If you are only using LinkedIn for networking, you are not getting the most out of this powerful platform.
LinkedIn is also a great social channel to drive forward your B2B content marketing and lead generation efforts.
Why?
LinkedIn has a larger audience than you might realise.
LinkedIn’s biggest audience is among the 25-34-year-olds, who make up around 60% of those using the site. 35-54-year-olds make up over 15% of users. If your clients fall into these age ranges, there’s a high likelihood that they are on LinkedIn and that you can connect with them and drive engagement by utilising LinkedIn content marketing.
Content marketing is creating, planning, and publishing useful, relevant content to attract a certain audience and build their trust in your company.
This article will show you how to implement an effective LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy.
What is the LinkedIn Content Marketing Strategy?
To begin, what exactly is a LinkedIn content strategy?
It’s how you think about, plan, and write content to build your LinkedIn profile, whether it’s a personal or B2B company page.
Your LinkedIn content strategy should be based on the following:
- Your target audience
- Marketing goals
- And the value you’re offering
“Posting whenever you feel like” isn’t a good LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy and will not help you get anywhere.
If you do it right, you can create many leads with one post on LinkedIn.
In addition, you can automate reaching out to all who have commented on or liked your post.
A few common content marketing objectives for LinkedIn include:
- Presenting your B2B business to new clients
- Improved business recognition
- Building trust by sharing case studies and expert posts
- The addition of leads to your sales pipeline
- A loyal and devoted community of followers
The content marketing strategy aims to increase sales for your B2B business.
It is possible to do this with different types of content that include:
- Delivering value
- Case studies
- Engagement polls
- Networking posts
- Social selling strategies
- And more, based on the business
You must recognise that no “one-size-fits-all” LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy exists because every brand’s identity is unique.
For instance, a B2B business owner on LinkedIn and the head of HR will write completely different content. However, most want to draw the reader into their advertising funnel.
So, is LinkedIn content marketing worth it for all companies?
Let’s have a look!
Why Do Content Marketing on Linkedin?
Here are some reasons why it’s important to do LinkedIn content marketing.
1. Expand Your Reach to More Potential Clients
If you post content on LinkedIn, you can reach more people.
LinkedIn has an impressive number of users, over 1 billion worldwide. Exploring that audience is a great way to expand beyond your primary organic traffic sources (i.e. search engines and social networks such as X ( Twitter)) to reach many more users.
2. Create Your Network
In addition to many users, LinkedIn is also a social platform for business owners and professionals.
65 million decision-makers and 61 million influential senior-level people use the platform.
This means posting regular content here will draw more people.
You may catch the attention of people searching for collaboration opportunities. Think of guest posting and speaking gigs, interviews, and much more that can help you reach new audiences.
B2B business partnerships with these people could yield mutual benefits, particularly if your target audiences have a common interest.
3. Be Aware of the Latest Trends in Your Industry
Do your competitors use LinkedIn to market their B2B business?
Most likely.
96% of B2B marketing uses LinkedIn for content marketing.
If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, you may miss out on a significant segment of your target audience – one your competitors are likely to grab instead.
How Do Businesses Use LinkedIn for Marketing?
To Get Leads
The majority of LinkedIn users are responsible for making the decisions for their businesses. Furthermore, 40% of B2B marketers believe LinkedIn can be the most efficient method of creating leads of the highest quality.
This makes the platform an excellent way to get in front of your clients, create leads, and get them to the sales funnel.
To Build Thought Leadership
Building thought leadership is essential for establishing your B2B business as an industry authority and to drive growth and sales on LinkedIn. By positioning yourself as a thought leader you demonstrate expertise, credibility and innovation in your field and earn the trust and respect of your target audience.
This recognition enhances your company’s reputation and attracts high-quality leads and potential clients.
Thought leadership content, such as insightful articles, thought-provoking posts, and engaging discussions, allows you to showcase your knowledge and spark meaningful conversations and connections with industry peers and potential clients.
Additionally, consistently sharing valuable content and engaging with your audience can expand your reach and increase brand visibility, which ultimately drives more leads and sales for your B2B business on LinkedIn.
B2B LinkedIn Marketing Strategies – How to Build
Once you have mastered the basics, this article will guide you through the five steps to create an efficient LinkedIn content strategy (click on a step to go straight to it).
