Why LinkedIn Should Be Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy

The beauty of a content marketing strategy is that it is probably the most effective way of generating leads for your business that have a high return on investment (ROI). This is because – via the copy that you generate – readers are genuinely interested in what your business has to offer as they have engaged with what you’ve written about your products and services.

LinkedIn is undoubtedly the social network that business-to-business (B2B) companies need to be on. This is because decision makers from all manner of companies are on this channel. At last count, there are 509 million registered users on LinkedIn and – of those 509 million – 106 million are unique monthly visitors.

LinkedIn offers the opportunity to publish articles on your profile in a manner very similar to your own site. The beauty about publishing on this B2B platform – as opposed to your website – is that your article is automatically put under the noses of the people who are connected with you on LinkedIn. There is no need to perform other steps to get your article out there.

LinkedIn Publishing Dos

There are a number of best practices when it comes to publishing on LinkedIn as part of your content marketing strategy. Here are some of them:

Watch the length of your headline

According to statistics, you should only make your headline between 40 and 49 characters – the length of almost half of the average Tweet. Avoid the temptation to make it rambling as this will only decrease the amount of likes your article will get.

Be careful of how you structure your heading too. Most readers make the decision to read an article based on if the headline interests them. So make sure that it adequately portrays what your article is about. “How-to” and list-style headlines generate the most engagement on LinkedIn.

Add images to your post

It’s been found that the more images a post has the most engagement the article generates. If your article doesn’t lend itself to a lot of pictures in the body of the text, have at least one at the top of the article.

Other multimedia – such as infographics and SlideShare presentations – have also been shown to increase the likes and shares that an article on LinkedIn gets. However, as opposed to other social media platforms such as Facebook, video doesn’t generate that much engagement.

Divide your post

Statistics show that the best-performing posts are the ones which are divided into five sub-headings. This breaks the post down into easily skimmable parts which are easy to view on a mobile phone. LinkedIn readers prefer to read long-form content – approximately 1 900 to 2 000 words – so the practice of inserting a lot of sub-headings will make it easier for them to digest it.

Watch your tone

LinkedIn is about disseminating information rather than trying to get people to form an opinion. And this is shown in the stats:

• Posts with a neutral tone attract more engagement from readers,
• Posts with a positive tone less so, and
• Posts with an overtly – almost aggressive – tone turn people off from engaging with you.

So make sure that you adopt a thought-leadership type style with all your articles on LinkedIn that shows your expertise in your field.

We’re not saying that you should give up posting your articles on your own website in favour of LinkedIn. As your website is your own property on the web, this has more weight than any social media platforms. Publishing on LinkedIn is a very good idea as this practice will automatically bring your articles and company to an audience that you may not have otherwise had.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

The Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Copywriting and Content Marketing Course will teach you the ins and out of how a well-thought-out piece of content should be structured. To find out more about our other online digital marketing courses, visit our website.