LinkedIn Publishing Secrets that Will Make Writing & Sharing Blogs a Cinch

Thought leadership for business development professionals, at its core, relies on original content that attracts, teaches and engages your targeted buyers and gets them excited to take your call.

The top challenges I most often hear are a lack of ideas to blog about and how to get buyers to read it.

Let's start with ways to come up with blog topics:

1. Questions you answer to your clients and prospects are often great topics to blog about. If they have these questions, many of your other readers may as well.
2. Most professionals can much more easily speak than write. If that's the case for you, when you have a good idea, record it on your mobile phone. By using apps like Dragon Dictation (voice to text) you can email your conversation to yourself, and with a little editing, you have an effective blog.
3. Check out BuzzSumo, a site that highlights blog posts and articles based on keywords and topics. This is a great way to get ideas on what topics are getting attention. For purposes of writing original content, just take the inspiration from the topics. I recommend you don't actually read the articles until you have written your own to ensure it truly is an original idea.
4. Interview blogs are a great way to develop content in addition to building strong relationships with key stakeholders. Consider interviewing clients, prospects and influential people in your industry. You are actually going to accomplish many things with the interview blog, including:

• Engaging your prospects in a way that is not just selling your stuff.
• Building relationships with your interviewees as thought leaders, not prospects. Offers much more credibility and relevance to their world.
• Having conversations where you can learn about successes, challenges, and goals a "prospect" would not normally offer if it were a "sales call".
• Develop content that provides value and insights to your audience.
• Expand your network as when you publish, your interviewee will share the piece with their network and seen by your prospects' audience, co-workers, and connections.
• You can leverage the interview to get phone calls with others inside of the interviewee's company.

Next, getting people to read your content is essential. Here are 9 easy to follow actionable steps that will drive targeted traffic to your post.

1. Create content that engages your target market. Make sure you are teaching not pitching. Add real value that leads your readers to your solution.
2. Share your blog post in LinkedIn Groups that are aligned with your message. From the blog post, you are provided with share buttons that make this very simple. 
3. Create a list of 10 or so professionals that work with a similar target audience as you and commit to sharing each other's content every time you post. No one likes to be the first one to "like" or "comment", so if you get it started, his or her networks will see he or she liked your post and your views will grow exponentially. 
4. @Mention 10 targeted connections every day. Make sure that you have permission to do so or at least an existing relationship. Share an update on the home page, Type in the "Thought You Might Like TITLE" and paste the link to the blog post. Then type @NAME of the people you'd like to mention and pick the name from the drop-down. You can also mention the people in a comment below the post.
5. Post it to your LinkedIn Company Page and your newsfeed.
6. Share it with other platforms such as Twitter, Google+ and Facebook with #hastags that are read by your target audience. In your message, you can mention (@TARGETNAME) specific people you would like to share your content with, but be sure not to SPAM them - and only send content that is purely educational not selling them anything. BONUS: When you tweet your post mention @LinkedInEditors - you get their attention and if they like your content you might be picked up and shared around the world.
7. Add a link to your latest blog post on your email signature. I purchased https://LinkedInPosts.com and it redirects to my blog posts. This makes it very easy for me to share it with my network. If you blog consistently, you can even add it to your business card.
8. Consistently build your LinkedIn network with your in-person relationships. Be sure to connect with your co-workers, clients, networking partners, and friends as well as the prospects you speak with every day. Each time you post on LinkedIn, your connections and followers will receive a notification (flag) in LinkedIn with the title of your new post. The bigger your qualified network is, the more views and readership you will have.
9. Share it in a Welcome Email - Every time you connect with someone send a message like:

Thanks so much for connecting with me on LinkedIn. 

I am not sure if you are using LinkedIn for sales, but if you are I wanted to share 10 secrets from our Social Selling Boot Camp that can help you grow your business https://bit.ly/2su9afk.

Good Networking, 

Brynne

PS - If you are not a member yet, check out Linked User Group, a great place to ask LinkedIn's top experts questions and share your knowledge as well. https://bit.ly/linkedusergroup

I will also add you to my LinkedIn email tips - so please look for those! If you'd prefer not to, please let me know.

BONUS: Recycle your blog posts. By using HootSuite or Buffer, you can schedule a healthy rotation of your blog posts on a daily/weekly basis. I continue to share blogs that get engagement months or even years later. 

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This is just the tip of the iceberg! If you ready to move from random acts of social to mastering LinkedIn, let's chat. here is a link to my calendar https://ScheduleaCallwithBrynne.com - please pick a time that best works for you.