How To Build Your First LinkedIn Content Marketing Strategy

Set Your Goals and Start with the End in Mind

When building your strategy, it's important to start with the end in mind. Think about what you want to get out of your LinkedIn content marketing strategy—what is it that you want to achieve? Are you trying to increase leads? Connect with potential customers?

When setting goals, make sure you set specific, measurable goals with clear deadlines. For example, if you want more followers for your brand on LinkedIn, a SMART goal may be: Increase followers by 10% (from 100 followers to 110) by June 1st.

Define Your Avatar (aka Buyer Persona)

As you start to create your strategy, you'll also need to define your avatar (i.e., your ideal customer). This will help you identify the types of content you should be creating and sharing on LinkedIn. The first step is to determine who that ideal customer is and where they hang out online.

Below are some questions that might help generate ideas for defining your avatar:

• What industry or industries do they work in?
• How old are they?
• How much experience do they have in their field?
• What gender are they?
• Are there any websites or blogs that most of them visit regularly?

Create a Content Map

Building a content map is the only way you can ensure your content strategy is laser-focused on your goals.

A good place to start is by asking yourself what your audience’s goals are, and then reverse engineering that with your content. For instance, if you have a SaaS tool for entrepreneurs, what questions do they ask when they’re “shopping around?” What are their pain points? How can you answer those questions in ways that help them in the short-term, but also position you as an authority and leave them coming back for more? These are all things to think about when creating your content map.

Determine the Types of Content You Will Create

Determine the types of content you will create. LinkedIn has several tools that allow companies to share different types of content with their audiences.

You can share text, video, audio, images, infographics, animations and gifs with your audience.

Set Up Your LinkedIn Account for Business/Marketing Purposes

Once you have set up your account, make sure to add a profile picture.

Next, write a compelling headline that communicates what you do in less than 120 characters.

You can change this later on, but it’s important to have something in place when you start posting content.

The more specific you can get about who you are and the value that you provide, the better.

For example, instead of writing “Customer Success at HubSpot” or “Entrepreneur” as your headline, try saying something like “Content Marketer Helping Brands Create Consistent Content for Social Media and LinkedIn” if that describes who you are and what value you provide the best - though be sure to keep this under 120 characters!

Align Your Content to LinkedIn’s Algorithm

People most often use hashtags to search for content. To make your post more discoverable, you need to include the right keywords in it.

You should consider these factors when including a hashtag in your posts:

• The frequency at which the hashtag is used.
• The relevance of the hashtag to your target audience and industry.
• The hashtags associated with your competitors’ posts.

As mentioned previously, LinkedIn suggests relevant hashtags based on the text you have typed into the “Add a caption” box. You can then choose from a list of suggested hashtags or add more of your own by clicking “+ Add More” next to each category. Here are some tips for selecting appropriate hashtags:

• Use short-tail and long-tail keywords that are relevant to both your industry and audience (e.g., using #landingpage instead of #b2bmarketing).
• Your post can include up to 10 hashtags, but only 5 will appear below it (2 if you’re posting through LinkedIn mobile). So make sure you prioritize them by placing more important ones near the beginning of your list so they're visible in users' feeds once they click on “See more….”

A well-planned content marketing strategy will help you build your brand on LinkedIn.

We all know that users on LinkedIn are actively seeking quality content. You have the opportunity to build a brand and community on this platform, but you need to create a plan for your content marketing strategy to do so.

A good content marketing strategy will help you deliver regular and relevant messaging to your ideal audience. It also helps you create a consistent brand experience.

To build your first LinkedIn content marketing strategy use these steps:

• Define Your Goals
• Research Your Audience
• Determine What Type of Content To Create
• Create A Content Calendar

Want to work with Up Automation?

From Connection to Contract

LinkedIn only works when you have?these 3 Systems in place

For businesses seeking to sell their products or services to other companies, Linkedin is home to 620 million professionals. A sizable chunk of them can make purchasing decisions, and many more can in some way influence those decisions. It is the most targeted network for B2B organizations.

As one who has dipped her toes in LinkedIn’s shallow pool, I know a thing or two about leveraging the business-oriented social media site to augment an existing digital marketing strategy, help generate leads, and nurture them deeper into the sales funnel.

Schedule a free discovery call now - https://calendly.com/asmf/meeting