responses they receive from their audiences. If you find they have missed something in their strategy, you could implement it into your own and reap the benefits. In the long run, you can put together a comprehensive content strategy by taking bits from each competitor and molding it into a complete package for your business to use. Keep an eye out for the topics they choose to engage with and how they interact with their followers. Every piece of information you observe is a learning curve which you can grow from. 

5. Put Together An Editorial Strategy 

An editorial strategy has two main parts to it. The first is an editorial plan, and the second is an editorial calendar. Both sections are interconnected with each other. An editorial plan can be defined as a social communication plan consisting of the objectives, posts, themes, and resources utilized in the content creation process. Finally, the editorial calendar lists the content scheduled for publishing and when it will be published. 

The next step would be identifying macro-topics and subheadings that will allow you to create a posting schedule. It’s essential to choose the frequency of posts; the frequency of publication does not come with an exact number, but too many posts can lead to losing followers quickly. Research when people are most likely engaging with your social media content on LinkedIn and choose the best time to post.

6. Boosting LinkedIn Ads For Organic Reach

Quality content is a step in the right direction, and posting it at the right time will get you seen, but sometimes you need a little boost in your strategy to make it airtight. To achieve its marketing goals, a business might need to implement LinkedIn ads into its strategy, so its content is being targeted toward its ideal audience. This would lead your business page to turn out more solid leads and improve your brand awareness. 

Promoting your content is easy; first, narrow down the posts you think will have the best responses. Once you have selected them, you can amplify them by pressing the Boost Post option above every post. Then, pick an objective and audience, and you are good to go. 

If you’re looking for a more extensive campaign, take advantage of LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager. Then, create a new LinkedIn campaign, and select from the objectives that align with the stage of the sales funnel you want to target- including Awareness, Consideration, or Conversions. 

From there, populate your audience based on demographic data you’ve collected through years (or months) worth of marketing efforts for your company – but only if it’s applicable. You can also target audiences who’ve interacted with your company page, videos, events and website pages before too; either by retargeting them or taking advantage of converting tracking tools from the app itself.

7. Review LinkedIn Analytics Periodically 

A good habit to incorporate into your content strategy is to monitor your LinkedIn page analytics from time to time. You should review your analytical data before and after a major campaign. Some metrics you should observe are Followers, Impressions, Engagement Rate and CTR (Click Through Rate). Alternatively, you can also go to your Campaign Manager tab on your LinkedIn page to find the results of advertising your content. 

Finally, you can view metrics like Cost Per Click, Lead Generation and Conversions. The idea is that if you review the metrics from your content, you can see what works and what isn’t. With all the data in front of you, you can carefully curate and modify your content to better target your audience and get an even more dynamic response when you publish content.

After implementing these steps into your strategy, you should have a better handle on conquering the business domain that is LinkedIn. In the vast ocean of content being posted on the platform every day of every minute, finding your niche and standing out is essential to success. Remember to keep changing your content according to your audience’s preferences and to monitor how users take in each change. Keep experimenting and monitor your growth whenever you can.