How to do Content Marketing on LinkedIn

nThe business platform has many advantages that the other social media platforms lack. It doesn’t have the chaos, raucous energy, and toxicity of X (formerly known as Twitter). 

It doesn’t have the insane conspiracy theories and irrelevant nonsense of Facebook, and it doesn’t have the context-less thirst-trapping and product placement of Instagram. 

LinkedIn is home to an army of people looking to do business. There are CEOs looking to hire, the owners of startups looking for content writers and SEO to scale their new websites, headhunters looking to recruit for big companies, and so on. Therefore, this would make LinkedIn the ideal place 

A lop-sided job market

However, this is only the demand side of the job market. The job market in the US has experienced a weird sort of collapse and its results can clearly be seen on LinkedIn. It has been described as an employers' market.

This means there is an oversupply of people looking for jobs and gigs. Therefore, the rate of success for people using LinkedIn to sell their talent might be reduced as a result.

The sorry state of the lopsided job market has been made apparent on LinkedIn. First, it showed up as murmurs and grumbling from freelance writers, translators, and editors, complaining about the impact of AI being compounded by the lack of demand for freelancers.

Since then, it has grown to include more obvious signs such as massive layoffs in tech companies, as was the case with the gaming industry. This took the form of individuals laid off from these industries posting on LinkedIn about their precarious situations.

They have been joined by a range of others in the marketing and creative industries. Content managers, creative designers, and freelancers are now all using LinkedIn to express just how much they are at the end of their rope, with some of them nearing homelessness, deep in debt, and on the precarious brink of poor mental health. 

The stints of employment range from three (if they’re lucky) to sixteen months. Some have sent out hundreds of applications with no response. Others have sent out hundreds of applications with decent response rates, promising interviews, and last-minute ghosting. 

LinkedIn Content Marketing 

LinkedIn content marketing is a relatively new marketing strategy based on social selling and inbound marketing. It amounts to posting based on classic marketing and sales principles. You define your target market, study their pain points and needs, and then create content that speaks directly to these needs. And voila, clients come to you by sliding into your inbox.

In other words, a LinkedIn strategy is based on the premise — If you build it (or create the right content), they will come. There is a wide range of creators who are attracted to this approach and are busy implementing it. 

Based on my observations, here are the people who are the most busy using LinkedIn for content marketing: 

—Life coaches

—LinkedIn ghostwriters

—CEOs of software startups

—CEOs trying to promote their thought leadership strategies

—Agency owners

—Even other freelancers

There are several advantages to it compared with alternatives like SEO content writing and editing. You don’t need a website. You don’t need to write massive blogs that it will take months or years for Google to pay attention to and show in the SERPs. 

It is said that only 1% of everyone on LinkedIn is actually posting. You would never think that when on there. Every freelancer is posting, with various levels of success and adroitness, long, short, and medium-length posts and the occasional video about various aspects of their business.

Some of these posts are “how to” posts; others are “process posts” that show how the freelancer does his craft, and others are “social proof” posts showing how the creator has delivered successfully for their clients. 

How to benefit from LinkedIn

LinkedIn has its challenges. Don’t expect to just go there and clients will automatically come to you. Instead you have to build credibility. 

You would expect them to be the face of this social selling movement on LinkedIn. It gives them the opportunity to practice what they preach — that is, posting daily to attract leads, sales, and long-term clients. 

It’s an idea that is based on the social selling principle of VCO. VCO means Visibility, Credibility, and Opportunity. Think of it as a mathematical formula:

                                                            V + C = O

This means making yourself visible on social media and doing so in a way that makes you and your offers credible. Ideally, LinkedIn inbound marketing means leads come to you by sliding into your DMs.

But it usually doesn’t work like that. Some of these LinkedIn ghostwriters admit that they have to directly message dozens (sometimes 100s) of prospects a week with abysmal rates of conversion. It’s a time and energy-consuming process. 

And they have to deal with the treacherous and unpredictable LinkedIn algorithm. One week, your impressions (that is the number of people who see your LinkedIn posts) expand exponentially; next week, they decline at the same rate. So does LinkedIn offer good content marketing opportunities? 

Incorporating LinkedIn into Content Marketing Strategy

Relying entirely on LinkedIn to distribute content is not enough. Instead, LinkedIn should be part of a much more holistic content distribution strategy. This strategy should include:

• Email marketing

• SEO-based blogging

• Other social media sites

• Repurposing content

In particular, repurposing content should be a top priority. With repurposing content, you save time and effort. The blog that you write can be broken down into multiple LinkedIn posts, Twitter posts, or FB posts. 

It can also serve as the basis of email newsletters. Even your podcasts or excerpts of your podcasts can be sent to LinkedIn, especially now with the platform promoting more video-based content. 

Tips to follow when using LinkedIn

The LinkedIn algorithm can be unpredictable; however, it is possible to take advantage of the opportunities it offers. The key is developing a method, seeing if it works, and making necessary changes when you deem it necessary. 

In other words, you should take full control of your strategy. That being said, here are a few tips to follow when posting content on LinkedIn:

1. Post regularly. Choose to post between three to five times a week. Some people go as far as posting seven times a week. You should probably reduce it to one post a day and even think about posting regularly at the same time. 

2. Don’t be afraid to use video. LinkedIn is now aggressively pushing video content. Many people have no natural inclination to use video or even pics. But LinkedIn seems keen on rewarding people who put themselves out there. 

3. Do outreach. It’s not enough to simply post content and expect leads to slide into your DMs. Think of doing some outreach. It does not have to be necessarily cold outreach. You can reach out to followers who like your content or who comment under your content.

4. Keep things contained in LinkedIn. LinkedIn — like all the other big social media platforms — hates it when you try to link off their platform. If your LinkedIn posts contain links to your blog or newsletter, your reach will be limited. So how do you shepherd your LinkedIn followers away from LinkedIn and to your site or newsletter? 

Take full advantage of LinkedIn's suite of features, including its blogging features. LinkedIn has two features that allow you to blog — LinkedIn Newsletter and LinkedIn articles. They both are essentially blogging platforms with full-on SEO capabilities. If you have to embed any links to your blog/newsletter, think of incorporating them into the body text of LinkedIn articles. 

LinkedIn is a platform that as of now has none of the distracting noise that we have on the other social media platforms. However, as a content platform, it is relatively new. Any LinkedIn content strategy should include keeping a close eye on trends and being ready to tweak or even pivot when necessary. 

More importantly, LinkedIn is a social media platform. Call it the Instagram for professionals. No matter which you cut it, you have to put yourself out there in the form of selfies or videos alongside your content. The LinkedIn algorithm requires your face as the signature of your content, and there’s no escaping that.

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2024, November 05). How to do Content Marketing on LinkedIn.