- Step 1: Set the Goals for Your LinkedIn Content Strategy
- Step 2: Determine Your Success Metrics
- Step 3: Determine Topics as Well as Content Types
- Step 4: Create Engaging Content for LinkedIn
- Step 5: Promote and Share Your Content Strategically
Step 1: Set the Goals for Your LinkedIn Content Strategy
Begin by determining what you want to accomplish by using LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s content marketing goals should be simple and align with your business goals. Common LinkedIn goals for B2B business include:
- Introducing your business to a larger client base
- Sharing content to increase brand recognition
- Establishing a trust to attract new clients
- Generating leads
- Getting more sign-ups for trials or demonstrations
- Building a community of loyal clients
Once you’ve determined some goals or objectives, write down the steps to measure and monitor your progress. For example, you could monitor the traffic you receive from your social media channels to increase brand recognition.
Create specific traffic rise goals, such as a 10% increase, to gauge your progress.
This will help you decide on the content you need to produce in order to focus on your primary objectives and goals.
Step 2: Determine Your Success Metrics
How can you tell if your LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy is working?
To make your content production worthwhile, you’ll need to determine the success metrics you want to measure.
Although growth in sales will always be the most crucial measure, you won’t be able to attribute a rise in sales to specific LinkedIn content directly.
A B2B user experience could take the form of:
- A lead can see your post because their friend has commented on it.
- They follow you on Twitter as well to read more of your content.
- After a few weeks, they visit your page for your business due to another LinkedIn post. They then subscribe to your newsletter via email.
- They decide to make a complimentary discovery call and then return to work with you for a week later.
It’s difficult to determine what attributed to this sale.
This is why you must evaluate your LinkedIn content’s effectiveness independently of your sales.
The most important LinkedIn content metrics that you must be watching using LinkedIn analytics tools include:
- LinkedIn engagement rate
- Post and reach views
- Content impression
- Follower numbers
- Video views
- People who visited your profile
- Likes, clicks, comments, and shares
Fortunately, LinkedIn makes tracking your posts’ engagement and statistics easy.
You can find this information in the analytics section on your business page.
In this case, LinkedIn provides an individual dashboard and graph that will help you understand your data over time.
Step 3: Determine Topics as Well as Content Types
Now let’s look at the content you’ll produce and the areas you’ll focus on. To determine topics, you should keep two factors in mind:
- Audience Connection: Create content that truly engages and fulfils the requirements of your LinkedIn followers.
- Make the Most of Your Expertise: Ensure that your content matches the knowledge and expertise of your brand.
Refrain from making assumptions and use reliable methods to research your audience to determine what they would like to read and their preferred format.
Analysis of your content and your competition on LinkedIn could help you find the top topics in your field.
This analysis of your audience will ensure that your content matches your viewers’ preferences and enables you to select the appropriate content.
LinkedIn offers a wide range of content styles and types. You’ll rotate through different types to keep your audience engaged.
Here’s a breakdown of the most popular LinkedIn content:
- Text Posts (Status Updates)
- LinkedIn Articles
- LinkedIn Newsletter
- Photo Posts
- Link Posts
- Poll Posts
- Video Posts
- Document Posts
And remember to refresh your previous content as well.
What Should You Share?
- Life and business lessons
- Offer practical advice or creative ideas
- Insights into your business and success stories
- An interesting or thought-provoking quotation
Content Types to Share
LinkedIn Newsletter
An excellent content idea is to share your content each month or every week by creating an email newsletter for LinkedIn.
The service’s creation process is simple: invite your followers and connections to sign up. Once they’ve signed up, you send a notification each time you send out an updated newsletter.
They can then get involved by expressing their opinions and reactions.
Done-For-You LinkedIn Newsletters: Get a Dedicated UK-based Writer from just £100 a month.
Poll Posts
LinkedIn polls are getting increasingly popular because they generally have a greater reach than normal text based posts. This is because it is easier to participate in the poll rather than write an interesting comment.
Video Posts
Videos often attract high viewing figures as audiences are more inclined to share videos than any other content.
