by Forbes Agency Council
Republished from Forbes, November 17, 2017
LinkedIn is becoming a growing source for brands to publish and share highly readable content. While the platform is considered the social site for professionals to connect, more businesses are taking advantage of its solid reputation to circulate content to clients.
According to a report by LinkedIn, the site has a whopping 530 million users in more than 200 countries. This expansive reach can make your content visible to customers near and far, making it an effective outlet to get in front of your audience in a credible way.
Twelve members of the Forbes Agency Council share how LinkedIn can help your brand’s content marketing strategy. Here is what they had to say:
1. Leverage LinkedIn’s Pulse Blog
Your LinkedIn profile is your business card, resume, job-seeking tool, speaker/award submission, marketplace voice and your relevancy check. It helps you track and connect with other industry influencers and build your professional credibility. From a brand perspective, and particularly if you are business-to-business, utilize the Pulse blog as a news distribution tool. It won’t disappoint. – Jaymie Scotto Cutaia, Jaymie Scotto & Associates
2. Establish Your Influence
Nowadays, fewer and fewer people are following branded content on LinkedIn. Individuals can give tons of value and interact directly with others. LinkedIn is a person-to-person platform. If you actually share content as your brand, it tends to be an afterthought. Individuals are always looking to build their own identities and audiences, and it means more to followers when they act as influencers. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
3. Invest In Advertising
LinkedIn is an expensive platform, at least for advertising. Even if you need a bigger budget for this platform, you should consider the outcome it can provide you: better-qualified leads who are looking for solutions for their business. You should definitely capitalize on this. It is also a content hub for professionals, so you should consider it in your content strategy. – Martha Madero Gonzalez, GROU Crecimiento Digital
4. Encourage Employees To Promote Their Thought Leadership
Individuals and brands should use LinkedIn. Individuals should have their own personal/career content marketing strategies, but brands should encourage employees to be thought leaders and contribute brand messages via their LinkedIn accounts. This approach helps both the individual and brand, as the individual earns recognition while the brand gets promoted. – Dan Golden, Be Found Online
5. Identify Targeted SEO Keywords
Think of LinkedIn as an extension of your SEO program. It’s a perfect database to crawl and identify relevant keywords, which you can then implement into your profiles and content. By optimizing your LinkedIn profiles, you’re maximizing your findability in a pool of competing influencers, making certain that your strategic messaging is reaching the highly targeted and valued audience you seek. – Matthew Jonas, TopFire Media
6. Use Content To Build Relationships
LinkedIn is a powerful platform, specifically for business-to-business companies. If you value staying in front of prospects and clients, LinkedIn is definitely the place to be active. There are three main ways to use LinkedIn: Creating thought leadership and staying top of mind with your network, finding new clients and prospecting, and building relationships with your network to create new opportunities. – Tami Joy Schlichter, Ajax Union
7. Humanize Your Brand
Part of the reason LinkedIn has taken off recently is because it’s more about the individuals than the brands and companies. People want to connect with people, not brands without faces or names. LinkedIn has done a tremendous job of giving individuals a voice that can be seen and heard across a massive network — something that Facebook has lost touch with. – Vinny La Barbera, imFORZA
8. Stay Top Of Mind
You need to create content on Linkedin because it’s a soft way of reminding your contacts you exist. The larger your network of potential clients and business partners, the harder it is to stay in touch individually. With that said, create compelling content and your contacts will constantly be reminded you’re there. – Gil Eyal, HYPR
9. Reach A More Targeted B2B Audience
LinkedIn is a relatively inexpensive way to reach a B2B audience. While we do not anticipate LinkedIn being a significant portion of media budgets, there is definitely opportunity for testing. LinkedIn has targeting capabilities to reach professional titles, geos, business sizes and industries. With any social media effort, it is critical to post valuable, actionable content that engages users. – Zach Morrison, Elite SEM
10. Expand Your Network
While platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat keep users engaged and connected to your brand, LinkedIn connects you with the individuals behind other brands. It allows you to share your entrepreneurial experience, comment on related topics, and get opinions from industry professionals just like yourself. #NetworkIsNetworth – Alex Quin, UADV
11. Build Trust Behind Your Expertise
LinkedIn should already be a part of most brands’ content strategies. The social network established itself early as a place for companies to connect with current team members, prospective employees and professional customers. Individuals should also leverage the channel to share thought leadership content. The format and context of LinkedIn help to label it as trustworthy and professional. – Nina Hale, Nina Hale, Inc
12. Communicate Authenticity
In the B2B world, success is dependent on meaningful and often highly personal connections, offline and online. To effectively engage on LinkedIn, your outreach needs to reflect a clear understanding of your audience’s specific challenges, while accurately conveying your unique brand promise. In other words, it requires the same authenticity expected of face-to-face interactions. – Howard Breindel, DeSantis Breindel