Katrina Manning
When you think about the fact that there are over 200 million blogs worldwide today, and that over four million blog posts are published each day, you might be wondering whether or not this type of marketing is worth undertaking. As you can probably already tell, with so much competition, most blog posts go virtually unread. This means that even after the hours you’ve spent researching, writing and editing, you might not even get a single view. On the other hand, writing a blog is an unparalleled way of becoming a better writer and driving business leads.
However, the question remains–where to blog? While you do have thousands of personal branding activities that you can engage in on a daily basis, nearly all of them can be accomplished through LinkedIn. If you only have time for one personal branding tool, you should choose LinkedIn. Once you’ve made your selection, you need to understand how to make the most out of your LinkedIn posts. There is a lot more to it than loading an article and calling it a day. Read on to learn more.
Why LinkedIn?
The question shouldn’t be why LinkedIn as much as it should be, why not LinkedIn? Think of it this way, LinkedIn has 250 million active users with most of them being business professionals. What does this mean for you? Well, for starters, these people have careers, meaningful connections, experience, probably education and money to spend. This isn’t the network of family and friends, this is the network of individuals who can actually have a real impact on your business. If you can’t afford to hire a seasoned team of promoters, you can certainly afford to use LinkedIn for free! They are the influencers in your field. Yet, how can influencers affect your content marketing strategy, this article shows you exactly how to find your own influencer.
In addition, LinkedIn increases your visibility to decision-makers who are out there looking for exactly the types of services you provide. Using the right keywords on your LinkedIn profile will connect you to people who need whatever it is you have to offer. That means you can find the perfect matches in minutes rather than days, weeks or months. In fact, you might not even know what you might be looking for. Yet, if you have a profile embedded with the proper search terms, then you will be found. As a result, you open yourself up to opportunities you did not know even existed. When you out, then real growth comes.
Moreover, LinkedIn works for you even when you are sleeping. There are only 24 hours in the day, and we all need our beauty rest. Nonetheless, your profile is what comes up in Google or Bing searches. This is because when someone searches your name, your LinkedIn page normally ends up at the top of the search page results. Think of that when it comes to writing your articles. Here are a few other statistics that help you achieve your quest for personal branding success:
- 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute their content.
- 63% of B2B marketers surveyed rated LinkedIn’s effectiveness as “Effective” and “Very Effective.”
- 70% of B2B companies are creating more content than they did in 2014.
Plan your LinkedIn content marketing strategy
The first thing you want to do that is critical to LinkedIn success is to continually plan and document your content marketing strategy. In fact, 60% of those with a documented strategy achieve better results than 32% of those who only have a verbal strategy. How do you plan and document your content marketing strategy? Do you understand what types of customers might respond to your posts?You start off by creating a calendar of the days and times you want to post. Not to mention, you need a list of titles/topics you intend to write about. That is certainly not all though. You really want to come up with titles that grab readers’ attention with thousands of other posts clamoring for the same spot. A large part of the overall success of a post on LinkedIn has to do with the title. In 2014, the most read LinkedIn post was titled, “10 Reasons You Have To Quit Your Job In 2014.” The second most viewed post is titled, “The Difference Between Successful People and Unsuccessful People,” and the third most viewed post in 2014 was, “The 7 Things Successful People Never Say.”
As you can see, numbers such as “Top 10,” “7 Things” or “How Tos” attracted a large number of LinkedIn’s readers. Also, using topic ideas around words such as: interview, people, work, success, learned, job and culture seem to rank fairly well. Think of the people who use and intend to use LinkedIn. What types of posts would matter most to them? It can help to study consumer psychology. On LinkedIn, they are either looking for a job, posting a job, making new connections and building their own personal brands too.
Once you have your title down, you need your article to pack a punch with as few words as possible. When people are determining what to read, they usually read around 40 to 49 characters before deciding whether or not they want to stick around. Like the start of a new TV pilot, you need something that will get them hooked. This is something they can sink their teeth into, and not something they’ve already read before. On the other hand, it should seem natural. Don’t use an exclamation point on every other sentence just because you want someone’s attention. That makes it seem too promotional, aggressive and pushy–this will turn people off in the end. Your posts should also be easy to read and digest with headers.
Timing is everything
Along with your content marketing strategy, the time of day you post is critical too. Research shows that articles are most read between 7 to 8 PM, 1 to 2 PM and 4 to 5 PM. You want to post at the most opportune times for getting your posts read. This is true whether you are first starting out, or if you have become an authority in your field. This is about reaching your targeted audience by understanding the importance of an insightful and relevant post. More than that, you want to ensure that all of your topics are well-researched and tested among your target audience. The good news is you can always go back and refine your original train of thought.
Media
We all love text, but who doesn’t like accompanying images? LinkedIn audiences love images. They might not always have enough time in the day, but an image can convey a thousand words. You should always include up to eight images. Now, you might be thinking video too. While video does work for other sites, it isn’t too popular with LinkedIn users.
As you can see, LinkedIn is the place to be. Yet, what’s better than reaching over 250 million active viewers? Reaching the right 250 viewers and getting your message across effectively.
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