On LinkedIn, you can directly upload videos, which is different from video ads or embedded videos on sites like YouTube. You can also use the LinkedIn Live feature for those who prefer a more interactive experience, such as a Q&A session or a live stream.
When you are making videos and sharing them, adhere to the guidelines:
- Focus on the things your audience would like to see.
- Ensure your content is relevant and not outdated; avoid posting videos that are not aligned with your company’s mission or identity.
- Use videos to tell captivating stories about your company, business culture, and clients.
Here’s an example of video content by 100 Pound Social:
Generate Discussion
Use relevant current affairs or events to create discussion points with your audience.
If it is relevant to your B2B business, share your opinion on it and find out what others are thinking – this can give you a greater understanding of your clients.
What To Be Aware of:
- Me, Myself, And I. Do not promote your products too aggressively
- Wandering updates
- A torrent of texts
Step 4: Create Engaging Content for LinkedIn
Here are some great ways to help make your LinkedIn content stand out:
- Begin with an introduction that catches readers’ attention and draws them in.
- Make sure your sentences are concise and interesting. Think casual conversation, and do not use complicated jargon.
- The authenticity of your voice is crucial, so get rid of the selling pitches.
- Include videos and images that match your message, making the content exciting and entertaining.
To make a bigger impact, include relevant LinkedIn users and pages that amplify your message. Hashtags are your friends, so use them to boost the exposure and reach of your content.
👉 READ NEXT: Let’s Be Clear on LinkedIn Hashtags
Step 5: Promote and Share Your Content Strategically
Every successful content strategy should include a plan for creating content and a reliable material calendar.
Begin with one high-quality post every week, and gradually increase the content frequency as your social network expands.
👉 How to Schedule LinkedIn Posts – 2024: The Ultimate Guide
When it comes to the perfect time to post on LinkedIn, experiment to find what works best for your company. If you target international audiences, change posting times to adapt to various time zones.
👉Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2024
Furthermore, you can increase your content reach using LinkedIn ads, which provide specific targeting beyond your existing network.
Spend money on these ads to refine your audience and make it compatible with your industry, job position, and geographical location.
This paid advertising method helps increase your content’s reach by getting your content in front of the right people to boost engagement and interaction.
Measure the Success of Your B2B LinkedIn Strategy
One of the best methods to increase the effectiveness of your LinkedIn content marketing approach is analysing the data and making informed decisions based on what is working and what is not.
When assessing your performance, evaluating your metrics over time is crucial.
The most important metrics you need to take into account are:
- How many followers do you have, and how fast is your business page expanding?
- Impressions and the frequency with which your content appears in the news feed.
- Engagement rate and the frequency at which people comment on or like your posts.
- How many conversations are you having, and how many prospects are contacting you?
- Click-through rates and the frequency visitors click the links that lead to your site.
Although analytics may appear difficult at first glance, the whole point is to identify what works and what doesn’t based on the data.
As you produce ever-growing content, you’ll be able to see which posts receive more love and engagement.
LinkedIn’s Global Impact on B2B Leads
The ultimate goal of every business in adopting efficient strategies on LinkedIn is lead generation. This helps B2B businesses generate steady and consistent profits.
- 930 million experts in business and 63 million companies use LinkedIn as their primary lead generation for B2B.
- 40% of business marketers believe that LinkedIn can bring in quality prospects.
- Based on LinkedIn Analytics, 89% of business marketing professionals depend on LinkedIn to generate leads (Source: LinkedIn)
- 80% of social media leads originate from the LinkedIn platform (Source: LinkedIn)
Key Takeaways of LinkedIn B2B Content Marketing
B2B content marketing is all about sharing high-quality content, such as blogs, posts, and videos.
The ability to plan your strategy will benefit your company’s growth on LinkedIn. It’s important to identify who you’re trying to reach and what goals you’re aiming for.
Explore different options and discover what is working well for your business on LinkedIn. Creating a schedule will help you monitor the content you share.
Keep up-to-date with the latest developments in LinkedIn content marketing trends and best practice to continue to grow in B2B content marketing on LinkedIn.
Next Steps
If you need help creating effective LinkedIn content, 100 Pound Social has worked with 1,000+ B2B companies across a range of professional service industries, including:
Learn more about our social media plans or join a 15-minute demo to see how they work.