LinkedIn is the perfect sounding board to launch a meaningful brand experience for the businesses you want to reach. If you’re a B2B marketer, you cannot afford to leave the professional network out of your digital strategy – it should be the content hub delivering your message to industry professionals everywhere.
This post is going to outline how to put your audience and their goals at the center of your digital content strategy to deliver a robust online presence and sound results that are easy to track.
Outline Your Company’s Game Plan
Before you kick off your strategy online, you’ll want to do some research and some internal preparation. First, make sure your LinkedIn company page is in place with a descriptive bio about what makes your business unique with current logos and branding.
Next it’s time to find your target audience on LinkedIn. Every industry has dozens of relevant groups on LinkedIn with business owners or executives looking for ways to make their work day easier and business more profitable. Find your niche where you’ll be able to expand your message, reach industry thought leaders, existing clients, and prospective partners or clients.
Finally, enlist your army; everyone at your company from account executives to C level executives should have a professional presence on the network. A company-wide announcement needs to communicate the gravity of employee involvement – let your team know their support is necessary to increase brand trust and carve out an unstoppable digital presence.
Center Your Content Around Your Audience – Think Thought Leadership
Your company’s updates on LinkedIn should be used to position your business as a trusted partner in the community. Ensure that posts are tied to what really matters to your client base – not pitching your products and services; that message should be reserved specifically for ads on LinkedIn.
Lure in your audience with great content on industry trends, challenges and solutions. Here are some examples of content that can generate hype and traffic to your webpage.
- Blog Posts on Industry Topics: Blog posts can pull your audience to your website for a closer work at what you do, while sharing insight on industry trends and news. Blog posts are an excellent way to get your content up and running on LinkedIn.
- Guest Posts from Industry Thought Leaders: Your readers are interested in learning from other businesses in the industry. Invite high profile clients to share their success stories with the community.
- Links to Industry News: Link to relevant industry news with teasers and questions that entice your audience. When posting, be sure to replace any non-desirable preview images from the original source with vivid, click-worthy graphics.
- Ebooks and Studies: Link to downloadable ebooks and studies on the problems your customers face every day. Studies or research on general industry topics also offer a softer approach to warm leads and start a dialogue.
- SlideShare: Post presentations with helpful hints or fun facts for your clients. These should be highly visual and engaging.
- Webinars: Promote webinars your business is spearheading with a link to a quick RSVP form.
- Events and Tradeshows: Let your audience know how and where they can meet you at national and regional tradeshows and events.
- Community Efforts: Is your business making a difference for others? LinkedIn is the perfect medium for spreading good vibes acround professional networks – photos please!
Increase Visibility with Sponsored Updates and Advertising
Now that your Marketing department is hard at work publishing meaningful content on your company page, use meticulously targeted sponsored updates to drive readership. LinkedIn lets companies create campaigns that fit any budget range and allows you to effortlessly specify locations, job titles, groups or age ranges of your audience so each post makes an impact.
LinkedIn ads can help you attract followers and leads to your business. Use irresistible text links about business benefits, compelling graphics or videos that share a story about your company or one of your customers.
Now you know where to start, time to outline your strategy! Need more examples? Check out LinkedIn content strategies behind leading companies and even your industry competitors. I’m always looking to other companies for more ideas – some of my faves include Uber, PayPal and Storybyte.
This article was originally published on The Demand Signal.
If you loved this article then you’ll want to read Brand Advocacy Strategy, Delivered.
More Than Words 