Top 5 content marketing ideas for guaranteed LinkedIn success

A few strategies you should employ to increase your influence and engagement on the professional platform

A.M.S Pandian
Updated: May 26, 2017 12:42:44 PM UTC
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Image: Robert Galbraith/REUTERS

“LinkedIn is all set to become the Facebook for professionals.”

Doesn’t sound far-fetched, isn’t it? LinkedIn’s growing popularity has made it necessary for most marketers, especially digital marketers, to take more than a cursory look at their company pages and professional profiles.

This social media channel is one of the largest community of professionals worldwide with more than 414 million professional users. You will find global leaders, decision makers, senior influencers, opinion leaders make up this user base.

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So, the question here is, how do you capitalise on your opportunities and engage with these users effectively using various marketing options. Have you ever noticed there are a few brands and users on LinkedIn who have managed to achieve the kind of popularity that you aspire to have?

If you look at how they engage with their followers, you will notice they all follow similar patterns and tactics. Content plays a major role in their engagement and here’s why it should play an important role in your LinkedIn marketing strategy. linkedin_sm

There are many who use social media channels to de-stress and spend time while they capitalise their time on LinkedIn. According to Alex Rynne, 96.1 percent of business marketers use LinkedIn as their content marketing channel and more than 60 percent find it highly effective.

Not just this, more than 80 percent business leads are from LinkedIn, which clearly shows how important engaging on this channel is to your business. In another study, Hub Spot says 43 percent marketers believe they have found a customer through this professional network.

Influencer Neil Patel says, “The real value on LinkedIn is not the number of people in the network, but the influence that you possess within your network.”

To make the best out of this opportunity, here are a few strategies you should employ to increase your influence and engagement on LinkedIn.

Build up a strong LinkedIn presence: To build up a strong presence, start with your profile. Use a good, preferably a clear headshot, as a profile photo. Then work on your profile, this is your reputation online so stay focussed and be honest. Don’t embellish your achievements just to look cool. Next add relevant people to your network as much as possible.

Don’t add people just like that. Add those you know or those who know you. Lastly, be consistent and share links, posts, and articles that are relevant to your target audience. This may take some time to build-up, but the results you get will be worth the time you spend on it.

Invest as little as 10 minutes a day to build a strong profile and get the results of it within a month

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“Measure your influence – Not just the first level but the second and the third level followers to know the right measure of your influence on LinkedIn.”     ------Neil Patel

Build a company page/s: If you have different brands, you can create a separate company page for each brand. The target audience for different brands would also be different. Share content that is specific to your audience to build a strong relation with them. Allow users on LinkedIn to follow the company pages for your business they are interested in.

  • Objectives: To create brand awareness, become thought leaders, generate leads and get registrations for events you organise, you can create dedicated pages for different business aspects with their own content messages and audience to share it with.

Here’s an example of what you can share on your page
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  • Metrics: To get a clear picture of your brand and company influence, analyse your page followers, their comments, clicks on your posts and articles. Check for shares and likes on your messages to understand the level of network engagement your profile or company page has. Make a note of inquiries, leads, and registrations in the case of events.
  • Action: Post three to four times a day and engage with your followers through comments on posts. Make sure you change your profile or page cover image at least twice a year. Spend an hour every day doing this.

“Think of your LinkedIn network as a mastermind of trusted friends. The group consists of mentors, mentees, influencers, professionals, people of high net worth and power. Post about issues that are relevant to your network.”  -------Neil Patel

LinkedIn slide share: Another way to engage with like-minded people is to use SlideShare to put up company videos and presentations, industry related infographics and webinar slide decks.

  • Objectives: To create leads, create brand cognisance, thought direction and search engine optimisation.
  • Metrics: To understand the growth in your network through slide share check for views, solid leads and inquiries. Check for linkbacks and embeds for the content you have posted on slide share.
  • Action: Put up new content every week, highlight new slide decks on your profile, create playlists and group together a specific type of content. Upload lead generation forms.

Spend as little as 30 minutes on slide share and you are done.

Here’s why LinkedIn SlideShare is important to your content strategy for LinkedIn

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“Post about real problems that people are facing. For example, these two problems are killing social media, here’s how we fix them.”  ----Neil Patel

LinkedIn publishing: The latest tool from LinkedIn to help you become a thought influencer is the option to publish within LinkedIn. You can share articles and links about your professional expertise and experiences. Keep your followers abreast of industry trends and lessons you have learnt over the years.

  • Objectives: Become a thought influencer
  • Metrics: Check for views your posts and articles get. You can check for demographics of your readers and see where they are located. Understand whether your followers have liked and shared your content and if they have visited your profile to know more about you.
  • Action: Publish when you feel you should and passionately feel like sharing your experience. Publish at least once a fortnight or once a month if you can. Spend as little as an hour a week

 “Use the first-person when you post. It means use me, my, and I wherever possible.” --- Neil Patel

Here’s what makes LinkedIn Publishing an ideal choice
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“Post your own articles. To become an influencer whenever possible, write your own articles.” ---- Neil Patel

Linked sponsored content: Gaining influence organically can only help you so much. But how do you reach people beyond organic reach? The answer is sponsored content on LinkedIn. You can use the paid option to share new about your company, publish blogs, industry research and news, case studies you have done, webinars as well as visual representations and statistics.

  • Objectives: To generate viable leads, become a thought influencer and create cognisance about your brand.
  • Metrics: Pay attention to the rate of engagement, impressions your content receives, leads or inquiries received, followers on your company page or brand showcase page
  • Action: Run campaigns twice or thrice a week, campaigns should run for at least 21 days before you test its success and then modify the next lot accordingly. Make sure the images and visuals used are captivating. Share links to lead generation forms and add URL tracking codes to get a better picture. Spend 30 minutes a day and you are done.

“Use an image of a face. Human psychology teaches us that we are instinctively drawn to look at human faces.” ----Neil Patel

 Here’s why you should try it

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When you put together all these options and the actions you will find the levels of engagement rise instantly. Does this mean the engagement level will rise as much as 80 percent instantly? Probably not, but eventually you may find it does if you have a consistent and solid presence on LinkedIn to garner better engagement levels.

*Images and statistics courtesy LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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