How Content Strategy Can Give You the Edge

CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT! Everyone is always thinking about how to put out content for the world to obsess over, to share, to react, and to click on. Content can be used for good and for evil. Putting out content can also be messy and confusing, but when you know how to put out content, it can be the most powerful tool in your box. Content can also be used to generate leads on LinkedIn. A lead-generating content marketing strategy is a strategic marketing effort that focuses on creating and distributing interest, engaging, and relevant content to attract and create leads from a predefined visitor persona. Putting out content is a carefully crafted art and very specific to the platform you intend to promote it on.

LinkedIn is a network with the goal of connecting professionals and creating a productive world. The platform is for the professionally-geared, the leaders, and the business growers. You cannot put content meant for Instagram into LinkedIn, it does not work that way. Today, I will be teaching you the way of the content.

“… A firm can target a niche audience, increase website visitors and, if the content is compelling enough, generate lead sales’

Jeremy Durant, business principal at Bop Design
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7206-linkedin-marketing-business.html

Leads Through Content Marketing

Finding your content marketing strategy can be overwhelming when you do not know how to start or you find yourself having a roadblock and don’t know what content to promote. Here are a few things that can help you:

1. Understand your target audience– Understand what your audience needs and use that as the way to create content. Talking to customers and asking them questions.
2. Content promotion along with creation– It needs to be distributed for potential customers to read and share. Collaborating with companies like Outbrain, PR Newswire, GrowthHackers, and Zest can help get content circulating. Planning distribution of the content, this helps with distributing, targeting, monitoring, and marketing the content and engaging with customers.
3. Choose the right channels– Very crucial to your content marketing strategy. If LinkedIn is your social platform, using small and quick content should be your target. 
4. Data-backed content pieces– Content is meant to gain the trust of your audience. In order to establish that trust, make sure your content is accurate and backed by facts and data. 
5. Widen your content sourcing horizons– Bring in guest blogger, guest speakers, ask employees, etc. This will help give new ideas, increase volume, and bring new perspectives.
6. Personalize your content marketing– Customizing content helps boost effectiveness, appeals to the audience, and makes the audience feel unique and compelled to take an action. Personalization can be simple, putting the reader’s name in an email or it can be complex, creating a personalized website experience. 
7. Make it visual– Educational videos, Interactive infographics, and Illustrated summaries

Always align your content strategy with your ultimate goals and your target market audience’s needs!

Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation

Lead Generation refers to all of the activities and strategies you use to attract potential customers. 82% of B2B marketers find the greatest success on LinkedIn and the typical audience on this platform are professional decision-makers with purchasing power. It can be intimidating because LinkedIn is a very professionally-geared content. Not knowing how to start forming leads can be detrimental to your brand. Following these steps can help take you in the right direction.

1. Make sure your executives have a strong LinkedIn presence
2. Create a powerful LinkedIn Page for your business
3. Post relevant content and updates
4. Join LinkedIn groups your clients and customers are in
5. Use paid products to ensure your content reaches your intended audience
6. Ensure you have strong sales and marketing alignment

Creating Effective LinkedIn Pages

Create opportunities for customers to learn more about the brand and engage with relevant content. Sharing relevant content and sharing often will increase the amount your followers engage and the higher your page will be appear in search results. How do you create these opportunities?

• Publish engaging content on your company page– Post content that your target audience will want to read. “Salesy” content does not generally work very well on LinkedIn. They like leadership content on your company page, and it will grow an audience. Not only promote your content but also promote engaging and insightful content from others
• Images bring in over six times more engagement than text-only content– Custom image collages (3-4 images in one post) perform well. Videos should be about 1-2 minutes and should capture attention within the first few seconds and always have subtitles. Live videos generate 24x more comments than regular video on LinkedIn
• Highlight your best content– With Sponsored Content, you can place your content directly into your audience’s feed.
• Using analytics– you can find out which content is doing the best with your audience 

These were only a few focusing on the content aspect of creating opportunities. On the website, you can find many more to help you create a more effective LinkedIn page.

Growing Into the Profile of Your Dreams

If you want your profile to grow beyond your wildest dreams, there are a few more components you have to think about. The Social Media Examiner explains everything you need to know about what should be put into a post for growth! In her video she goes into depth about the Categories of posting: Industry Insights, Storytelling, and Relatability. The Post-Forumla of a post, and all of the Content-Types that you can use when promoting content! At the end of her video is an AMAZING BONUS TIP on how to get that initial bump in reach and awareness!

Content is more than a stock photo of a happy family using a product, content is the connection between the brand and the audience. It’s the moment when a brand catches the eye of a potential customer and the battle for the customer’s trust commences. What kind of content can a sales rep post that will help them generate leads using their social network? The content that… has a connection with their target audience, is able to get the message across without asking the viewer to read a whole book, is not only focused on their own but engages with other brands, and finally, the content that grab the attention and keep it. Let content be your most powerful tool.