What Type of Content is Best For LinkedIn?

Our recent research highlighted that B2B companies are likely to be most successful on social media when they focus on 3 things:

• Growing an audience of their ideal clients / business partners / hires
• Building trust and credibility with that audience through what they post
• Finding ways to convert that audience so that you increasingly have a relationship with them off of LinkedIn (or any of the other social platforms)

But what should a B2B firm post in order to build trust and credibility, what kind of content strategy makes sense?

To answer this, I've pulled together some insights from LinkedIn experts Luisa Reynolds , David Petherick and Sarah Clay . Would love to hear any additional ideas or experiences you may have in the comments...

Using Content Pillars To Give Some Structure To Your Strategy

Luisa made some great points in this session including:

• Investing time to come up with your content pillars will really help structure a company's content strategy - and the planning needed to deliver that strategy.
• Content pillars are broad categories of what you're going to post about. That could be helpful advice, industry trends, employee insights, case studies, client testimonials, etc.
• Once pillars have been decided upon, clients can start slotting specific content topics and assets under the relevant pillars and plan out when these will be shared.
• A simple Excel document or social media calendar can help with both getting organised and ensuring there's a variety in content (avoiding oversaturation in any one topic).

What Can Be Done To Drive Up Performance of Your Content?

Some key points made by David in this session include:

• LinkedIn PDF documents perform well because they increase dwell time and reach more people due to the higher engagement they tend to produce. What content or insights could you turn into a swipeable PDF?
• More generally, getting high engagement and dwell time in the first few hours of a post going live will generally improve its performance on LinkedIn.
• Being more personal in posts, like sharing stories and photos, can help content stand out and perform well. So don't always be polished and corporate, try to incorporate team away days, award ceremonies, charity events, "a day in the life" and other such content that gives people a taste of the personalities within your business.
• Effective content creation on LinkedIn uses the power of storytelling to keep posts engaging while avoiding monotony.

Sarah had some more helpful ideas you can start using today:

• Start slowly with LinkedIn content, don't try to post every day but gradually build up your volume of posting.
• Think of your content in terms of a networking meeting. What might you talk to people about if you were to meet them at an event in person? Jot down those ideas and use them as inspiration for new posts.
• Develop a basic content strategy with buckets of ideas that can be reused over time. Lead with problem-solving in your content by documenting problems you've solved for clients or questions you are commonly asked.
• Get ideas by looking at what other LinkedIn profiles are sharing and how those posts are being received.

Need More Help? Let's Talk!

Whether you run a consulting firm, a training company, a recruitment agency or any other type of B2B business, I hope these tips help you rethink your current content strategy.

If it would be helpful to chat through ideas for your business - and what could be achieved with social media - then feel free to book in a call via my profile here on LinkedIn.

Thanks, Tony Restell