LinkedIn has been established as a popular B2B networking channel for some years now – and in 2020 that strength and value is set to continue.
In fact, it’s now the single most popular channel B2B marketers use to distribute content. There’s a good reason for this; the professional focus of the platforms creates a more specific audience than other social networks.
By now, most businesses and B2B marketers have some presence on the platform. But not all of them are making the most of the potential it offers.
Simply having a presence and adding business connections isn’t enough. Posting content is a key part of getting the most out of your platform and fostering the connections you have.
LinkedIn Pulse
Blogging forms the cornerstone of any digital marketing campaign – and LinkedIn is no different. If your content is worth it, people will take the time to read it.
But writing a LinkedIn blog isn’t quite the same as blogging for your website. The chances of someone taking the time to read long-form content on LinkedIn is lower – since social media platforms lend themselves to more economical formats.
Native LinkedIn content, therefore, should be shorter and easier to understand than blogs you’re used to writing for your website. You can think of the best writing style for LinkedIn as somewhere between an email and a full blog. A LinkedIn marketing agency could help you to find the right tone of voice for your posts.
Perhaps the biggest difference between LinkedIn and website blogging is in the way people access content. People will generally go out of their way to read a website blog, either seeing and clicking on the headline or by following an external link.
On LinkedIn, however, they see the first few paragraphs of text on their feed, and then decide whether to click the ‘see more’ dropdown. It’s important to catch the reader’s eye as the scroll in the first few seconds – so make the header image and first few sentences of your blog really pop.
Website content
If you’re struggling to think up content ideas for your LinkedIn feed, your website is a great place to start. LinkedIn doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it should form part of a broader digital marketing approach, taking inspiration and content from your website and other social channels. Content that you post elsewhere, therefore, should form a large part of your LinkedIn content.
There’s an obvious benefit in getting more value from your existing blogs, eBooks and whitepapers, without having to curate new content from scratch. As well as this however, it also allows you to direct the following you’ve built on LinkedIn towards your website – which, after all, should be the main goal of your digital marketing efforts.
Personalisation, personalisation, personalisation
LinkedIn might be a professional network, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be personal. After all, it’s still a social network. It’s important that the content you put out there doesn’t just come from your main business page.
Authenticity and the personal touch are as important here as on any social network. Appointing brand ambassadors can be a great way of achieving this, through which the values and ideas of your company can be channelled.
A company’s workers are the most valuable asset they have. And there’s no better way for a business to gain traction on LinkedIn than by building up their brand through the intelligent, influential people that make it tick.
Video
Digital consumers react well to visual content. It’s one of the longest held digital marketing mantras, and in 2020, it remains as true as it’s ever been.
Visual content like videos, images and infographics are among some of the highest performing digital content types. In fact, as much as 55% of readers are likely to pay close attention to videos – much more than any other content type.
Videos perform well on LinkedIn, because they break down information into a clean, digestible format. Most importantly, they don’t require hard work from viewers to understand the information you want to communicate. If your content requires viewers to grapple with complex information, a video could be a great way of breaking it down. Just make sure you include subtitles for the hard of hearing or those without headphones.
3rd party content
Rule one of building a successful LinkedIn presence: it’s not all about you. As marketers, our first instinct is to wax lyrical about the merits of whatever product or service we’re offering. But LinkedIn isn’t just a marketing platform; it’s a business networking tool.
To achieve traction and a steady following, you’ll need to give and take a little – sharing other people’s content is a great way of doing this.
There’s a clear benefit to distributing third party posts; you don’t have to invest time and resources into providing great content for your following. But as well as this, it also shows that you pay attention and interact with people in the wider industry – a vital part of any content marketing strategy.
And hopefully, by giving their content some free traction, you’ll be able to start networking and building connections with the content creators – further expanding your own network. If the content is good, everybody is a winner. Just take care to give credit where credit is due – and not to distribute work published by competitors.
Rule one to LinkedIn success
There are many different ways to improve the chances of your content being found and read on LinkedIn. But ultimately, none of them will have any success without the most fundamental ingredient: good content.
Like any other social media platform, followings are built on the value your content provides. If your content is valuable and informative, people will read it.